Cholesterol gets such a bad rap.

It’s thought of as one of the worst possible diagnoses. “You have high cholesterol” is not something that anyone wants to hear.  Why? It’s commonly associated with heart disease and cardiac arrest.

But is cholesterol really that bad?

What is cholesterol and what does it do in the body?

Cholesterol is a waxy molecule found in all of the cell membranes of the body. One of its principle functions in the the cell wall is to add structure but it also assists in providing fluidity in cold temperatures. Cholesterol is also the main ‘backbone’ of all stress hormones and naturally made steroid hormones in the body like the adrenal gland hormones cortisol and aldosterone as well as the sex hormones progesterone, estrogens, and testosterone, and their derivatives.

Of course, as it is commonly discussed, It circulates in the blood stream and assists in wound clotting. It also functions in moving nourishment into the cell and plays a major role in cell signaling and nerve conduction. Another job of cholesterol is to act as the precursor molecule in several biochemical pathways such as the synthesis of Vitamin D and most recently it has been discovered to act as an antioxidant.

It is really a very important molecule in our bodies!

Good versus Bad Cholesterol

High density lipoproteins (HDL) are considered “good”. Low density lipoproteins ( LDL) are considered “bad”

It is a myth to say that one is GOOD and one is BAD. There is no such thing as good or bad cholesterol. ONLY cholesterol. The truth is that both are vital in functions for different reasons.

LDL’s
Moves cholesterol out from liver to:
* Aid in repair process of old damaged cells
* Make hormones when demand is high
* Necessary to make new cells in the body

HDL’s
* Transport cholesterol back to liver to be recycled
* More “economical” than making new cholesterol

The fact is that cholesterol moves around body through the blood stream. LDL’s can vary in size and small ones can get stuck in-between gap cells of the arteries. Here there is a chance that the stagnant cholesterol can oxidize which leads to inflammation and signals to the brain to release more cholesterol into the blood stream. This in turn can lead to more potentially getting stuck causing placing in the arteries. Not good.

So what determines LDL size?

YOUR LIFESTYLE!

Pharmaceutical companies tell us cholesterol is bad, causes heart disease, death and should be controlled at all costs.

But what does the medical scientific literature show us?

More harm than help?

* Over 225,000 new statin users per year
* They found that for every 10,000 women being treated with statins, there were only 271 fewer cases of heart disease.
* And yet, at the same time, the statin drugs caused 74 cases of liver damage, 23 cases of acute kidney failure, 39 cases of extreme muscle weakness and 307 cases of cataracts.
* Statindrugs, in other words, helped 271 people but harmed 443 people.

That’s 2.7% helped. 4.4% harmed

Unintended effects of statins in men and women in England and Wales: population based cohort study using the Q-Research database

Julia Hippisley-Cox, Carol Coupland BMJ 340:doi:10.1136/bmj.c2197 (Published 20 May 2010)

* A critical review of thirteen clinical trials, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reveals some startling facts about statins:
* Statin drugs save zero lives.
* Statins are utterly useless as prevention.
* Even in people with high cholesterol, statinsdon’t reduce the risk of death one iota.
* There has never been a single study that demonstrated statinsextend life for women.

Lipitor
* According to Lipitor”s own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?
* Pfizer says Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:
* “That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor.”
* for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
* One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack.
www.pfizer.com

Some evidence for statin drugs

Some evidence that they help with those who have had previous cardiac events. Although it is believed that there is some anti-inflammatory mechanism at work – NOT because the cholesterol levels shrank!

Over 65? Male? 1%

(Lancet) Popular cholesterol drugs like Crestor and Lipitor are responsible for increasing user risk of developing diabetes.

The report analyzed 13 different studies about statin drugs, one of which showed a 25 percent increased risk in developing diabetes in those who take AstraZeneca’s Crestor. That company funded study and others were aggregated together to arrive at the 9 percent statistic for the entire pool of statin drugs. Over 90,000 patients were evaluated in the various studies.

According to David Preiss, lead researcher of the Lancet study, the benefits gained from taking statin drugs far outweigh their risks. For every 1,000 patients that take a statin drug for a year, one of them develops diabetes while five other avoid heart attack and death. He believes such a statistic validates the safety and effectiveness of statindrugs.

