Have you ever wondered what’s actually in the flu vaccine? Dr. Larimer will be discussing this and some of the recent research about the flu shot and what it does in your body. Did you know that the flu shot has actually been banned in some countries and that getting the shot can actually make you more likely to get the flu? We will also cover some natural alternatives that will help you avoid the flu and stay healthy during cold and flu season!

Please call (360)334-5051 to reserve your seat today!

I see not only a beautiful woman, but extra years of health and life!

How many of the people who you care about are dealing with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes or the myriad of other devastating health implications caused by not being at a healthy weight?

Over 60% are overweight or obese. It’s hard to talk about it. It’s hard to address it. There are many barriers that make it difficult for those of us who are overweight to actually get the scale moving in the right direction. BUT what if there is an easy, fast, effective way to get rid of the extra weight you are carrying so that you can move on with your life? Do you want to live the extra 5-10 years that you would if you were at your optimal weight? Do you want to reduce the illnesses you may already be experiencing as a result of carrying extra weight? How about really having that chance to enjoy active time with your family or participate in that hobby that you love but is just too hard for you right now?

Join us later this month as we talk about how you can start moving toward optimal health. We will tell you what we have done with our own family to drop a combined 100 pounds of extra fat and add at least 20 years of time together! Imagine the impact this could have on YOUR family.

We encourage you to attend, and bring your family members and friends – anyone you want to enjoy a little extra life with!

The Truth about Fast, Safe, Effective & Permanent Weight Loss
Wednesday September 26 2012 – 6:30pm to 7:30pm
Larimer Chiropractic & Wellness – 700 SE 160^th Ave Suite 113, Vancouver WA 98684

Call us at 360-334-5051 to reserve a seat. The workshop will begin in our office promptly at 6:15pm.

When: Tue, June 5, 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Where: New Seasons Market – Fisher’s Landing, 2100B SE 164th Ave., Vancouver, WA 98683

How many times have you gone on a trip and come home sick or feeling sore from all the travel? This used to happen to us all the time. A few years ago I was travelling frequently to help care for a family member and I would come home, needing to get back to work, but usually fighting a cold, having a stiff neck and back from sitting in planes and cars and sleeping on unfamiliar beds. Over the years, we’ve come up with a few really great tricks that make a huge difference!

• Travel with your own pillow. Yes, it takes up extra room, but particularly if you’ve got a pillow that works really well for you, it is absolutely necessary. If you don’t have a pillow you love, ask us about our favorite – we carry them in the office because they make such a difference for us personally! This step really helps eliminate the nasty headaches you can wind up with if your hotel has bad pillows.
• Load up on Vitamin C & D. We always make sure we take our vitamin D regularly before and after trips to boost our immune system. And, just before and after a trip (and sometimes during) we also boost our vitamin C, usually by adding a packet of Emergen-C (or two) into our day.
• Keep eating healthy food. It can be hard to eat right when you travel. We work hard to keep our eating pretty good when travelling… when we know it’s going to be a challenge, we bring some of our Greens powder with us and mix it up each day. Getting the nutrients we need helps us stay healthy. Also, the less you increase your consumption of sweets, the  healthier you’ll stay.
• Drink lots of fluids. It might be inconvenient to stop for bathroom breaks when you are travelling, but keeping properly hydrated will help you body keep working well.
• If you’re changing time zones… try to limit the change you experience. Here in Portland I tend to wake up around 5 am and go to bed around 9pm. When I travel to Central or Eastern time zones, I try to wake up later and go to bed later so that the time change doesn’t effect me as much when I get home from my trip. On a related note, do everything you can on your first day back not to nap so that you get back to your normal schedule as quickly as possible.

If you have great travel tricks, please share them! Or if you have other issues you experience when you travel, share them and we’ll let you know if we have any ways to combat them.

So what do we do about it?

The standard approach is well known by most of us: we take painkillers, muscle relaxants, and anti-inflammatories in the hopes that the problem will go away. Other strategies such as traction, hot packs, cold packs, and ultrasound may be used if the drugs don’t cut it. Sadly, these strategies often don’t work, only managing to cover up the symptoms of an underlying problem. For many people the low back pain becomes chronic, flaring up occasionally over weeks, months, or years. That pain is like our body’s alarm bell warning us that damage is occurring. The damage could be in the muscles, the ligaments, the tendons, the discs, the nerves, or (most commonly) all of the above.

When the damage worsens to the point that the discs begin to fail and rupture, the nerves become severely inflamed and irritated leading to “sciatica.” Many patients have described sciatica pain as “knife-like,” shooting, stabbing, throbbing, etc. The pain is often set off by changing positions, prolonged sitting, bending and twisting. Simple things like walking, putting on socks, and going to the bathroom can become a huge challenge and extremely painful. Once drugs and other treatments have failed, surgery is often the last resort.

