When we don’t sleep in tune with the natural rhythms of seasonal light exposure and when we don’t properly prepare our body for rest, we risk altering the hormones and chemistry that helps to regulate everything from digestion to fertility.

One way to stack the deck in favour of the highest quality sleep experience is to craft the perfect restoration routine.

Ritualize Your Routine

A routine is a series of actions done repeatedly.

Not all routines are helpful, or move you towards a predetermined goal, they’re simply routines due to repetition.

You’ll see routines, even rituals, a more intentional form of routine, among many high achievers across a variety of professions.

What makes routines so impactful is the ability to automate them and require little to no willpower.

This makes consistency easier and as such, the opportunity for a maximum return even more likely.

Here’s a simple process to get started:

STEP ONE: Create a plan

STEP TWO: Cue the plan

STEP THREE: Follow the routine

STEP FOUR: Get the reward

The following is a sample Restoration Routine:

Use the template to create your own.

1. Body Preparation

Your “cue” in the routine is the first thing done at every sleep cycle to initiate the remainder of the steps.

Once you’ve pulled the trigger and seen the routine through a few times, the steps will start to feel automated and easy.

• Hydration – Drink salted water with lime
• Exfoliation – Dry brush
• Opens pores – Hot shower
• Detoxification – Sauna
• Circulation – Cold shower
• Moisturization – Coconut oil

2. Nutrient Needs

Bone Broth

The amino acid glycine, found in broth, helps promote sleep, aids digestive recovery and reduces inflammation.

Magnesium

Involved in hundreds of body process, magnesium can help to regulate melatonin, a hormone that guides our sleep – wake cycles.

Vitamin C

Many are aware of the immune system effects of adequate Vitamin C levels but studies show that individuals with a greater concentrations of Vitamin C have better sleep than those with reduced amounts.

Sea Salt

While most often vilified, salt can having a calming effect on the nervous system.

Salt restriction has many harmful effects with insomnia being one of them.

Sleep Hygiene

Cold Room

Reducing the ambient temperature, you’ll reinforce your body’s natural instinct to sleep.

Temperatures between 60-68 degrees stimulate melatonin production and encourage initiation of the sleep cycle.

No Light

Light plays a significant role in the body’s circadian rhythm via biological signaling of the need for sleep or to wake.

Sleep masks help to remedy this by creating a pitch-black environment, including blocking out blue light from the devices inside your bedroom.

Maximize Breathing

Mouth breathing has been linked to high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and even cognitive dysfunction.

When you breathe through your nose, you’ll wake up more rested, without a sore throat and dry mouth.

Try mouth taping as way to encourage nasal breathing.

Building your own “perfect restoration routine” can start off simple and grow.

The key to success is having one.

As with any intentional routine, getting started small is better than not starting at all.

What’s your restoration routine? What steps do you include?

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

Remember when you could stay up late; eat from your favourite fast food joint, workout a couple of hours a week, and stay relatively fit?

Once you put 40 in your rearview, everything seems to change.

Just looking at those fries seems to tighten the belt…

Don’t get your 8 hours?

… More lbs. added.

And workouts?

…Sweating it out any less than daily seems to be a waste of time.

Here are the dos and don’ts of fat loss over 40.

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

How often do your resolutions become reality?

If you’re like most, it’s about 8% of the time, and that’s not even terrible considering less than 25% of people stay committed to the end of the first 30 days!

This year, ditch the resolutions and do this instead.

The primary reason traditional resolutions rarely work is because they focus too much attention on the end result as opposed to the process it’ll take to get there.

“I’m going to lose 10 pounds this year!”

It’s a worthy goal, but that declaration has nothing to do with the success path or day-to-day commitments required to make it real.

Follow this process to improve your life in 2021 and beyond.

ASSESS YOUR LONG-TERM GOALS  

It’s not as though goal setting has no value, only that revisiting your long-term vision is step one, not the only step.

Dream big as most tend to underestimate what they can accomplish in a lifetime and overestimate what they can do today.

ASSIGN A DOLLAR AMOUNT

Living in reality is a fantastic way to create the future you’re dreaming of.

Just about everything has a monetary cost, so it only makes sense to assign that cost.

