Dr. Patrick Ess

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Dr. Patrick Ess Corrective Care Chiropractor, Fitness Consultant, Nutrition Coach, Detoxification Specialist and Wel

🚨 JUNK FOOD MAY BE REWIRING YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN! 🧠🍟What children eat today may influence what they CRAVE as adults!A new ...
10/13/2026

🚨 JUNK FOOD MAY BE REWIRING YOUR CHILD’S BRAIN! 🧠🍟

What children eat today may influence what they CRAVE as adults!

A new 2026 study published in Nature Communications found something alarming:

🐭 Mice fed high-fat, high-sugar diets early in life developed lasting changes in brain pathways controlling appetite.

⚖️ Even after returning to a healthy diet and normal body weight, their preference for junk food persisted!

🦠 Here’s the fascinating part: A specific probiotic helped normalize food preferences, suggesting the GUT-BRAIN CONNECTION may play an important role.

⚠️ This was an animal study, not proof of permanent brain damage in children. But the findings deserve attention!

🥦 MY TAKEAWAY: Feed your children REAL, nutrient-dense foods. Perfection isn’t necessary—think 80/20—but healthy habits established early may influence a lifetime of eating behaviors.

You’re not just feeding their bodies. You’re helping shape their future! 💪

📚 Research: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41735265/

👨‍⚕️ Dr. Patrick Ess | Stanly Wellness Center

📅 https://askdrpatrick.com/appointment-scheduling/

🚨 STRESSED OUT? EATING LATE? YOUR GUT MAY BE PAYING THE PRICE! 💩New research presented at Digestive Disease Week 2026 an...
10/12/2026

🚨 STRESSED OUT? EATING LATE? YOUR GUT MAY BE PAYING THE PRICE! 💩

New research presented at Digestive Disease Week 2026 analyzed data from over 15,000 people and found a surprising connection between stress, late-night eating, and bowel problems!

📊 39% of highly stressed late-night eaters experienced constipation or diarrhea, compared to just 23% of lower-stress individuals who ate earlier.

🧠 Researchers also found that higher stress combined with poor dietary habits was associated with reduced gut bacterial diversity.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

Your gut and brain are constantly communicating through the gut-brain axis. Stress and meal timing may influence digestive health more than we realize!

✅ Finish dinner earlier.
✅ Avoid heavy late-night meals.
✅ Manage daily stress.
✅ Give your digestive system a consistent routine.

⚠️ This was observational research, so it shows an association—not proof of cause and effect.

BOTTOM LINE: Sometimes improving your gut health starts with WHEN you eat, not just WHAT you eat!

📚 Study — American Gastroenterological Association:
https://news.gastro.org/issues/2026/april-2026/late-eating-stress-tied-to-bowel-issues/

🚨 BEFORE YOU REPLACE YOUR HIP… CHECK YOUR FEET! 🦶🦴Did you know your hip pain could be influenced by the way you WALK?You...
10/08/2026

🚨 BEFORE YOU REPLACE YOUR HIP… CHECK YOUR FEET! 🦶🦴

Did you know your hip pain could be influenced by the way you WALK?

Your feet are the foundation of your body. When your arches collapse or your feet excessively pronate, it can change the forces traveling through your knees, hips, pelvis, and spine!

🔬 WHAT DOES RESEARCH SHOW?

✅ A 2023 systematic review of 7 studies involving 266 people found that foot orthotics and footwear modifications showed potential benefits for hip pain and function, although the evidence was limited.

✅ A 2024 randomized feasibility study found promising improvements in walking activity with contoured orthotics.

💥 THE TAKEAWAY?

Your hip doesn’t work alone! Sometimes addressing foot mechanics, gait, and muscle imbalances can help improve comfort and mobility.

Hip replacements are sometimes necessary, but conservative options deserve consideration when appropriate.

👨‍⚕️ At Stanly Wellness Center, we evaluate the entire kinetic chain—not just where you hurt!

📍 Locust, NC

📅 Schedule your evaluation today!
https://askdrpatrick.com/appointment-scheduling/

🚨 **THINK YOUR DIET GIVES YOU ALL THE NUTRIENTS YOU NEED? THINK AGAIN.**Even people eating a relatively healthy diet may...
10/06/2026

🚨 **THINK YOUR DIET GIVES YOU ALL THE NUTRIENTS YOU NEED? THINK AGAIN.**

Even people eating a relatively healthy diet may be falling short on essential micronutrients.

