Why massage works so well with Chiropractic

Prenatal Massage
Prenatal massage is specifically tailored for the expected Mother’s needs. Swedish massage is recommended during pregnancy because it addresses many common discomforts associated with the skeletal and circulatory changes of the mother-to-be. Massage can be incorporated into routine prenatal care as an emotional and physical health supplement proven to improve pregnancy outcome and maternal health.

Potential benefits of Prenatal Massage include:
• Hormone regulation
• Reduced sciatic nerve pain
• Reduced back and joint pain
• Improved circulation
• Reduced edema/swelling
• Reduced muscle tension and headaches
• Reduced stress and anxiety
• Improved oxygenation of soft tissues and muscles
• Better sleep!

Remember, relaxation is one of the keys to labor and delivery!

Postnatal Massage
As a new mom, you need to take care of yourself while caring for your newborn. Postnatal massage is one of the best ways to do that! It not only gives you nurturing and emotional support to help you gain back your lost energy, but also helps the body return to its condition before pregnancy.
When to Start Postnatal Massage

For mothers who delivered naturally or without complications, they can start their postnatal massage as soon as they are comfortable and ready. For caesarean delivery, it is best to wait at least 2 weeks after giving birth or when the incision is properly healed before starting postnatal massage sessions.

You are even welcome to nurse your infant while you receive a massage in a side lying position. Bringing your baby with you eliminates the need for childcare and makes you feel less anxious about leaving your newborn. Postpartum massage is a great way to enhance your bonding experience and attachment to your baby.

Massage for All Moms
It is hard work being a mom. Picking the baby up out of the crib, putting them in car seats (plus the shear weight of baby and car seat), holding children on your hips, nursing or bottle feeding the baby… all of this wear and tear on your spine and your muscles adds up to tremendous muscular tension. This is especially evident in tight shoulders and sore lower back muscles. Regular massages are a great idea to relieve some of the built up tension in and around the spine, which not only helps you, but helps the kids as well, since you will be feeling better and hence able to accomplish more. Sign up for your massage today…

Jamie Baumhardt, LMT, NMT at Rubin Family Chiropractic at 770-937-6300

What Are You Waiting For?

My mother passed away from colon cancer in 2006 and my dad died from Alzheimer's three years earlier. It was a crushing blow to the family, especially for me, as an only child. In the last 8 years, Lisa and I have lost 6 close relatives to heart disease, cancer and diabetes, some of the nation's top killers. So my wife and I went on a quest. Are we doing enough, even with all the good health choices we currently make?

We originally made a decision to become vegetarians, about 16 years ago, because of a patient's husband who died of a heart attack one month after he retired. My patient said to me to be sure to live life to its fullest because you never know when it will be taken away. My wife and I decided after this conversation with my patient that if we ever got "sick", we would do a whole list of alternative life-style changes. Then we realized, "What are we waiting for?"

We started adding more health related practices to our life. We became strict vegetarians (no meat or milk, very limited sugar & white flour, no preservatives or additives), took no drugs of any kind, began exercising a minimum of 5 days a week, and of course, continued our weekly chiropractic adjustments.

We closely examined what my parents did, to make sure we were not doing what they did. Research shows that even if you have a genetic predisposition, you’ve got to do something to turn on the ‘bad’ genes. Hence if you do what your parents or siblings or aunts did, you’ll get what they got. Our goal was NOT to get what they got. My mom & dad never exercised and had a horrible diet. Yet they always took handfuls of vitamins every day since I was kid, because they thought that vitamins alone prevented cancer. Unfortunately that is not the case. One cannot ignore the triune of health (chiropractic, diet, and exercise), and expect vitamins to be the answer to poor diet and lack of exercise.

Your health grows the way a bank account does; the more deposits you put in, the more your "health" account grows. Your goal should be to find more ways to make health deposits to 'diversify' your portfolio, with Chiropractic as your foundation. Most of America waits for there to be a problem with their health, and then they scramble to fix it. Our thought is to get your health to an awesome place and then keep it there. Why wait for your body to fall apart until you fix it. You can always become healthier. You can always grow your health bank account. Aim to have a million dollar health portfolio rather than an overdrawn health plan. So here is the key question: What are the one or two things that are you neglecting in your life? If you can fix those items you are neglecting, with habits of daily discipline, watch your health account balance soar! What are you waiting for?