Inflammation
Harvard researchers have discovered that a high blood level of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation, is more predictive of heart disease than cholesterol.

Potential Dangers of Cholesterol Medications
1. Liver Damage
2. Neuropathy
3. Severe joint pain – ligament and tendon ruptures
4. Muscle wasting/atrophy
5. Heart failure
6. Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant and protects us against aging and cancer
7. Depression
8. Stop the production of CoQ10

Fire Analogy

If your house was on fire, who would you call? The Fire Department! – Right?
The fire department is well equipped to put out a fire. Their main tools are axes and fire hoses. If they get there in time, they will arrive, smash down your door, soak all of your belongings and put out the fire. Makes sense right? And we should be thankful!

After the fire is out and you need to re-build your house, who do you call? The fire department? Remember, they only have axes and fire hoses – tools that are designed to put out fires.

We need to call the carpenters, the painters, the drywallers – trades that are equipped to help get your home beautiful and back in order. Wouldn’t it be silly if a painter showed up to a fire with a paint brush and a hammer? Of course it would.

So let’s take this analogy and apply it to you or me. If your house is on fire, we need people who can help with tools that get us through the crisis. We need to put the ‘fire’. In this case your body is the house and the fire department is the practitioner who has the best means from an evidence based perspective to deal with the crisis. After the ‘fire’ is out, we need the ‘home improvement’ crew back on the job to maintain and restore the ‘house’ back to working functional order.
In my opinion, there is a time and place for medicine and there is a time and place for chiropractic, nutrition, massage, acupuncture etc.

Let’s take a look at WHY your body starts the process of moving more cholesterol in to the blood stream in the first place. In order to understand this, we need to understand some basic physiology of what our bodies do when we are stressed. The figure below is what happens when we encounter stress – of any kind at any time.

In the event of an attack or the need to run away from danger (fight or flight), your body assembles its forces to protect you. This is NORMAL. Chronic lifestyle stress (poor diet, lack of exercise, sitting in front of a computer for hours a day, lack of sunshine, deadlines etc) all cause our bodies to go into a state of fight or flight. The body is doing what it is supposed to for a short time but because of the chronic stress, it does so for a long time. This is not healthy.

Essentially, our stress creates the ‘disease’ of HIGH cholesterol. (PS – it also creates diabetes, depression, bone loss, muscle wasting and much more).

The ’solution’?

Medication is one way to lower cholesterol.

More harm than help?
* Over 225,000 new statin users per year.
* They found that for every 10,000 women being treated with statins, there were only 271 fewer cases of heart disease.
* And yet, at the same time, the statin drugs caused 74 cases of liver damage, 23 cases of acute kidney failure, 39 cases of extreme muscle weakness and 307 cases of cataracts.
* Statindrugs, in other words, helped 271 people but harmed 443 people.

That’s 2.7% helped. 4.4% harmed

Unintended effects of statins in men and women in England and Wales: population based cohort study using the QResearchdatabase Julia Hippisley-Cox, Carol Coupland BMJ 340:doi:10.1136/bmj.c2197 (Published 20 May 2010)
* A critical review of thirteen clinical trials, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, reveals some startling facts about statins:
* Statindrugs save zero lives.
* Statins are utterly useless as prevention.
* Even in people with high cholesterol, statinsdon’t reduce the risk of death one iota.
* There has never been a single study that demonstrated statinsextend life for women.

Lipitor
* According to Lipitor”s own Web site, Lipitor is clinically proven to lower bad cholesterol 39-60 percent, depending on the dose. Sounds fairly effective, right?
* Pfizer says Lipitor reduces heart attacks by 36 percent. But there is an asterisk. And when you follow the asterisk, you find the following in much smaller type:
* “That means in a large clinical study, 3% of patients taking a sugar pill or placebo had a heart attack compared to 2% of patients taking Lipitor.”
* for every 100 people who took the drug over 3.3 years, three people on placebos, and two people on Lipitor, had heart attacks. That means that taking Lipitor resulted in just one fewer heart attack per 100 people.
* One hundred people have to take Lipitor for more than three years to prevent one heart attack.
* www.pfizer.com

Some evidence for statin drugs
* Some evidence that they help with those who have had previous cardiac events. Although it is believed that there is some anti-inflammatory mechanism at work – NOT because the cholesterol levels shrank!
* Over 65? Male? 1%
(Lancet) Popular cholesterol drugs like Crestor and Lipitor are responsible for increasing user risk of developing diabetes.