According to data highlighted by Chris Kresser:

☀️ **94%** may not get enough vitamin D
🥚 **92%** fall short on choline
🌻 **89%** fall short on vitamin E
🥬 **67%** fall short on vitamin K
⚡ **52%** fall short on magnesium

Why?

Modern diets, chronic stress, medications, restrictive eating, changes in agriculture, and other factors can make optimal nutrient intake harder to achieve.

🥩🥦 **REAL FOOD SHOULD ALWAYS COME FIRST.**

But a quality multivitamin may act like nutritional **“insurance”**—helping fill the gaps your diet leaves behind.

⚠️ The key word is **QUALITY.**

Not all multivitamins are created equal. Look for:

✅ Bioavailable forms
✅ Appropriate—not mega—doses
✅ Nutrients that complement one another
❌ Avoid unnecessarily high amounts of iron, calcium, iodine, and certain forms of vitamin E unless specifically needed.

👉 **Food first. Supplement intelligently.**

Your body doesn't just need enough nutrients to survive—it needs the right nutrients to **THRIVE.**

🚨 YOUR CHRONIC COUGH MAY NOT START IN YOUR LUNGS.Most people think acid reflux means:🔥 Heartburn🤢 Indigestion😣 Burning i...
10/05/2026

🚨 YOUR CHRONIC COUGH MAY NOT START IN YOUR LUNGS.

Most people think acid reflux means:

🔥 Heartburn
🤢 Indigestion
😣 Burning in the chest

But reflux can potentially affect something you might NEVER associate with your stomach…

🫁 YOUR LUNGS AND AIRWAYS.

Researchers have recognized connections between gastroesophageal reflux and respiratory problems including:

🫁 Chronic cough
😮‍💨 Asthma
🗣️ Hoarseness and throat clearing
🌙 Nighttime coughing
🫁 Other chronic respiratory conditions

And here’s where it gets interesting:

👉 You don’t necessarily have to feel heartburn for reflux to be occurring.

Stomach contents can travel upward into the esophagus and throat. In some people, reflux may trigger airway reflexes—and small amounts of refluxed material may potentially reach the respiratory tract, a process known as microaspiration.

Think about that.

Your persistent cough or irritated airway may not always be JUST a lung problem.

There may be a gut → esophagus → airway connection involved.

And the relationship may work BOTH ways.

When breathing becomes labored, changes in pressure between the chest and abdomen can potentially encourage reflux.

Then reflux may further irritate an already sensitive respiratory system.

🔄 BREATHING PROBLEM → REFLUX → AIRWAY IRRITATION → MORE BREATHING PROBLEMS

But here’s another important piece of the puzzle:

💊 Acid-blocking medications such as PPIs reduce the acidity of stomach contents.

They don’t necessarily stop the physical act of reflux itself.

And clinical trials have NOT consistently shown that simply suppressing stomach acid improves respiratory conditions such as chronic cough, asthma, COPD or pulmonary fibrosis.

👉 WHY IS THE REFLUX HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Sometimes we become so focused on suppressing a symptom that we forget to investigate the mechanics and physiology contributing to it.

Your digestive system and respiratory system aren’t operating independently.

The body is interconnected.

If you’re dealing with unexplained chronic coughing, throat clearing, hoarseness, nighttime coughing or difficult-to-control respiratory symptoms, reflux may be ONE piece of the puzzle worth discussing with your healthcare provider.

Sometimes the symptom you feel in one part of the body…

may have its roots somewhere else entirely.

— Dr. Patrick Ess
Stanly Wellness Center
www.askdrpatrick.com

🚨 WHAT IF PRAYER AFFECTS MORE THAN WE CAN SEE?For thousands of years, Christians believe that prayer and healing can rea...
10/03/2026

🚨 WHAT IF PRAYER AFFECTS MORE THAN WE CAN SEE?

For thousands of years, Christians believe that prayer and healing can reach beyond physical distance.

Interestingly, researchers have actually tried to study something similar in the laboratory.

🧠 THE STUDY

A study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine the brains of people while experienced healers directed distant healing intention toward them from another location.

Researchers studied 11 healer–recipient pairs.

During randomly selected periods, the healer was instructed to intentionally connect with and direct healing intention toward the person lying inside the MRI scanner.

The researchers reported correlations between those intentional-healing periods and changes in activity within several areas of the recipient’s brain.