“What will the mortgage be on our dream house?”

“How much do we save for life experiences?”

“How much will we need to save for the kids education?”

Once you have a monthly expense total for your Dream Life, you can reverse engineer the revenue you’ll need to earn and what you’ll need to accomplish to earn it.

Aside from a real sense of peace that comes with knowing your numbers, it also

gives a deeper purpose to the day-to-day actions that you’ll be completing.

PLAN LIKE A CORPORATION

Split your year into 4 quarters and approach your life planning no differently than Amazon or Apple would schedule there’s.

Success leaves clues, and it only makes sense we follow the trail and follow suit.

Every 90 days, host a detailed strategy session for yourself or your family during which you’ll review your successes and failures, your proximity to the future goals, and what changes, if any, need to be made.

CREATE COMMITMENTS

Once you’ve made it this far, you can easily replace your annual resolutions with commitments to each and any action steps required to move you closer to your future dreams.

Whether that dream is retirement or losing 10 pounds, it’s all the exact same process.

Set your daily schedule to support keeping your commitments and encourage those around you to help keep you accountable to them.

When you apply this process over time, the results become exponential.

You’re not only able to complete one commitment and replace it with another but instead; many prior commitments simply become your new habits.

Those well thought out habits push the unconscious, and often detrimental routines aside, leaving you with progressively more and more strong, life-enhancing automatic actions to guide your success.

Now, if given two choices, which do you think is better?

A New Year’s resolution or an entirely new you… every year!

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.

When workstations are set up properly you will be less likely to experience problems such as headaches, eye strain, neck and back pain, as well as prevent bursitis and tendon problems linked to repetitive movements.

Set up your own optimized space with these 6 steps to design a pain-free workstation.

Monitor Height

Start by setting up your monitor such that the top of your screen is at eye level. This can be done most easily with an adjustable height desk or desk topper.

If a new desk is out of the question, you can always add a stack of books under your computer monitor.

Note, if you’re using a laptop, you will need to have an external keyboard to meet optimal ergonomic criteria.

Monitor Distance

The monitor should be between 18-36 inches from your eyes. A single monitor can be placed closer to the 18-inch mark whereas a dual monitor system would be best placed closer to the 36-inch position.

Blue light blocking glasses can also be beneficial to reduce eyestrain.

Keyboard & Mouse

The keyboard and mouse should be placed beside one another, at the same height, and close to the front edge of the workstation.

The desk or keyboard holder needs to be adjustable in order to compensate for any necessary modifications in the wrist angle.

Desktop Arrangement

The frequently used items (pens, pencils, paper, etc.) should be placed within arms reach to avoid excessive reaching, bending, and twisting.

Chair Design

While it’s common thinking to focus on a chair with extra lumbar support, I prefer the opposite.

Similar to shoes in which too much support reduces the strength development and mobility of the feet, using support from a chair silences the spinal musculature and causes abnormal pelvic tilting.

By moving towards the front of your chair and not using the backrest, you’ll require the more consistent activity of the muscle that supports the spine.

Sit up tall, keep the shoulder back and down, knees bent between 90 and 120 degrees, and position your feet on the floor or footrest.

To Sit or Stand: That is The Question?

There is potential for a standing workstation to be a better option than sitting, although some of the research gives us conflicting information depending on what parameters are being measured.

Some of the advantages are:

• Reduced Leg Weakening
• Less Hip Flexor Tightening
• More Glute Activity

The final advantage and the main reason why a standing station could be a great choice is more overall movement.

When standing, it’s more likely you’ll be inclined to move versus while working from a seated position.

How much you move, regardless of a sitting or standing desk, is a determining factor for which choice is the healthier one.

Either way, taking micro-breaks is very important.

Getting up and walking around for 10 minutes at the end of every 30-60 minutes can make a world of difference over the course of long days, weeks, and months working away in front of a computer.

Have you set up your pain-free workstation?

Dr. Steven Gall has been offering exceptional chiropractic care to infants, children and adults for over 25 years. He has spent his life learning, and improving his knowledge, skills and ability to provide his care. As a public speaker and health coach he strives to assist people in seeing and attaining a life of extraordinary health. Contact the office to join others who have started the same journey.