The report analyzed 13 different studies about statindrugs, one of which showed a 25 percent increased risk in developing diabetes in those who take AstraZeneca’s Crestor. That company funded study and others were aggregated together to arrive at the 9 percent statistic for the entire pool of statin drugs. Over 90,000 patients were evaluated in the various studies.

According to David Preiss, lead researcher of the Lancet study, the benefits gained from taking statindrugs far outweigh their risks. For every 1,000 patients that take a statindrug for a year, one of them develops diabetes while five other avoid heart attack and death. He believes such a statistic validates the safety and effectiveness of statin drugs.

Dangers of Cholesterol Medications
1. Liver Damage
2. Neuropathy
3. Severe joint pain – ligament and tendon ruptures
4. Muscle wasting/atrophy
5. Heart failure
6. Cholesterol is a powerful antioxidant and protects us against aging and cancer
7. Depression
8. Stop the production of CoQ10 – the molecule that protects your heart from inflammation!

Other side effects

So what are some ways to help lower your cholesterol naturally?

7 steps to lower your cholesterol naturally
1. Eat a healthy cholesterol lowering diet.
2. Do regular healthy physical activity.
3. Reach and maintain a healthy weight.
4. Eliminate sweets and refined foods.
5. Cut out caffeine and alcohol – drink water.
6. Don’t smoke or use tobacco in any form
7. Practice good healthy stress management.

Essentially – remove the stressors in your life and your body will have a chance to return back to a normal functioning level versus a state of chronic stress.

Here are some other solutions
Ensure that you are getting omega 3 free fatty acids. Fish oil (2-8 g/day) is a great option. Through your diet, you also want to ensure that you get folic acid, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin E, CoQ10, niacin, and plant sterols.

How important are natural solutions?

* A study has shown that fish oils are more effective than the statin drug Lipitor in positively affecting the levels of HDL (“good”) cholesterol in obese and insulin-resistant men. HDL cholesterol protects against atherosclerosis by removing excess cholesterol from arterial cells, and low HDL levels can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly for those who are obese or insulin resistant.
* In the six-week study, fish oils and Lipitor were given to 48 men, both separately and combined. Fish oil and Lipitor together greatly lowered plasma triacylglycerols and raised HDL cholesterol levels.
* But only fish oil also influenced HDL cholesterol by altering the production and catabolism rates of HDL apolipoproteins (catabolism is the breakdown of complex molecules metabolically into simpler ones). Lipitor did not increase this effect when combined with the fish oils, and did not produce a similar effect on its own.
* American Journal of Clinical NutritionJuly 2006; 84(1): 37-43

The best way to care for your self is to avoid a crisis in the first place. By taking care of yourself in mind, body and soul, you will ensure the best opportunity to live a happy, healthy, full life!

Dr. Craig Hazel’s mission is to help families THRIVE.  After graduating from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education, he went on to earn a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy from Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas Texas.  He is passionate about seeing children and families in his private practice at Synergy Chiropractic in Kanata Ontario.  A sought after speaker, he has been featured regularly on TSN Team 1200, CTV and Rogers TV. He is also the Chairman of the Alliance for Chiropractic of Ontario.

In 2001, I made the commitment to train for a heavy maximum one rep squat of 400 lbs. It was just one of those physical goals that was out of reach previously, and I was more curious to see if I could than anything else. I had been close in the past, but never quite got there.

I trained over the course of three months to scale my training and move myself closer to the goal. I had to make changes in how I approached my goal. In the past, I was unsuccessful and I realized that I needed a different strategy if I was going to hit it.

I’ve made so many other commitments in my life, and I bet you have too, dear reader. Marriage, kids, jobs, savings, exercise, eating healthy, climbing mountains, or cutting back on sweets. We all make commitments and when we put our full engagement into them, the sky is the limit.