How Your Child Can be the Healthiest One at School

Our children are among the sickest in the top 100 industrialized countries of the world. The United States spends over $2 TRILLION per year (that’s $2,000,000,000,000, or 2 with 12 zero’s) on health care! That’s $100 BILLION more than in 1990.

Asthma is one of the fastest growing childhood problems. Ear infections run rampant through our pre-schools and elementary schools. Ritalin is being given to over 3 million boys under 10 years old every day for hyperactivity, and Prozac is being prescribed to children under 5 at ever increasing rates. Allergies are plaguing more and more of our kids today, with shots and Claritin becoming regular routines for millions of youngsters. Obviously, the United States spending more money on our health care is not producing a healthier society, and especially not producing healthier kids? What do we as parents do?

What health specialty are more and more parents turning to for relief of their issues and their children’s problems? Where did over 600 million Americans go to in 2004 for help with their health? The answer might surprise you: Chiropractic. Yes, we all know that most adults (over 80%) who go to chiropractors first visit this kind of specialist for lower back pain, headaches, whiplash or other injuries. But many of these adults learn something very unexpected about their new chiropractic lifestyle:

1. Since everybody has a spine, including their children, (only it’s a lot smaller), it is very important to have their kids spines checked because if the parent has a spinal problem, it’s highly likely that their kids may inherit it!

2. The nerve system does a whole lot more than control whether you feel pain (which is the most obvious reason why an adult goes to see a chiropractor). As a matter of fact, only 15% of the nerves’ function is to control whether or not you feel pain. The other 85% of the nerves’ function is to control the organs, the muscles, your balance, and YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM! That’s right. Your immune system, and as a parent, having a child with a healthy immune system can have a much different impact on your life than having a child who is sick every other week. Let’s investigate this impact:

Money A sick child costs you a tremendous amount of money since not only are you paying for doctor’s visits, but for prescription and non prescription drugs, and their side effects as well. A study recently done and mentioned in the Ladies Home Journal states that the average American spends over $4000 per person on their health per year. Hence an average family of husband, wife, and 2 kids spends over $16,000 per year on their health. All that money isn’t keeping them healthy, it’s spent trying to restore health. Health is not something you wait to find once you lose it. Rather it’s something you hold onto dearly everyday once you have it, so you’ll always have it.

Time A sick child costs you time. Time off of work, time for the child being out of school. This adds up to increase financial burdens too, since if your child can’t get to school, you can’t go to work, and that costs you your paycheck

The solution: If all the kids were healthier, the day care centers and schools would have healthier kids in them. Parents would take less time off of work. Parents could take all the money they used to spend on prescriptions and invest it. But how do we get our children healthy? Chiropractic care to first boost their immune system to normal, then to keep their immune system at peak performance so that they stay healthy.

Your health and the health of your children should be treated like a bank account. If you want your money to grow, you’ve got to keep on putting money in the bank. Then when you need to write a check, you’ve got money waiting there for you. Same thing with your health bank account. If you want to be healthy, you have got to do something for your health every day, and every week, to keep that precious commodity.

Many parents around the country are turning to chiropractic care not just for themselves, but for their kids too. The spine is the body’s foundation. If your child’s foundation is weak and they suffer from earaches, allergies, or asthma, you might want to try something different. Chiropractic unlocks the body’s ability to heal itself for both adults and kids alike. Add that benefits to savings of time and money, and you have an alternative for taking care of your family.

Chiropractic Principles are NOT just for Chiropractors! By Dr. Lisa Rubin, Ph.D.

