Chiropractic Care Helps You Recover from Sports Injuries
Every day you're not participating in your favorite sport may seem like an eternity if you've been injured. Chiropractic treatment can ease your pain and may even help you recover from your injuries faster than you expected.
Types of Injuries Chiropractors Treat
If you're thinking about visiting a chiropractor, you're in good company. College and professional sports teams throughout the country rely on chiropractors to help their athletes rebound from injuries and avoid new injuries when they return to the playing field. One-hundred percent of National Football League and Major League Baseball teams have chiropractors on staff, according to Palmer College of Chiropractic, while 72% of Professional Golf Association golfers receive treatments while on tour.
Chiropractors offer therapies that help athletes heal from many types of sports ailments, including:
How Chiropractic Treatment Can Help You
Sports injuries can be very complex. If you strained the muscles in your back when you fell or twisted an ankle, your muscle or ligament injuries may not be the only source of your pain. Your fall may have also caused the vertebrae in your spine to become misaligned. Misalignments, called "subluxations" by your chiropractor, not only trigger back or joint pain but can stress muscles and nerves and throw off the alignment of your hips, backs, neck, and legs.
Falls are one cause of subluxations, but they can also occur due to poor posture or spending too much time in one position. For example, the hunched-over position you use when you ride a bike may increase your risk of subluxations.
Spinal manipulation or mobilization, two types of hands-on therapy, ease vertebrae back into the optimal position, eliminating subluxations and reducing pain.
Every chiropractic treatment plan is unique and tailored to your injury. In addition to manipulation or mobilization, your chiropractor may recommend massage, soft tissue mobilization, trigger point therapy, flexion-distraction therapy, traction, electrical nerve stimulation treatments, or ultrasound therapy.
Chiropractic treatment offers many benefits, including:
Are you eager to get back to your favorite sport? Call us to schedule your chiropractic appointment.
Sources:
Palmer College of Chiropractic: Sports Chiropractic
Cleveland Clinic: Chiropractic Adjustment
How Chronic Stress Can Cause Body Pain
Stress and anxiety aren't just mental health issues. If you feel stressed or anxious much of the time, you may be more likely to develop high blood pressure, diabetes, acid reflux, or other conditions. Chronic stress can also affect your muscles and joints, causing pain and inflammation.
4 Painful Symptoms or Conditions Caused or Worsened by Stress
Fifty-five percent of Americans report feeling stressed during the day, according to the American Stress Institute. That's no surprise considering how busy our lives are in the 21st century. Although stress is a part of life, it's much more than just a nuisance. In fact, chronic stress can cause these symptoms and conditions:
Chronic stress can cause inflammation throughout your body, irritate your nerves, and even affect blood circulation. When you're stressed, your body increases its production of a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol, known as the "fight or flight" hormone, helps you prepare to face a challenge or run away from danger. Over time, your cortisol level can drop too low if you're constantly stressed. A low cortisone level can decrease your pain threshold and make it more difficult to manage pain.
Your Chiropractor Can Ease Your Painful Symptoms and Help You Lower Your Stress Level
Prescription medications are certainly effective in reducing stress but may cause unpleasant side effects. If you're looking for a drug-free way to control your stress, chiropractic offers the perfect solution.
Spinal manipulations, or adjustments, realign your spine, correcting subluxations. Realigning your spine also helps ease muscle tension and reduces pressure on nerves, ligaments, and tendons.
Improving blood flow, one of the benefits of chiropractic treatment, promotes healing of painful areas and may also help your brain reset itself after a stressful day.
Stomach pain, indigestion, and heartburn may occur if your nerve function is affected due to subluxations. Realigning your spine improves nerve function, which may help you reduce stress-related stomach pain.
Soft tissue mobilization and massage, two chiropractic therapies, loosen tight muscles and get rid of painful knots in your muscles. These therapies also trigger the production of serotonin and endorphin, two hormones that reduce stress and help you feel calm and relaxed.
If stress-related headaches and migraines are a common problem, regular chiropractic sessions can help you keep pain under control and reduce the number of headaches you experience every month.
Treatments are just as effective for back and neck pain caused by stress. In addition to performing spinal manipulations and other treatments, your chiropractor can also teach you exercises that will help you improve your posture and reduce the effects of stress on your body. He or she may also recommend stress relief techniques and dietary changes that will enhance your physical and mental health.
