To maintain wellness during winter, Leland’s Dr. Carrie Sands focuses on the wellness wheel, including getting enough fresh air, sleep, water, and movement.
Sands, a certified chiropractic sports physician, is in her sixth winter in northern Michigan and is the first and only certifi ed sports chiropractor and only chiropractor in Leland.
Especially living at this latitude, Sands preaches the wellness wheel as a great concept that was developed many years ago and adapted for Sands’ standards today.
The wellness wheel is a concept developed years ago that recommends people focus on personal health, acting like a pie chart for examining nutrients, movement and sun, rest, water, air, and mental health.
“A lot of those can take a hit at this time of the year so some of the things that people really need to put a little bit extra focus on include how much time you’re spending outside which can be rather challenging right now. But your goal is to have an hour of fresh air every day all the time every day of your life. If you’re not getting that, we can’t expect our system to work well if people know some of these sorts of rules of thumb including getting 6-8 hours of sleep a night, for example,” Sands said.
One trouble this time of year is obtaining fresh food, according to Sands.
Sands encourages finding a community sourced agriculture (CSA) for fresh vegetables and fruit to get proper nutrients.
Another focus for Sands is making sure the vitamin D level is up, especially when getting less than 20 minutes of sunlight a day and being unable to create natural levels of vitamin D, which has taken a hit in recent days.
“My recommendation is if you’re over if you’re over 70 we want you to have at least 600 IU of vitamin D,” Sands said.
Sands recommends fresh food including fish, mushrooms, eggs, and beef liver, which are also high in vitamin D as natural sources. She advises five or six servings of fruits and vegetables a day, as fresh as possible.
One hour a day of fresh air and practicing deep breathing exercises, even as simple as 10 deep breaths, is recommended.
The Surgeon General recommends an elevated heart rate for 30 to 40 minutes a day, three to four times a week. Getting a sweat going is also important, at least every other day, according to Sands.
“Moving our body through a full range of motion every day is unbelievably important for your general health,” Sands said.
Sands says today’s civilization is living in a state of thermal neutrality, living in 68 to 72 degrees indoor weather most of the time. Using versions of hormetic or metabolic stressors will help in vitality and cellular function.
“We see so much research when you’re using metabolic stressors ... anything from intermittent fasting or changing diet slightly,” Sands said. “Work out a little bit harder, there’s a sweet spot that you want to create a little stress response in the body, but then not too far because when you push it too far, you’re gonna have diminishing,” Sands said.
One stressor includes using cold and heat therapy.
Sands recommends 11 minutes a week in cold therapy, ranging from cold baths to cold showers that have proven massive health benefits. Even heat, like saunas, are a necessity for this time of year, according to Sands.
“We have to do some of these things that are closer to the bone or closer to how our ancestors lived 200 to 300 years ago and we can’t modernize our way out of these concepts,” Sands said. “I am a huge advocate of everybody using some version of yak tracks on their shoes because at this time of the year, we have the freezing ice and snow ... we see a diminished is complete lower extremity problems in fact, tons of people with pesky knee problem, pesky foot problem and ankle problems seemed to all go away in the winter season being,” Sands said.