Engagement

Notice I didn’t say effort? My reasoning is that effort is, in my opinion, a fair bit short of engagement. Engagement is the full commitment to the process with a clear and directed process and outcome with an emotional investment in all of it. I can give my effort (defined as vigorous attempt) but if the goal isn’t clear, I can do ‘stuff’ that moves me towards it, but not directly because it lacks the emotional anchor to get me there.

What are you committing to?

After the Holiday Hangover, you’re probably looking to do more or less of something that led you to make decision to commit to something different.

Good for you!

I believe that since we all make commitments everyday in our lives (like checking facebook, emails, making dinner etc) we can and must commit to ourselves.

Here are a few things to help you make commitments

1. Overt benefit assignment. Want to exercise but can’t seem to get going? Write out 100 reasons WHY you want to. Here’s an example of a conversation I had with a practice member recently:

Me: Why do you want to get fit?
PM So I can have more energy
Me: Why?
PM: So I can play with my kids
Me: Why?
PM: So I’ll feel better as a mom
Me: Why?
PM: Because they need me
Me: Why?
PM: So that I can be there for them and raise them to be strong and confident
Me: Why?

and so on and so on.

You see, if the WHY isn’t BIG ENOUGH, the HOW doesn’t happen.

2. Write out your goals and review daily. As we wrote about last week, we discussed how you can lay out your goals and action steps for each. Next is to pick one of the categories and review a different one daily. This should only take you 3-5 minutes to review. Then pick one or two things to do that day that can move you towards your goal. For example, let’s say that you chose to review the Intellectual category and your goal is to read ten books. Maybe the action step for that day is to research and buy a book that you want to read.

3. Accountability.  Share your goals publicly. Whether with friends, or on social media, or on your fringe for all to see, there is massive benefit by getting support from others. And you just might inspire someone else too!

4. Be realistic.  I’m guilty of ‘biting off more than I can chew’. Trying to hit my goal of 400lbs two days after I made the commitment wasn’t realistic. I needed to give myself a timeline and ‘reverse engineer’ how I was going to get there.

5. Make it FUN!  Choose some cool things to commit to. A couple of years ago, I made the commitment to see 5 different waterfalls that year. I had to research where ones close to me were, and that meant, planning a day trip to get there. It got me out in nature, and I discovered some cool areas I had never been before. Choose some commitments that appeal to your adventurous side as much as your more serious side. Heck, by choosing the adventurous child side, you’ll likely get to your serious goals much faster anyways.

I would love to hear how these commitments are going for you!

Dr C

PS – I did hit my squatting goal – 405lbs on September 23, 2001.  👊 😊

Dr. Craig Hazel’s mission is to help families THRIVE. After graduating from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education, he went on to earn a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy from Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas Texas. He is passionate about seeing children and families in his private practice at Synergy Chiropractic in Kanata Ontario. A sought after speaker, he has been featured regularly on TSN Team 1200, CTV and Rogers TV. He is also the Chairman of the Alliance for Chiropractic of Ontario.

Oops you did it again. Way too much food, drink and don’t forget the crazy stress, travel, family drama, and maybe just one too many fruitcakes can all contribute to the dreaded holiday hangover.

The truth of the matter is that the STRESS of the holiday season is nothing to dismiss. It is the time of year when heart attacks reach a peak level. For 46% of people, their first sign of heart disease is a fatal heart attack.

For others – the holidays bring cold/flu, exhaustion, poor digestion, sleep disturbances, irritability, and depression, and

Stress manifests as symptoms in our bodies.

anxiety.

Symptoms are signals that our body tells us to let us know that something is wrong or that our body is trying to adapt to something. Body signals are the tip of the iceberg because they only represent the point at which our brains become aware that a problem is happening or has been happening for a while. Learning how to “speak body” is critical to our health outcomes.

The way in which we think about our symptoms drives our choices and it’s our choices drive our outcomes.

Sources of Stress

Stress around the holiday season can bring on a multitude of body signals.  Stress can most definitely come in the form of excessive food and alcohol intake, or sweet and calorie-rich foods.

There may also be stress from late nights, long travel days, high states of family distress and emotional turmoil, poor sleep in different beds and let’s not forget the financial stress that the holidays can bring on with over-spending.

