Bly Chiropractic Clinic

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Welcome to Bly Family Chiropractic!
At Bly Family Chiropractic we combine the most advanced facility and equipment with the latest chiropractic techniques, plus that extra dimension of personal care for you. New patients have our word that if after an examination we find their case to be a chiropractic problem, we will inform them and do everything in our ability to help them. If we find their condition is not chiropractic, we will refer them to a resource we feel that can further help them.

Phys Ed: How Exercising Keeps Your Cells Young
Recently, scientists in Germany gathered several groups of men and women to look at their cells’ life spans. Some of them were young and sedentary, others middle-aged and sedentary. Two other groups were, to put it mildly, active. The first of these consisted of professional runners in their 20s, most of them on the national track-and-field team, training about 45 miles per week. The last were serious, middle-aged longtime runners, with an average age of 51 and a typical training regimen of 50 miles per week, putting those young 45-mile-per-week sluggards to shame.

From the first, the scientists noted one aspect of their older runners. It ‘‘was striking,’’ recalls Dr. Christian Werner, an internal-medicine resident at Saarland University Clinic in Homburg, ‘‘to see in our study that many of the middle-aged athletes looked much younger than sedentary control subjects of the same age.’’

Even more striking was what was going on beneath those deceptively youthful surfaces. When the scientists examined white blood cells from each of their subjects, they found that the cells in both the active and slothful young adults had similar-size telomeres. Telomeres are tiny caps on the end of DNA strands the discovery of their function won several scientists the 2009 Nobel Prize in medicine. When cells divide and replicate these long strands of DNA, the telomere cap is snipped, a process that is believed to protect the rest of the DNA but leaves an increasingly abbreviated telomere. Eventually, if a cell’s telomeres become too short, the cell ‘‘either dies or enters a kind of suspended state,’’ says Stephen Roth, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland who is studying exercise and telomeres. Most researchers now accept telomere length as a reliable marker of cell age. In general, the shorter the telomere, the functionally older and more tired the cell. It’s not surprising, then, that the young subjects’ telomeres were about the same length, whether they ran exhaustively or sat around all day. None of them had been on earth long enough for multiple cell divisions to have snipped away at their telomeres. The young never appreciate robust telomere length until they’ve lost it.

When the researchers measured telomeres in the middle-aged subjects, however, the situation was quite different. The sedentary older subjects had telomeres that were on average 40 percent shorter than in the sedentary young subjects, suggesting that the older subjects’ cells were, like them, aging. The runners, on the other hand, had remarkably youthful telomeres, a bit shorter than those in the young runners, but only by about 10 percent. In general, telomere loss was reduced by approximately 75 percent in the aging runners. Or, to put it more succinctly, exercise, Dr. Werner says, ‘‘at the molecular level has an anti-aging effect.’’ There are plenty of reasons to exercise in this column, I’ve pointed out more than a few but the effect that regular activity may have on cellular aging could turn out to be the most profound. ‘‘It’s pretty exciting stuff,’’ says Thomas LaRocca, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of integrative physiology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who has just completed a new study echoing Werner’s findings. In Mr. LaRocca’s work, people were tested both for their V02max or maximum aerobic capacity, a widely accepted measure of physical fitness and their white blood cells’ telomere length. In subjects 55 to 72, a higher V02max correlated closely with longer telomeres. The fitter a person was in middle age or onward, the younger their cells. There are countless unanswered questions about how and why activity affects the DNA. For instance, Dr. Werner found that his older runners had more activity in their telomerase, a cellular enzyme thought to aid in lengthening and protecting telomeres. Exercise may be affecting telomerase activity and not telomeres directly. In addition, Stephen Roth has been measuring telomeres and telomerase activity in a wide variety of tissues in mice and has found, he says, the protective effects from exercise only in some tissues.

Another question is whether we must run 50 miles a week to benefit. The answer ‘‘can only be speculative at the moment,’’ Dr. Werner says, although since he jogs much less than that, he probably joins the rest of us in hoping not. Given his and his colleagues’ data, ‘‘one could speculate,’’ he concludes, ‘‘that any form of intense exercise that is regularly performed over a long period of time’’ will improve ‘‘telomere biology,’’ meaning that with enough activity, each of us could outpace the passing years.
In closing, what does this have to do with chiropractic? Seldom a day goes by that a patient says to me, "I really want to start an exercise program but my back pain is so bad that I can't". Many people suffer from headaches, neck, low back and sciatic pain which is so dehibilitating that they can't exercise even if they wanted to.
Through the end of 2010 we want to make a special offer for those in need. For any new patients referred in, we will do a comprehensive examination, and our new digital x-rays for $17. You are reading this correctly a $310 value for $17 through the end of 2010.

The above headline comes from a May 6, 2010, feature story on the Pittsburgh, PA, TV News station KDKA. The story starts off by noting that millions of people have high blood pressure. And they note that if left untreated it can be deadly. Most people treat blood pressure with medication. However, the story notes that some people are turning to chiropractic for help. As a result, these people are seeing improvement in their blood pressure numbers. The story focused on Dr. Michael Vactor who stated in an interview that, "Basically, one in four adults in America have some form of high blood pressure."
The article also quoted Bill Bird, a patient who is now sold on chiropractic. Bill has a very stressful job selling cars resulting in high blood pressure requiring prescription medication. After a few visits to the chiropractor, his blood pressure had improved to the point where his medical doctor cut his medication in half. Looking to the future, Bill optimistically stated, "30 to 45 days of my blood pressure staying at the levels it is, I'm going to be off it 100 percent." In spite of the fact that studies have now shown that chiropractic can help lower blood pressure, some in the medical profession are still skeptical. Dr. Vactor noted, "If we can get somebody's blood pressure to be lowered without medication, it's amazing because most doctors you talk to will tell you it can't be done." The article also interviewed Dr. George Bakris, a medical doctor whose expertise is high blood pressure, and who conducted a blood pressure study involving chiropractic on 50 patients at the University of Chicago Medical School. "We saw miraculous changes in blood pressure," said Dr. Bakris. "We saw 12 to 13 millimeter reductions in blood pressure."

In the conclusion of the article, Dr. Vactor noted that in spite of the medical approach to treat high blood pressure, chiropractic could have a unique answer. He states, "We've never been able to find a drug or a medication that can lower blood pressure that fast with no side effects."
*May 2010 Chiro Secure Monthly newsletter