People go into surgery with high hopes that their low back pain will be gone forever, but sadly it often doesn’t turn out that way. Many who have back surgery report a return of their symptoms with 1 or 2 years and many end up having multiple surgeries. Medical research studies have shown that anywhere between 20% and 40% of all back surgeries fail. Those are some scary odds! In fact, many medical doctors are arguing against surgery these days. Dr. Lynn Johnson of the American Academy of Pain Medicine states: “Just about any approach is better than having surgery because all studies have shown that, if you take a surgical population and non-surgical population, they all seem to do the same in five years.” Interestingly enough, he recommends more conservative forms of care such as chiropractic before resorting to surgery.

What does chiropractic have to offer?

Chiropractic has helped literally millions of people suffering from back pain, often helping them get out of pain, reduce or eliminate pain medications, and avoid invasive surgery. Vancouver WA Chiropractic helps to gently and effectively realign the spine and structural system, takes the pressure and irritation off of the nerves, and allows the body to begin the healing process. One study found that “…Chiropractic was particularly effective in those with fairly intractable pain–that is, those with a history of severe pain… The percentage of chiropractic patients who were ‘very satisfied’ with the care they received for low back pain was triple that for patients of family physicians.” There is definitely a time and place for drugs and surgery, but why not try chiropractic first?

So, what does this mean for you?

People often come to see me as a last resort. They’ve tried nearly everything else. When they start to see great results they’re shocked, often saying, “I wish I had come to see you sooner! I didn’t realize this would help so much!” Many people come to me originally for back pain, but then find that chiropractic can help them and their families in so many other ways. The goal of chiropractic is to free your body from subluxations, which are distortions in your spine and body that irritate, pinch, compress and stretch the delicate nerves that control not only your muscles, but also your digestion, your immune system, and a whole lot more. If you’re looking for a natural approach to correcting the underlying cause of your low back pain and has the potential to improve your overall health and quality of life give us a call! Let’s find out together if chiropractic care is the right option for you.

So why do millions of people around the world use chiropractic healthcare to address their headaches rather than drugs or surgery? The answer is simple: chiropractors take a very unique approach and analyze the body for a condition that is often ignored and can go undiagnosed for years. The condition that chiropractors are trained to find and correct can cause damage to the nerves, painful inflammation of body tissues, spasming and knotting of muscles, fatigue and weakness, and can set in motion more serious health problems. This condition is called the vertebral subluxation complex (or “subluxation” for short).

Just like dental cavities, subluxations can be present for a long time, doing significant damage, without you even knowing that they’re there.

So, what is a subluxation? It’s a distortion or misalignment in your spine and/or other structures of your body that puts stress on your nervous system. These subluxations are caused as a result of too much physical stress, emotional stress, or biochemical stress.

Why does chiropractic work so well for headaches? Most people suffering from headaches have uncorrected subluxations in their bodies (and don’t even realize it) that were caused by old injuries, poor posture, a build-up of mental and emotional stress, a poor diet, or nutritional deficiencies. When these subluxations are corrected the headaches often go away.

For example, in a study at the University of Odense in Denmark, chiropractic care helped headache sufferers decreased their need for pain medication by an average of 36% and decreased the number of hours per day with a headache by an average of 69%.

It’s not just adults who suffer from headaches, children and teens experience them too. As a teenager I had daily headaches and was told by my medical doctor that there was nothing he could do except prescribe drugs. Eventually my dentist recommended a great chiropractor that he knew, and that referral changed my life in more ways than one:I got amazing results (no moe headaches!) and eventually decided to become a chiropractor myself so that I could help people just like my chiropractor helped me.

Additionally, studies have shown that 85% of newborns suffer injuries to their delicate necks during the birth process. Forceps, suction, c-sections, doctors pulling and twisting… all of these things may be necessary to ensure the baby and mom come out of the birthing process safely, but they often lead to undiagnosed injury in the newborn. “Colic” is a condition where babies cry frequently and exhibit signs of distress even though there seems to be nothing wrong with them. Why do studies show that gentle chiropractic care helps over 90% of infantile colic cases? The answer is simple: birth trauma often causes subluxations which create pain, inflammation, and damage to the nerves and sensitive tissues of a child’s neck. If the subluxations are corrected and stress is taken off their delicate nervous systems, a colicky baby can become a happy and healthy baby relatively quickly. And rest assured – in our office we only use very gentle chiropractic techniques (no popping, cracking, or twisting) that are comfortable, safe and effective for newborns, the elderly, and everyone in between!

As you can see, chiropractors take a much different approach than other health providers when helping a headache sufferer. Instead of just suppressing the symptoms with painkillers and other drugs, chiropractic is about correcting the underlying cause of the problem so you can get relief, truly heal, and have a better quality of life. The only way to know if subluxations are causing your headaches, or the headaches of a loved one, is to get examined by a Vancouver WA chiropractor. In our office we GUARANTEE that we will help our clients: if we find that you do have subluxations we will do everything in our power to correct the problem, or if you don’t have subluxations we will do everything in our power to find someone who can help you. Either way you will know more about your body and have a better idea of what you can do to get relief and improve your health.