⚠️ This study raised an intriguing scientific question:

👉 Can focused intention between two people be associated with measurable physiological changes—even when they are physically separated?

For Christians, that question is especially interesting because Scripture has been talking about prayer and healing for a very long time.

Jesus didn’t reserve the ministry of healing only for Himself.

📖 Mark 16:17–18
“And these signs shall follow them that believe…”

Among the signs described are casting out demons and laying hands on the sick.

📖 Luke 10:19
Jesus told His followers:

“Behold, I give unto you power…over all the power of the enemy…”

📖 Matthew 10:7–8
Jesus commanded His disciples:

“Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils…”

And Jesus made an extraordinary statement about those who would believe in Him:

📖 John 14:12
“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also…”

Then James tells the church:

📖 James 5:15–16
“The prayer of faith shall save the sick…”

🙏 Science can measure brain activity.

It can measure electrical signals, blood flow, hormones, immune responses, and countless other physical processes.

However, science cannot tell us that an fMRI signal proves God acted—that is a theological interpretation, not a finding of this experiment.

As a Christian, however, I find it fascinating when modern researchers investigate questions believers have contemplated for centuries:

Does prayer matter?

Can what happens spiritually have measurable effects physically?

And have we underestimated the authority Jesus gave those who believe in Him?

Jesus didn’t simply tell His followers to TALK about the Kingdom.

He told them to GO.

🙏 Pray for the sick.

✋ Lay hands on the sick.

❤️ Care for the suffering.

✝️ Proclaim Christ.

🔥 And believe that God still has the power to heal.

FAITH DOESN’T NEED SCIENCE TO MAKE IT TRUE—BUT IT’S FASCINATING WHEN SCIENCE STARTS ASKING THE QUESTIONS FAITH HAS BEEN ASKING FOR 2,000 YEARS.

📚 Study: Achterberg J, Cooke K, Richards T, Standish LJ, Kozak L, Lake J. Evidence for Correlations Between Distant Intentionality and Brain Function in Recipients: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Analysis. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. 2005;11(6):965–971.

🚨 YOUR COFFEE MAY BE STEALING YOUR DEEP SLEEP—EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU SLEEP FINE.“I can drink coffee after dinner and slee...
10/01/2026

🚨 YOUR COFFEE MAY BE STEALING YOUR DEEP SLEEP—EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU SLEEP FINE.

“I can drink coffee after dinner and sleep like a baby.”

Maybe.

But falling asleep and getting truly restorative sleep are not necessarily the same thing.

A new systematic review published in Nutrients examined 32 human studies that measured sleep using EEG—the electrical activity of the brain.

☕ The consistent finding?

Caffeine can change what your brain is doing while you sleep.

Researchers found caffeine tended to:

🧠 Reduce slow-wave activity — the deep, low-frequency brain activity associated with restorative non-REM sleep

⚡ Increase faster brainwave activity — making sleep look more wake-like

🌙 Have some of its strongest effects early in the night

😴 Blunt the normal rebound in deep sleep after sleep deprivation

And here’s the part I find especially interesting:

👉 In several studies, EEG detected changes that traditional sleep-stage measurements DIDN’T necessarily pick up.

That means you could potentially:

✅ Fall asleep normally
✅ Sleep through the night
✅ Get 7–8 hours
✅ Wake up thinking you slept well…

while still getting less deep, restorative brain activity than you might have without caffeine.

Why?

Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors.

Adenosine normally accumulates throughout the day and helps create the pressure that drives sleep. Caffeine temporarily interferes with that signal.

And not everyone responds the same way.

Your response can depend on:

🧬 Genetics
⏰ Timing
☕ Dose
👤 Age
🔄 Habitual caffeine use

That may explain why one person can drink coffee at 4 PM and feel fine while another can’t touch it after breakfast.

But “I can fall asleep after coffee” doesn’t necessarily mean:

“Caffeine isn’t affecting my sleep.”

And this can potentially create a vicious cycle:

☕ Caffeine → less restorative sleep → daytime fatigue → MORE caffeine → repeat.

TRY THIS EXPERIMENT:

For the next 2 weeks, move your last caffeinated coffee to before NOON.

Don’t change anything else.

Then pay attention to:

😴 How deeply you sleep
🌅 How you feel when you wake up
⚡ Your afternoon energy
☕ How much caffeine you feel like you “need”

You might discover that the coffee you thought was giving you energy…

was partly helping create the fatigue you were using it to fight.