As a psychologist, people walk in my office everyday with emotional pain and suffering which changes their physiology and often manifests into physical symptomatology. Everyone has a story, a little box with the lid locked tight, a closed door slammed shut and bolted, a ball and chain that gets thrown off balance, everyday, every night, all the time. It is so important to look at the whole person. Listen to them and watch their body language and how they say what they say. People give you incredible clues into their lives, but first you must open your eyes and ears just a little more, each time you see them. For instance, have you ever sat with an individual that felt so lost and out of touch with universal intelligence that they wanted to hurt himself/herself of someone else? How do you tenderly touch their innate? Help them find light in the darkness. Listen. Guide. Teach gently the priceless gifts that chiropractic philosophy has taught me and my family over the years.

To be responsible for someone else’s life is a huge responsibility, isn’t it? With that responsibility comes extra hours away from your family, sleepless nights of tossing and turning. Thoughts go through one’s mind, asking, “Did I do the right thing?” “Is the patient ok?” “Should I have made a different choice?” “Could I have done more, not just for their physical pain but for emotional suffering as well?” That loud voice gets even louder, and it takes every ounce of energy to hear that ‘wee small voice’. To remove the ego, focus on the individual and know you are not walking in this journey alone.

So you see, many of the chiropractic principles apply not just to chiropractic; they are timeless laws that apply to all mankind, to every profession and person, young or old. As a species, we must celebrate our uniqueness, and realize that with each one of us, our effects are far reaching, far more than you will ever know.

What's Love Got To Do With It? 5 Questions About Love for You & Your Spouse

1. How did you meet and when?

Lisa: Drew and I met 23 years ago when he was in Chiropractic school at Life and I was at Emory University. Drew and his friends would come to the medical school library at Emory to study. I would study at the med library because it was across the street from my dorm. We were introduced by Drew's friend and would all go out to eat for study breaks. Drew and I were friends for 4 months before we ever dated. Drew asked me out on our first date on February 6th and we went to a dance club. We spent most of the night talking for hours learning about each other. Our lives changed from that night on.

Drew: It was September 1987. Life library was maybe ¼ the size it is now, with few books and fewer places to sit. My friend and I had this crazy idea that maybe if we went far enough away from our apartments to not easily make it back home to nap or eat, we could get a lot of work done. Little did I know studying at the Emory Med School library would be so life-changing. After I met her, every time I was at the library I would go to the water fountain a thousand times just so I could stop at her table and briefly chat with her. She was just so fun to talk to. Still is, 20 + years later.

2. You and your spouse both have the commonality of working or studying at Life University. How does it feel to have that in common?

Lisa: Drew & I, early on, decided we wanted to work together on our mission of helping others and promoting health. We created a plan to design our life. Here we are 20+ years later sharing a location for our private practice and working at Life University together. I love the energy at Life U and the ability to share the philosophy, vitalism, chiropractic and special people with my husband. How many people can say that they work in the same location and love being together everyday? We also have the ability to have our son present with us. He is currently in high school and at Life U with dual enrollment. Our son comes to seminars and events with us. My husband and I always try to meet for a kiss or a quick hello on campus, just to share our love for each other.

Drew: We are extraordinarily blessed. Few couples get to share their work life with each other, let alone being passionate about what they do. We both adore chiropractic, and still after this many years of marriage plot and scheme to find more ways to spend time with each other. Being at Life gives us the best of both worlds. We get to do something we love and believe in while spending some extra time with each other. It must look funny to others…we are constantly texting back and forth, trying to coordinate where we are so we can grab a hug.

3. What strengthens your marriage?

Lisa: We base our love on the following path: G-d, family, chiropractic. This foundation helps us decide which decisions are right for us as a couple. Our marriage is based on love, trust, compassion, philosophy and positivity. The journey is one we share together every step of the way. It is amazing to be more in love today after almost 20 years of marriage. We honor and cherish each other daily and constantly work on our relationship. We do everything together from the moment we wake up with a ritual of stating our intention for the day, reading, prayer, working out, making breakfast, listening to motivational tapes, texting throughout the day and always connecting and sharing our day with each other. Every day is a blessing and miracle we get to spend together.

Drew: The bedrock of a successful marriage is honesty and integrity. There is no substitute for these characteristics. Years ago, everyone told us that we’d stop holding hands and showing other displays of affection once the ‘honeymoon’ period is over. We have set out to prove them all wrong. Another key attribute is getting rid of the concept of ‘balance.’ There is no such thing. It’s always 100%-100%. You can’t give 50% to something and expect the kind of results that only 100% can give you. Add to these things lots of laughter, smiles, humor, and don’t forget hugs.