We can even have physical stress from long drives, poor bed arrangements, or sitting too much – all of these stresses add up.  When they exceed your body’s ability to adapt, the body begins to let you know that there is a problem.

Voila!  The body signals begin and we manifest them as symptoms and thus you may experience the Holiday Hangover.

If we aren’t careful and manage our stress, we can start the year off on the wrong foot.  We don’t want to drug away our symptoms because, well, that only masks the problem and doesn’t solve anything.

So let’s end the Holiday Hangover and get back on track!

With the New Year comes a renewed sense of a fresh start.

“I’m gonna lose weight this year!”

“I’m gonna quit smoking!”

I’m gonna be nicer to people!”

If you made a New Year’s resolution (and even if you refuse to make one each year) and have quit already, then listen up! Most people have fizzled out by week three in January.

EAT FOR RECOVERY:

How we eat plays a huge role in our weight and our energy levels. When you have a low energy level, it’s difficult to get the motivation to stay active and exercise. However, when you give your body the proper nutrition, you can have more energy, lose more weight, and stay more active.

Here are MUST-DO’s:

• Never Go Hungry – eat lots of smaller portions and meals.  Starving yourself doesn’t work
• The Battle is Won at the Register – if you don’t buy the bad foods, you won’t eat them
• Don’t Drink Your Calories
• Avoid the White Stuff (bread, pasta, white flour etc)
• No Refined Carbohydrates and Sugar
• Fill Yourself With Healthy Foods*

*Instead of focusing on the foods, you shouldn’t eat, let’s highlight a few foods and supplements that can help you stay active, energize, and get ready to shed those pounds.

Subtraction by Addition

Eating well is critical to getting rid of the holiday hangover.  Here are a few high energy foods (without that sugar crash): blueberries, strawberries, salmon, lean meats, nuts, whole grains, vegetables.

Supplements such as fish oil and probiotics can help you reduce inflammation and keep your gut healthy and happy.
Focus on having protein at every meal.

Stop mixing fats and carbs or protein and carbs.  Fats and proteins.  Carbs on their own.

Eat a handful of nuts once a day.  Raw is best.

Some other tips:

• Unlimited Vegetables
• Plenty of Lean Cuts of Natural Meats, Fish, and Eggs
• Some Fruit, Nuts, and Seeds

For healthy foods to give you an energy boost, it’s all about eating the right ones at the right time. Eating small meals and snacking throughout the day is a great way to keep your body fueled and your energy levels high.

Start by eating a few small meals per day and snacking every few hours in-between. This will help keep your energy up throughout the day. You’ll feel better, think better, and be more motivated to stick with your exercise routine.

Slow it Down

“IT’ is your brain.  Your nervous system takes on all of the stress.  Since we live our lives through our nervous systems, we experience all of our stress through it.  We want to calm it down after the holidays.

Exercise is a great way to burn off steam.  Take a walk.  Hit the gym.  Do a yoga class.  Punch a heavy bag.  Whatever you want.  If you’ve been sitting for the majority of the holidays, then its time to get active.  Pick something that you enjoy doing and get to it.

Another fantastic way to calm your nervous system is simply through breathing.

Try this out!

While laying on your back in bed, place both your hands on your heart.  In this position take ten deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth.  You want to feel your breaths lifting and dropping your hands up as your chest rises and falls.  After ten, move your hands to the top of your abdomen but below your ribcage.  Take ten more breaths here.  Finally, move your hands to your lower abdomen over your belly button.  Perform another ten breaths.  Then move your hands back to your upper abdomen for another ten breaths and finally back to your heart for the final ten.

Ahhhhhhhhh!

This is a great exercise for when you are having trouble sleeping.  The key is to concentrate solely on the rise and fall of your breaths and the action of taking the breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.

Nobody likes a hangover.  They are terrible.

But….

The New Year is a great time to improve your health, get a little extra motivation and even lose a few pounds in the process!  Now it’s time to recover.

When astronauts return from space, the most common comment they all have is how vast the galaxy is. When they look down on the earth below, they don’t see troubles. They don’t see races, countries, poverty or wealth. They all realize how small we are on this spinning speck of dust amongst the larger universe and

The Overview Effect helps us look at our lives objectively.

beyond.

