Greetings from Everything’s Connected Progressive Osteopathy! If you missed last week’s introduction, here is the gist. Each week we will be giving healthy tips in three areas aimed at informing and motivating you to improve your health. This week will include:
- Food – Bone broth, one of our absolute favourites!
- Exercise – 3D lunge matrix including demonstration video
- Tip – Sleep
We are thrilled to be able to share these healthy tips with you, so without further ado, let’s get started!
FOOD – Bone Broth
We are kicking off the food section with one of our absolute favourites, broth! It has so many benefits and is so delicious on cold winters day.
Humans have been eating broth for thousands of years and for good reason. It contains an abundance of minerals, including calcium to promote healthy hair, nails and bones, and, as it is pre-digested, is an easy form of protein. In fact, it contains collagen, which is the most accessible protein to help with osteoarthritic change.
Broth is also brilliant for digestion, it contains glutamine that can repair the small intestine and gelatine which attracts and holds digestive juices. The amino acids present help fight inflammation which can reduce joint pain and also stave off that pesky cold (try with extra pepper for a particularly bad case of the sniffles!). Not to mention it’s cost effective, homemade broth with left over bones that were going to be thrown away can save you money and is excellent recycling!
We could go on and on about the benefits of broth but trust us, it’s great! In fact, our nutritionally trained osteopaths recommend having this stuff daily. You could cook with it or just drink it like a cup of tea! Below we have provided our recommended chicken broth recipe below to get you started.
MOVE – Lunge Matrix
Lunging, we’ve all done it, whether it be at training, as a stretch before a run or at the gym. Sure, everyone knows how to do a FORWARD lunge, but have you heard of the other planes of movement? There are 3 all together – Sagital (forward/backward), Frontal/Cronal (left/right) and Transverse (rotation). Most of the exercises and stretches we do focus solely on the sagital plane but in our real lives we use all three planes. We have to make sure we are stretching and exercising all three in order to improve flexibility, strength and fitness, as well as to better prepare our joints and muscles for real life movements – and thus decrease the chance of injury. This healthy tip is best seen. Therefore, (click here) to see our lovely Matthew Harris in the ‘Pay it forward – free functional exercise routine’ and check out the ‘lunge matrix’ section (watch from 2 min 42 seconds).
TIP – Sleep
Sometimes a good night’s sleep can be hard to come by. With our busy lives we can be out late, up early and find it hard to switch off when we finally do make it to our bed. However, there are a few things we can do to make getting those ‘Z’s’ a little bit easier.
First of all, we need to switch off in order to switch off – that means no screens at least 2-3 hours before bed. The ‘blue’ light emitted from computers and phones mimics the light during the day and causes our body to delay the release of melatonin, the hormone in charge of getting you to sleep.
Another step you can take toward better sleep is not eating at least 2-3 hours before bed, and having nothing spicy or caffeinated 3-4 hours before. Trying to sleep on a full stomach can be uncomfortable enough to keep you up and the stimulating effects of spices and caffeine can last for hours.
Finally, try to time your sleep cycle so you wake at a 90 minute interval after you fall asleep (e.g. If you have to wake up at 7am, go to sleep at 10pm). We sleep in 90 minute cycles, going through increasingly deeper stages of sleep and back again. If you can time it so you are waking up at the end of one of these cycles you will likely feel refreshed and ready to go. Alternatively, being abruptly woken by an alarm in the middle of one of these cycles, when you’re in a deeper stage of sleep, results in that slow can’t-get-out-of-bed-can’t-keep-my-eyes-open feeling. This is also why if we wake up naturally and then go back to sleep, we can often feel more tired and groggy then when we first woke.
So there you have it – 3 healthy tips from the wonderful osteopaths at Everything’s Connected. If you have any questions or want to learn more, feel free to contact us on 9888 6176 or at reception@everythingsconnected.com.au. Otherwise, tune in next time for more!
CHICKEN BROTH 
Ingredients:
1.5kg chicken bones
250 grams carrots, cut into pieces
250 grams celery, cut into pieces
250 grams onion, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
I tsp ground tumeric
Directions:
Place the chicken, vegetables, salt and black peppercorns into a pressure cooker.
Pour in enough water just to cover everything.
Bring to pressure over high heat, about 20 minutes.
Reduce the heat to low, so that you barely hear hissing from the pot.
Cook for 40 minutes.
(Another cooking alternative would be to place all ingredients into a slow cooker and leave over night).
Strain the broth, discard the solids.
Refrigerate the stock overnight, or until the fat solidifies. Remove the fat.
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 6 months.