Who doesn’t like to have a good time? The whole point of having a good time is its better than a bad time, right! Food and drink have been a central focus point for merry making throughout history. Celebrations always revolve around feasts, like Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, a BBQ on the 4th of July, a romantic dinner for Valentines Day, or a good ole saucing on St. Patrick’s day, to wash down the corned beef and cabbage. Unfortunately many holiday traditional foods and customs are not the most beneficial for the betterment of our health. Worse yet many of us, because of the availability of food, tend to eat a feast’s worth of food everyday and consume many unneeded calories, sugars, preservatives and trans fats to the detriment of our health.  

Food can be as powerful to heal the body, as it can be to hurt the body. Hippocrates once said “let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”. It is true because giving the body the appropriate nutrients it needs to allow your body to produce energy, carry oxygen, and detoxify will keep us healthy and prevent disease but also allow the body to get back on track if there has been a disease or sickness. Dr. Royal Lee a dentist and founder of the first vitamin company, Standard Process, observed that most people were not sick because they were exposed to pathogens, rather they were sick because they were in essence starving themselves. Lack of trace minerals and nutrients, not calories, was causing “sickness” that was easily reversed when the person was then given whole food vitamins containing the missing micronutrients from their diet. It is essential to eat a diet everyday of whole, real foods, and rarely, if ever, eat anything that has been chemically manipulated, preserved or altered because it will affect your overall health and physiology. If the Thanksgiving dinner you eat this year looks like the Thanksgiving dinner our ancestors ate after their first year in Massachusetts I think you would be pleasantly surprised. However, I’m sure they didn’t have any marshmallows on their sweet potatoes!

With St Patrick’s Day around the corner I’m sure you are thinking of green beer and Irish car bombs (the drink not the terrorist kind). Alcohol has also been a long-standing staple of festivities and celebrations. Its ability to give us that warm fuzzy feeling inside is a desirable side effect and the way it can help us dance is a bonus. There have been many health studies done looking at the different effects of alcohol - good and bad. It has been shown that the resveratrol and antioxidants found in red wine do have a positive effect on reducing cardiovascular risk. Alcohol has a vasodilative property opening up blood vessels and increasing circulation. However, alcohol also has a downside, including cerebellum dysfunction and negative effects on coordination and killing of brain cells. It enhances the growth of gram-negative bacteria and yeasts in the digestive tract. Alcohol is a dense sugar and is food for those organisms. Making sure you have plenty of probiotics and fermented foods in your diet is one essential way of combating those organisms. One often over-looked aspect in the breakdown of alcohol is associated with yeast’s release of aldehydes as a waste product of their respiration. Aldehydes then go to the liver and if not broken down and detoxified they can quickly cause destruction of the “hepatocytes” liver cells and cause cirrhosis of the liver. If you choose to participate in the festivities and indulge in a few too many libations here are a couple of things you should consider for the after effects of the night before. Alcohol will dehydrate the body and many headaches are caused by dehydration. Keeping yourself hydrated with water along with your libation of choice during your merriment will ease the effects of the hangover. Alcohol also uses up your B-vitamins when it is broken down, to ensure its complete breakdown and removal from the body taking extra B-vitamins before and after a night of drinking will help keep you balanced. Fish oil is another helpful moderator of inflammation and has a dampening effect on a hangover headache.

Being merry is a state of mind but also has to do with how our bodies are working physiologically. Most of your body’s serotonin, which is the feel good neurotransmitter, is made in the digestive tract. The gut has been called the second brain. Ever had a “gut” feeling? It is this relationship between the gut and the brain that is so important. Eating a healthy diet is what keeps us healthy, along with rest and exercise. The healthier you are the better you feel, and the more merry you are! The exciting part is we have the power to choose what we put in our mouths, therefore we get to choose how healthy we are going to be, and we get to choose how merry we are also. Emotions are a personal choice too. As Eleanor Roosevelt so eloquently put it “no one can make you feel inferior without your permission”. How we react to situations or people around us is what determines our character and our level of merriment as we move through life.  
Eat healthy, drink healthy and your choices will bring merriment to your life. Its not a perfect science and sometimes we fall down or don’t get it right. If you have the courage to get back up one more time then you get knocked down then you will be able to consider your life successful.    

Dr. Phil Cameron DC is the owner of the Bozeman Wellness Center. He is a Chiropractic Physician and Professional Applied Kinesiologist. He treats every patient based on his or her individual health care needs and strives to help each patient Live Healthy, Live Naturally, and Live Optimally. Visit www.bozemanwellnesscenter.com for more information.