They call this the Overview Effect.

So let’s apply this to our objective look at our lives for a moment look at the answers to these questions from an objective viewpoint. Let’s do so WITHOUT judgement of ourselves or our situation.

Do you love your job?
Do you have an amazing relationship with your kids?
Do you have an epic love affair with your partner?
Do you friends share your values?
Do you know what you want in life?
Do you do things/behave to appease others?
Do you know your gifts, talents and strengths?
Are you happy?
Do you love your life?

11% of men and 16% of women are depressed.

The number of unhappy employees outweighs the happy ones 2:1.

Look at your life without judgement

Truth is – we are all EXTRAORDINARY. We each have the potential to achieve more than we have. If you already have everything that you want to experience, then FANTASTIC! Keep on keeping on. If not, then keep reading.

The “PETER” principle helps us to look at what we are doing and evaluating our performance. The formula is: P + E + T = ER

P = our foundational premise – what do we understand and our belief system of it.

E = Effort

T = Time

ER = Extraordinary results

If our effort is fantastic and we’ve been at it for an appropriate length of time but our actions (premise) is incomplete, then our results will be limited.

Perhaps our actions are perfect but our effort isn’t there, then similarly, we won’t achieve our full potential.

For instance – we want to save money. We create a savings account, we deposit money into it, but it’s only been two months of saving, then we won’t have the result we are likely looking for.

What about our health?

We start an exercise regime, we’re putting in outstanding effort and we’ve been at it for months and our results are there! WOO HOO! Exactly what we wanted.

Applying the PETER principle in our lives is a fantastic way to look at our goals and set pace and consistency towards achieving them.

So here are the steps to building your EXTRAORDINARY LIFE:

1. Develop a conscious philosophy. Look at what you believe about the different categories of life (health, intellect, financial, relationships, social wellbeing, or vocation). Does a lack of symptoms mean you are healthy? Is it normal for everyone to get sick? Does having no debt mean you are wealthy? Does not being dumb mean you are intelligent? What does it mean to you to be healthy, wealthy and intelligent? Consciously look at all categories and define it.

2. Build a healthy self esteem. Live consciously, develop self-acceptance, self responsibility, live purposefully, have personal integrity. Nathaniel Branden’s book “The 6 pillars of self esteem” is a great place to start.

3. Develop a crystal clear vision. See step 1. By defining your premises, you will be able to make better and more conscious choices about what to think, eat and how to move your body in ways that set clear parameters to achieve your goals.

4. Identify your purpose. Are you purpose driven or pain and pleasure driven. When we aren’t clear, we work really hard to avoid what we don’t want instead of chasing what we do want and what ignites our spirits.

5. Craft your action plan. Ideation without action is delusion. Set a clear plan to achieve your actions. Book your time to workout and hold it at a high value…just as important as any other appointment. Trust me – one thing I’ve learned the hard way is that committing to yourself is the fastest and best way to build your self esteem. Try it. You’ll realize quickly that it works amazingly well.

Here’s your 7 day Get Started Plan:

Craft your best life

Today: Schedule your Power Hour – spend 30-60 mins each day journaling and writing out your thoughts in each of the categories of life: My Health and Fitness, My Character, My Social Life, My Love Relationship, My Parenting, My Finances, My Intellect, My Career, My Spiritual Life, My Legacy.

For each category – Ask yourself:
– What do you know to be true about (category)?
– What is your vision for your (category)?
– Why do you want it?
– What action steps must you take to make it happen?

Day 1 –- “6 Pillars” Book
Day 2-4 – Answer 4 questions for 3 categories
Day 5-7 – Other 8 Categories

Dr. Craig Hazel’s mission is to help families THRIVE.  After graduating from Queen’s University with a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Physical and Health Education, he went on to earn a Doctor of Chiropractic degree and a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy from Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas Texas.  He is passionate about seeing children and families in his private practice at Synergy Chiropractic in Kanata Ontario.  A sought after speaker, he has been featured regularly on TSN Team 1200, CTV and Rogers TV. He is also the Chairman of the Alliance for Chiropractic of Ontario.