Sources:
American Stress Institute: 42 Worrying Workplace Stress Statistics, 3/25/19
The American Institute of Stress: 50 Common Signs and Symptoms of Stress
U.S. News & World Report: Surprise: Chiropractors Can Treat These 5 Conditions, 11/30/15
Why You Need Chiropractic in 2021
Have you decided to renew your commitment to good health this year? Whether you've been visiting the chiropractor for years, or you're considering making a first-time visit, chiropractic care can help you stay healthy and avoid aches and pains in 2021.
Are You Feeling Sore After the Holidays?
Holiday activities, as enjoyable as they may be, can strain your joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons. If your sciatica has been acting up after dragging your Christmas tree to the curb or your back hasn't been quite the same since you fell off your snowboard, chiropractic treatments will help you recover from your injuries.
Even seemingly harmless activities, like putting away decorations or shoveling snow, can leave you in pain. In fact, your symptoms may be related to the subluxation of your vertebrae, the bumpy bones that make up your spine. Subluxations happen when the vertebrae become misaligned and may be caused by falls, poor posture, car accidents, poor lifting technique, sitting for long periods, or even stress.
When you're feeling stressed, the muscles in your neck and back tend to become tight. If your muscles remain tense for a long period of time, the tension can pull your spine out of alignment.
Spinal manipulation, one of the hands-on treatments offered by your chiropractor, eases the vertebrae back into alignment, relieving pain, loosening tight muscles, and improving mobility and range of motion.
7 Ways Chiropractic Care Can Make 2021 Better
Visiting the chiropractor throughout the year offers these benefits:
Are you ready to protect and improve your health with chiropractic care? Give us a call to arrange a convenient appointment.
Sources:
American Sleep Association: Sleep and Sleep Disorders Statistics
Palmer College of Chiropractic: Benefits of Chiropractic
American Chiropractic Association: What Research Shows About Chiropractic
How Cold Can Affect Chronic Conditions and Worsen Pain
Winter can be the most uncomfortable time of the year if you have a chronic condition. Fortunately, making a few changes to your winter routine and visiting your chiropractor regularly can help ease your winter pain.
Why Pain and Other Symptoms Are Worse When It's Cold Outside
Arthritis, sciatica, fibromyalgia, and other conditions often seem to flare up during the coldest months of the year. Your pain may be worse due to several reasons, including:
How Your Chiropractor Can Help You Reduce Your Pain
A spinal misalignment may cause or worsen your pain. Misalignments can occur as a result of minor falls when you're tubing or skiing or might happen if you spend hours outside shoveling snow. Do you enjoy snuggling up in a comfortable chair with a book when the weather is nasty outside? Remaining in the same position for hours at a time can stress your spine, causing your vertebrae to move out of alignment.
Misaligned vertebrae can be the source of both pain and stiffness and may limit your range of motion. Spinal manipulation, a treatment that uses quick, manual thrusts to realign your vertebrae, will relieve your pain.
When you already have a chronic condition, the slightest change in your activity level or the weather can turn a good day into a painful one. Visiting your chiropractor regularly can help you prevent pain and relieve it when it does threaten to ruin your day.
Your chiropractor offers a variety of treatments designed to reduce pain and keep your spine, joints, muscles, ligaments, and tendons limber, including massage, hot and cold therapies, electrical stimulation, ultrasound therapy, soft tissue mobilization, and traction.
Would you like to avoid winter pain this year? Contact our office to schedule regular visits with the chiropractor.
Sources:
UChicago Medicine: It's cold outside! Do your joints hurt?
WebMD: Does Weather Affect Joint Pain?
The Benefits of Chiropractic Care During the Holidays
Creating the perfect holiday celebration for your family takes plenty of work. After spending hours wrapping gifts and planning elaborate meals, you may feel anything but joyous. In fact, stress, aches, and pains are just as much a part of the holiday season as parties and shopping. Luckily, your chiropractor offers a variety of treatments that will ease your symptoms and help you enjoy the holidays.
Chiropractic Care Helps You Avoid Aches and Pains from Holiday Activities
Shopping sounds like a fairly low-risk activity, but that's not always the case. When you spend hours shopping, whether you're hitting the mall or searching online, you're bound to experience a few negative physical effects.