4. What kinds of things do you like to do together as a couple?

Lisa: Most of all, Drew and I like to spend time together. We love to go for walks in nature, go to waterfalls, and roller blade together. We love to watch a thought provoking movie or go to a seminar that challenges our thought process so we can discuss it. Drew and I love talking. We focus on our goals, our vision and our purpose. I love when we sit in front of our fireplace or go in our hot tub together. How many people can say they love being with their significant others and are always trying to find ways to spend more time together?

Drew: We love challenging each other. We try to find things to bring us to higher levels of awareness. Whether it is going to a Life U basketball or rugby game, listening to Jim Rohn or Zig Ziglar audio tapes, reading books like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” or “The Way of the Peaceful Warrior”, or watching movies like “Defiance” or “I-Robot”, we always find a way to bring chiropractic philosophy into the mix. We have this idea that “everything matters”, so we try to really plan whatever we do to really matter. My favorite time spent with Lisa is a tie between going to some really awesome seminar and talking for hours about it, versus going to an incredibly gorgeous place out in nature like Sedona, and talking about that for hours too.


5. What is the most challenging thing about being married?

Lisa: The most challenging thing about being married is having to be ‘an adult’. It is much more fun to be giddy and laugh. Responsibility from the outside world makes it difficult to have the quantity of time with each other that we would like. Relationships are a work in progress. Our challenges, when handled correctly, help us learn from our mistakes and become the best people we can be. We try to make every minute count when we are together. We have to work harder today to keep our relationship energized and exciting. Falling in love is easy; staying in love is a constant work in progress. We have tried to master the secret to an exceptional and incredible loving relationship that is more powerful today than it was 20+ years ago.

Drew: Clearly the hardest thing we have to deal with is time. Quality has to make up for quantity. When we first started dating, while Lisa was at Emory and I was at Life, time seemed so endless, so eternal. Now with both of us working at Life U and having private practices and being parents and playing sports and all the other stuff involved, time really has been whittled down. I have taken lately to a quantum view of time. Time can be Newtonian, like 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour. Or time can be Quantum, like when you spend an hour doing something you truly enjoy with someone you love, and it is described as “time flying.’ Contrast this with sitting in a boring meeting and in the same 60 minutes is described as “time drags.” It is the same amount of time, just a different use of it. So we try to maximize our time together. Make it count. ‘Cause everything matters!


Ask these questions of you and your spouse, write down the answers, and then read them to each other. This simple exercise gave us 2 hours of awesome conversation and lots of good feelings. Try it and tell us what you think!

Adapted from the February “Love at Life” newsletter, Life University, Marietta GA

Life Change Through Saying ‘No’ By Dr. Lisa Rubin

I began my health quest about 23 years ago, when my husband and I first met. As a chiropractic student at Life University, he started sharing a whole new world of health I had never heard of before. I received chiropractic adjustments and began giving up dairy products and red meat. Next went all dairy products. Then I began to incorporate organic products. I read labels and started going to health food stores. Eventually, I consumed no processed sugar, no caffeine, no chocolate, no white flour, no preservatives, chemicals, and the list goes on. The more I gave up of the “old” and added more of the “new,” the better I felt. I also realized how other choices in my life began to change. I tried to get rid of negative input that was in my life: no more TV; no newspapers; no radio; and no magazines. I no longer took medication of any kind. I started letting my body heal itself. The body heals by removing interference that is in its way. This interference may come in many different forms: from the nervous system, or from chemical, emotional, spiritual, or even environmental factors.
I received a lot of pressure from my family and friends about my new lifestyle which increased when my husband and I decided to have a homebirth. All “*#@&!” broke loose. My family was in fear of what could go wrong as opposed to what could go right. Of course I knew that their concern was for my safety. I acknowledged their worries, explained my side of the story and showed them that I was unbending in my choices, but that I was open to conversation about those choices. This was very difficult for people to understand. The homebirth was magical.
As my son has grown, the choices have become easier; however, the resistance increased temporarily. Some of our alternative health and life choices included: no vaccinations, no drugs, nursing on demand until my son decided to wean himself, a family bed, vegetarian diet, attachment parenting, home schooling, etc. Some people comment that “You look normal, buy you just don’t do anything like anyone I know.” I take that as a compliment. I don’t want to be like anyone else. I don’t want my son to feel pressure to be like all the others. If we show our children it is okay to step outside the box and look at life differently, maybe we can begin to contribute to a healthier more positive outlook on life in the next generation.
Now the resistance is minimal. Our son is almost 16, and is taller and healthier than all his cousins. Many in our extended family are adopting or at the very least taking a deeper look at our health choices. All those “No’s” across all those years has made a lot of “Yes’es.” So start small. Start by saying no to what you don’t want anymore, and by saying yes to what you do want. Then move forward in the direction of your dreams.

