Summer is upon us full swing here in San Diego! It is essential for us to drink water, as our body demands LOTS of it. As the temperatures rise so does your core body temperature. Water can not only help neutralize that, but so many more benefits.
    So as you sit on the beaches of La Jolla, Pacific Beach, and surrounding San Diego destinations take lots and lots of water. If you are lacking hydration some key signs you may experience are dizziness, feeling of tiredness, headaches, and much more.
    For children, some signs to keep an eye out for are dry tongue and no tears while crying. If you notice things like this get some water in them as soon as possible. You may also notice they become more fussy than normal, which can be a plethora of things, one of which is colicky, which ultimately is a digestive issue that we have great success dealing with.
    For you adults, if you are not urinating at least 4 times a day, have dark urine with a strong smell. You my friend are dehydrated. 
    How much water should we be consuming? Well there are so many ways out there, however I personally feel the easiest way is to take you total body weight and by two. So half of you body weight should be drank in ounces. For example if you are 180 lbs you should consume 90 ounces of water daily.
    When you are drinking enough water, it has shown improvement on energy and brain function, may help prevent headaches, constipation, kidney stones, and weight loss. As little as 1.5-4.5 lbs of fluid loss was found to be detrimental to working memory and increased the feeling of anxiety and fatigue.
    Should you have further questions, please feel free to reach out to us. We are always here to help with chiropractic, but health and wellness across the board. 

Dr. Zach Beatty, DC
Gonstead Family Chiropractic
​San Diego, CA

    Constipation has occurred in just about everyone's life, whether it was as a child, as an adult, or as you grew older. There are without a doubt multiple reasons that one can become constipated. Some it stems from their diet, plain and simple, if you are not eating the right foods, you cannot expect everything to be A-ok. Some others stem from stress, lifestyle, while others can actually stem from low back issues as well. So where does chiropractic come in?
Well what each chiropractor does can be different, but I know what we do in our office. We look to find the true cause of your issue, we seek to find the answers that tell the story, not just put a blanket over the diagnosis of constipation and move on. I think that is the way of our new health conscious society. Who is not seeking to find ways to better their health through non-traditional medicines? I can tell you here in San Diego, it is without a doubt the majority. I have many friends from different realms of health, acupuncture, massage, medical doctors, orthopedic surgeons, trainers, dietitians, etc. But when I speak with them all, it all comes back to finding out what the cause (problem) is and how to fix it.
    But back to the link between constipation and chiropractic. Our entire body, every cell, tissue, gland in our entire body is controlled through our nervous system. When we take a look into the spinal column and where our nerves travel to and from, it becomes very clear that the nerves in our low back go directly into our digestive tract (bladder, small and large intestines), while some mid back areas go into our stomachs.
    Think of this like plugging a toaster into the outlet, putting a piece of bread in and pushing the button down, moments later nice crispy well toasted piece of bread pops up. Now imagine that the breaker on that outlet was disrupted... now what happens moments later after putting a piece of bread down? You guessed it, NOTHING.
    Chiropractic resets your breaker system allowing your body to function optimally, hence a nice piece of crispy toast pops up, and your concerning and sometimes embarrassing constipation issue is resolved. 

-Dr. Zach Beatty, DC