Runner Insight

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Without being excessively rigid about any of it, over the past few years we have been working at practicing everyday healthier habits.  Our latest endeavor was sparked by my chiropractor.  He was discussing the health benefits of drinking water and he recommended that every day we drink half our body weight in ounces of water. He said 1/3 of your body weight in ounces was a good place to start, but working up to ½ was better for you. I had heard this before regarding the health benefits of drinking water, but hadn’t really internalized it. But this time, since I was recovering from lower right back pain which turned out to be sciatica, I was in a place in my life where I was more willing to take on the challenge. 

While I was mentally prepared and ready to do it, my problem became finding a safe and convenient drinking container.  I had a couple of stainless steel water bottles, but they made the water taste metallic.  We had been buying a case of water every week in the disposable plastic water bottles, but if we were going to increase our consumption that much, using that many throw away plastic water bottles was a really bad idea, environmentally speaking.

So, we found a BPA free plastic water bottle with built in straw that holds 32 ounces, and bought four of them.  We then dug out our Brita water filter pitchers.  By having two Brita water filter pitchers of cold water, and 4 BPA free plastic water bottles, we always have fresh cold water on hand, making drinking it easy.

So that’s nice, but how does drinking water save us over $1,000 a year? Well, let’s calculate…

We had been consuming (conservatively speaking) two 12 packs of Diet Coke at an average of $3.50 each for a total of $7.00 per week.

We were drinking a little over a case a week of Talking Rain juicy flavored beverages at $10.00 a case. (And yes, it had the artificial sweetener in it: not very good for us.)

And we had been buying a case of bottled water a week at $6.00 a case.

That’s $23.00 a week on cold beverages! Cutting them out saved us $1,196.00 per year. When I added it up, it astonished me how much we were saving by switching to water. And that’s with just two of us in the household. How much more could you save if you have more than two people in the household making the change? Even if you can’t get your kids to completely eliminate the sugar and artificial sweetener-filled fruit flavored beverages and sodas and Red Bulls, if you could instill in them the health benefits of drinking water and get them to cut their consumption of those other calorie-laden and sweetener-filled beverages in half and replace it with water, think how much healthier they will be.  

At our house, we have always taken baby steps when making these healthy changes, and we did the same with drinking more water.  We still buy milk and orange juice of course, but other than that, we weaned ourselves off of all of our other cold beverages, simply by buying four BPA-free water bottles at $4.00 each. And it took less than a month to make the change-over. 

Doing something healthy for your family and saving over $1000 bucks a year…what’s not to love? And why don’t you take one of those dollars and donate it in that little green-bordered FirstGiving box in the right-hand sidebar? We will thank you with lots of special secret surprises and private access to our Donors Only page at www.RunOverToEllens.com…

How ‘bout it?

-Vision Runner

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As most of you know, I was struck with lower right back pain after a sneeze at the end of last year.  They diagnosed the lower right back pain as sciatica on December 30th. Since then I have been going to see my chiropractor Dr. Krieg.  It’s been just over 3 months now and I’m feeling really good and the lower right back pain is all gone. 

For a while there I wasn’t so sure how this was all going to work out.  Dr. K was aligning my upper cervical vertebrae when all my pain was lower right back pain creeping down into my right leg.  It didn’t really make a lot of sense to me, and the sciatica was intense and painful.  But I trusted that the doctor knew what he was doing, and he explained that if he didn’t start by getting my head and neck into alignment, nothing else would ever be quite right, and even if we fixed the lower right back pain for now, it could re-occur. 

Once I was past the worst of the lower right back pain and I got the go ahead to start running again several weeks ago, I was ecstatic to get out there and hit the pavement.  But as soon as I started running I found that my right calf muscle would get really tight and it caused the runs to be way less enjoyable. Don’t get me wrong, I was still glad to be able to get out there and run again once the chance of re-injury was past, pain or no pain. But the tight calf muscle hampered my enthusiasm somewhat.

Well it’s now been over a month since I’ve been able to run again, and each day that I run I can feel myself getting stronger and faster. And I haven’t had the lower right back pain come back.

But I must admit for a while I was wondering what he had done to me!  Was being in alignment messing up my running?  It sure felt that way my first few weeks. 

When I mentioned this to Dr. K, he told us a story about a guy he treated who was ranked in the top ten nationally in archery.  He had taken up archery later in life and had done very well, and was hoping to gain the title of National Champion, but could never place higher than about fourth place in the national events. 

After Dr. K started adjusting him, he found that he could not hit the broad side of a barn.  He asked “What the heck have you done to me?!”  Dr. Krieg told him that since he had been living out of alignment for so long, his body had compensated all these years for it, but now he was getting his body back into the alignment where he needed to be. It would take his body and his shooting some time to adjust to the new (proper) alignment.

Some time after that he was shooting better then he ever had. And the guy went on to win a national archery championship! Had he chosen to just live with his body out of alignment, he probably would have never realized his true potential.

With that story in mind, I realized that my body had to learn how to run again with the correct alignment, instead of the way it had been running (13.5 lbs heavy on the right side) for years and years.  So now that I’m running in alignment, I guess that means I’m on my way to realizing my true potential. Hey!  Maybe I’ll break my PB of 2:02 in the half marathon this year.

How ‘bout it?

-Vision Runner

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As you know from my 4 part Back to Basics blog posts, I had an excruciating encounter with sciatica on December 30, 2008. If you haven’t read the dramatic story of my back pain saga you may want to click here to read it before continuing:here’s the link to the beginning, from there you can follow the links to the other installments: Back To Basics

To update you on my progress, I’ve continued the story here:

I had a feeling my mid-way re-exam at the chiropractor’s office was going to be a lot different from my initial exam.  And I was right. The changes were impressive and significant.

Dr. Krieg put me on the dual scale and instead of being 13 ½ pounds heavier on my right side, I was now only 1 pound heavier on my left!  Right within normal range. Wow!  Amazing!  My hips were no longer 1 ½ inches off: I was right on even!  Overall I had improved in all areas, and some of the changes were dramatic.

At that point though, I was still having a lot of pain in my lower back and down my right leg due to the sciatic nerve.  But, the good thing was that my alignments were holding; I only had to be adjusted about once every 2 weeks. So the initial work was going well and producing the results that we wanted. I had another deep tissue massage with Robin and that really helped with the circulation in my right leg.

I kept on seeing Dr. K twice a week.  Since I was staying in alignment, Dr. K started working on my lower back.  He took me to a different table.  Here he had me lay face down and then lowered the bottom half of the table as he kept his hand on my lower back.  As he did this, my back was stretched like I have never had it stretched before.  It felt great!  Dr. K explained that the little muscles in between the vertebrae can not get stretched with conventional stretching.  This process speeds up the recovery time it would take if I was to only to do stretching on my own.

I am so pleased with how my treatment is progressing.  I feel so much better.  I hardly have any pain from the sciatica.  My right leg is still a bit tighter then the left, but not nearly as bad as a few weeks ago.  Seems like what used to take weeks to see results is now happing in a few days, I now only have to see him once a week.

He also recommended a joint formula that I have been taking for about 6 weeks. That, along with the deep stretches and running, makes me feel almost new again.

I go in for my (hopefully) last re-exam at the beginning of April.  Dr. K will take x-rays and compare them to the ones he took back at the start of the year.  I’m looking forward to seeing those.  I’ll keep you posted on the results!

How ‘bout it?

Vision Runner

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