📚 Nutrients — systematic review of 32 human EEG sleep studies
PubMed PMID: 42075032

🚨 CALCIUM + VITAMIN D PILLS MAY NOT BE PROTECTING YOUR BONES LIKE YOU THINK.A major new review published in The BMJ anal...
09/30/2026

🚨 CALCIUM + VITAMIN D PILLS MAY NOT BE PROTECTING YOUR BONES LIKE YOU THINK.

A major new review published in The BMJ analyzed 69 randomized trials involving 153,902 adults.

The conclusion?

💊 Vitamin D alone: essentially NO reduction in fractures
💊 Calcium alone: no significant reduction in overall fractures
💊 Calcium + Vitamin D: only small reductions in fractures
🚶 Falls: no meaningful reduction from any of them

Even the calcium + vitamin D combination reduced hip fractures by only about 0.3% in absolute terms in the pooled analysis. (BMJ⁠)

And calcium supplements aren’t necessarily harmless.

Previous randomized-trial meta-analysis has raised concern about a possible increased risk of myocardial infarction with calcium supplementation, although the cardiovascular literature overall remains debated. (BMJ⁠)

🧠 Calcium is also one of the body’s most important excitatory intracellular signaling ions. Excessive calcium entry into neurons is a key mechanism involved in excitotoxic neuronal injury. However, that does NOT mean ordinary calcium supplementation has been proven to cause brain excitotoxicity—the body tightly regulates blood and brain calcium.

So maybe bone health isn’t simply:

“TAKE MORE CALCIUM.”

Strong bones depend on the entire system:

🥛 Calcium-rich whole foods
☀️ Adequate vitamin D
🥬 Magnesium
🧀 Vitamin K2
🏋️ Strength & weight-bearing exercise
🔥 Healthy inflammatory balance
⚖️ Appropriate estrogen/testosterone status
🏠 Fall prevention

Your bones are living tissue—not a calcium storage container.

👉 BUILD BONE. DON’T JUST SWALLOW CALCIUM.

📚 New BMJ systematic review/meta-analysis:
Calcium, vitamin D, or combined supplementation to prevent fractures and falls — The BMJ

🚨 YOU MAY BE BREATHING WRONG—AND IT COULD BE AFFECTING MORE THAN YOU THINK.You take roughly 20,000 breaths every day.But...
09/28/2026

🚨 YOU MAY BE BREATHING WRONG—AND IT COULD BE AFFECTING MORE THAN YOU THINK.

You take roughly 20,000 breaths every day.

But HOW you breathe matters.

In his bestselling book Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor explores something remarkably simple:

👃 Humans are designed to breathe primarily through the NOSE—not the mouth.

Your nose isn’t just an alternative pathway for air. It helps filter, warm, humidify, and regulate the air before it reaches your lungs.

And there’s another fascinating piece of physiology:

🧬 NITRIC OXIDE

The nasal passages and paranasal sinuses contribute nitric oxide to inhaled air. Nitric oxide plays important roles in blood-vessel regulation and pulmonary physiology.

Nasal breathing may also encourage slower, more controlled breathing and greater diaphragm involvement.

Compare that with habitual mouth breathing:

👄 Mouth breathing bypasses much of the nose’s filtering and humidifying function and is commonly associated with:

😴 Dry mouth and poorer sleep
😮‍💨 Snoring and sleep-disordered breathing
🦷 Oral-health problems
👅 Altered tongue and oral posture
💨 Faster, less controlled breathing patterns

And this becomes especially important with CHILDREN.

Chronic mouth breathing in a child may be a clue that something is interfering with normal nasal breathing—such as allergies, chronic congestion, enlarged tonsils/adenoids, or other airway issues.

One of the biggest lessons from Breath is beautifully simple:

👉 Breathing is automatic—but that doesn’t necessarily mean our breathing habits are optimal.

Try paying attention today.

Are your lips naturally closed when you’re sitting quietly?

Are you breathing silently through your nose?

Are you breathing low into your abdomen and lower ribs—or primarily lifting your upper chest?

And what happens when you sleep?

👃 NOSE
🫁 DIAPHRAGM
🐢 SLOWER
😌 CONTROLLED

Sometimes improving health begins with something we do thousands of times every day without even thinking about it.

Your next breath is a pretty good place to start.

— Dr. Patrick Ess
Stanly Wellness Center

Address

712 Main Street W
Locust, NC
28097

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