You were born to be healthy. Every cell in your body has the blueprint for your health, they just need to be told what to do. The nervous system (your brain, spine, and nerves) acts as the master controller of your cells and your entire body. It controls and coordinates your body’s movement, your immune system’s efforts to defend against infection, your digestion and absorption of nutrients from your food, your thoughts and emotions, and a whole lot more. Everything that happens in your body is controlled by your nervous system. If clear messages can be sent from your brain to your cells and back again, you have a better chance of being healthy. What happens if there is interference in the signal from your brain to your cells, kind of like static on a cell phone? For example, if there is interference in the signals to your pancreas, your pancreas would be more prone to damage and disease because it can’t receive its orders from the brain. Knowing that, does it make sense that your pancreas wouldn’t be able to work at 100% of its capacity? Chiropractic works to find and correct areas of nerve interference so that body can heal itself.

What causes nerve interference? Physical, biochemical, and mental/emotional stress on the body and mind lead to distortions of the spine and structural system. In other words, the joints of the spine and body become misaligned and/or can no longer move properly through their range of motion. These spine/body distortions lead nerve “pinching”, stretching, irritation, and inflammation. Those spine/body distortions that cause nerve interference are called subluxations. Chiropractors are the only healthcare professionals that are trained to detect and correct subluxations and the health problems they cause. Chiropractors use specific adjustments to correct subluxations which realign the spine and structural system while also removing nerve interference. When there is no interference your body can function properly and heal itself, ridding you of pain, discomfort, fatigue, digestive problems, or any other health problem that was caused by nerve interference.

Our Chiropractic Techniques

At Larimer Chiropractic and Wellness, we use gentle techniques to help you heal. There is no popping, forceful twisting, or cracking. Dr. Larimer has extensive post-graduate training in a chiropractic technique called Koren Specific Technique (KST). KST allows Dr. Larimer to quickly and gently detect and correct subluxations in your body, wherever they may be. That could include anywhere in your spinal column, discs, cranial bones, jaw, shoulders, hands, hips, knees, ankles, anything else that needs correcting. The correction is made with and adjusting instrument that is gentle and comfortable for people of all ages. KST often gets better results using gentle techniques rather than the quick, forceful adjustments that patients are often nervous about. This makes an adjustment at Larimer Chiropractic and Wellness comfortable, enjoyable, and effective.

Our Chiropractic Services

Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Are you tired of being told that “you’ll just have to learn to live with it”? Millions of people around the world have gotten the results they wanted from chiropractic rather than taking drugs to dull the symptoms and worrying about side effects. The truth is, we have no idea if we can help you or not. The only way to find out is to make an appointment to get checked for subluxations. If we determine that Larimer Chiropractic and Wellness for Vancouver WA chiropractic is the right place for you to get the care you need, we offer customized treatment plans based on your health goals. Want a quick tune up to get out of pain? Want a more long term solution that could result in feeling better now, preventing relapses, and having better health in the future? Call us today for an appointment to see how we can help you reach your health goals!

Whole Foods Mill Plain
815 SE 160th Avenue, Vancouver, WA

Drugs like antidepressants, antibiotics, and ADD/ADHD medications don’t have to be the new “normal” for our children! Join one of Clark County’s premiere wellness leaders, Dr. Jesse Larimer, for a FREE workshop on easy things you can do to help keep your kids off these drugs.

RSVP to save a seat for you and your family by calling (360)334-5051 or on facebook! Kids are welcome to attend.

A little background: your adrenal glands (found on the upper surface of the kidney) control your fight-or-flight response. When we are in this mode more than we are meant to be (either physically, emotionally, or biochemically), our adrenal glands get taxed and don’t function as well as they should.

Something simple you can do to help recharge your adrenal glands is to support them with an adaptogen (found in certain herbs). In our home we’ve tried doing this via capsules, but who wants to take extra pills?! The best solution we’ve found is to drink teas that have these adaptogenic properties.

Adaptogens can help people handle stress by providing:

• Antioxidant activity
• Liver protection and antitoxin activity
• Improved blood-sugar metabolism
• Less craving for alcohol or sugar
• Improved immune resistance
• Increased energy and stamina
• Improved muscle tone
• Increased strength
• Faster recovery
• Better focus and concentration
• Less anxiety
• Better sleep
• Better motivation and productivity
• A feeling of well-being
• Better moods

Our favorite adaptogen containing teas: yerba mate (buy it at Trader Joe’s for the best price) and Tulsi. There are quite a few different varieties of the Tulsi teas, so you can find whichever one suits you best!