Dr. Lisa Rubin, Clinical Psychologist, specializes in natural parenting, motivation, and transformation. She sees clients individually, hold workshops, and lectures in the community. Call 770-937-6300, or email her at lisa.rubin2@gmail.com

A Better Way To Live

Sometimes, just when we think we haven’t got a clue as to how things are going to work out, innate provides. Have you ever examined your life as it zigs and zags, wondering, “how did I get here?” I don’t mean physically in the place where you are sitting or standing or sleeping, but here at the place where you are spiritually and emotionally and healthfully. How did you get here?

Innate has been on the job. How did you find your occupation, your mate, your first client, your home? How did all this happen? Some people think life is a series of coincidences, or that they are being pulled around in life by a force called fate. They show up and whatever happen to then just, well, happens.

That’s not the philosophy BJ Palmer, the developer of chiropractic, lived by. He practiced an art of connectedness to source that emanates through his writing, which is affectionately known as the Green Books. BJ recognized the power of becoming one with this source, the fountain of all love, creativity, and abundance that exists in the universe. “Get the big idea..all else follows” was not solely based on the idea of chiropractic as ‘the big idea.’ It was really about reconnecting to innate. He wished us to understand that, if we can free up our innate intelligence and our ability to talk to the ‘wee small voice inside,’ then we will be lead by this intelligence to all the right people, places and things in our life, at the perfect time.

People are coming to my chiropractic office to learn this, to be a part of something bigger than fixing a backache. They are searching us out not for simple pain relief but for another way, a better way to live.

There are thousands of families and individuals in chiropractic practices who have caught the idea that there is a different way to live life altogether, one at which they are at 100% of their potential, all the time, subluxation-free. Women have better pregnancies and quicker labors while under regular chiropractic care, benefiting both them and their newborns. Children live healthier lives with less ear infections, asthma, allergies, and chronic illness than their peers. Adults live more active lives playing sports and running around after their 2.5 kids with chiropractic care on their side. I even watched my father pass away quietly, without fear or pain, in his sleep, because with chiropractic on is side, there’s even a different way out of this earthly plane. There’s a different way into this world, there’s a different way to live, and there’s a different was out.

Innate is on the job. Look around you when spring begins. The flowers will pop up and the buds will sprout on the tress. How did they get there? Yes, you can argue that someone planted them, or that a seed somehow managed to find its way into the soil, but I believe in a divine intervention for everything. There are no coincidences, just lessons, teaching us daily, ever moving us toward the source of all creation. This entire universe was created by what science calls a big bang, in which all the matter of the universe stemmed from. If that is true, and we are created from energy, that means all of ‘this’ came from the nothingness into the somethingness in a millisecond of intention. That would mean, if you want to wax really into philosophy, that all of the energy contained in our bodies dates from the very moment of the creation of the universe (as Dr. Wayne Dyer says)!

The abundance of the universe is ours to connect to, if we so desire. How? Listen to the wee small voice. Get the big idea. Reconnect to the majesty of this grand intelligence. Feel the power of the entire universe in your fingertips. Transfer that power to others, through your thoughts, words and deeds. Live an innate life. Chiropractic can show you how. Email us at rubinchiropractic@gmail.com.