Concrete floors are often concealed behind tile or carpeting at your favorite stores. Spending hours walking and standing on these floors can trigger back, neck, leg, shoulder, or muscle pain. If you spend hours hunched over your laptop, tablet, or phone doing a little online shopping, you may also experience neck, back, and shoulder pain.
Pain may be a result of subluxations that occur when the vertebrae in your spine become misaligned. Chiropractors often use spinal manipulation to realign your spine and correct subluxations. Quick, hands-on thrusts improve the alignment of the spine during this painless treatment.
Visiting the chiropractor before and after major shopping trips will help you avoid days of pain. Chiropractic treatments can also ease aches and pain caused by shoveling snow, spending long hours in a car or plane, slipping on an icy sidewalk, skiing, sled riding, ice skating, and other winter activities.
Chiropractic Treatment Provides a Natural Way to Treat Holiday Stress
If the holidays stress you out, you're not alone. More than a third of people surveyed in a PBS News Hour/NPR/Marist survey reported feeling the same way.
Muscle tightening is one of the most obvious signs of stress. When you're feeling overwhelmed or anxious, you may have noticed that the muscles in your neck, shoulders, or upper back feel rock hard.
Pain isn't the only issue when your muscles tighten. Muscle tension can limit your range of motion and trigger painful tension headaches. Tight muscles can even pull your vertebrae out of alignment, causing subluxations.
Massage therapy, spinal manipulation and mobilization, soft tissue mobilization, ultrasound, and other therapies offered by your chiropractor ease the painful physical effects of stress. Massage also triggers the release of endorphins, the body's "feel-good" chemicals. Endorphins help you feel calmer and less stressed.
Improved blood flow is an important benefit of chiropractic treatment. Blood flow improves healing and may also ease the "fight or flight" response that occurs when you feel stressed.
Staying Healthier During the Holidays Is Much Easier with Chiropractic Care
Aches and pains aren't the only effects of misaligned vertebrae and tight joints or muscles. If these structures press against your nerves, your organs and immune system may not function optimally. Eliminating subluxation ensures that organs receive important signals from the nerves, help balance your immune system and reduce inflammation
Improved lymph fluid drainage is another beneficial effect of chiropractic treatments. The fluid removes toxins and wastes from your body. When drainage improves, it may be easier to fight colds and other illnesses.
Chiropractic Care May Help You Avoid Stomach Issues After Holiday Meals
It's almost impossible to follow your usual diet during the holiday season. Parties, work potlucks, and family meals feature a tantalizing array of your favorite foods and treats. If you're not used to eating rich, fatty, sugary, or fried foods, you may soon experience bloating, constipation, gas, and other uncomfortable symptoms.
These problems may also be traced to issues with the nerves that control the organs. Keeping your nerves balanced with chiropractic treatment will help you avoid uncomfortable digestive issues. Thanks to your treatments, you'll be able to better handle the dietary challenges of the season.
Don't let stress or aches and pains keep you from enjoying the holidays! Contact our office to schedule your chiropractic appointment.
Sources:
PBS News Hour: Poll: How Stressed Are Americans This Holiday Season, 12/21/18
U.S. News & World Report: Surprise: Chiropractors Can Treat These 5 Conditions, 11/30/15
How to Prevent Pain While Traveling
Do you suffer from neck or back pain for days after a long car, plane, bus, or train trip? Sitting for hours stresses your spine, joints, ligaments, discs, and muscles, causing those travel-related aches and pains.
How Traveling Causes Pain
After you remain in the same position for a few hours, your joints and muscles tend to tighten. When this happens, your range of motion may decrease. As a result, the slightest movement can lead to painful muscle spasms or even strained muscles. Reaching forward to change the radio station or turning your head to look out the window can trigger jolts of pain if your muscles and joints are too tight.
Long trips can aggravate existing back or neck conditions, including arthritis, herniated discs, spinal stenosis, degenerative disc disease, and sciatica.
Sitting affects your spine's ability to support your body adequately. When you sit, the natural curve in your lower back flattens, while pressure on your spinal discs increases, according to a study published in the Asian Spine Journal.
Seat design is another issue. Although seat designers try to accommodate a range of body types and sizes, it's difficult to construct a seat that fits everyone equally well. If the headrest is too tall to fit your neck, or the seat doesn't offer enough lower back support, you're more likely to experience some degree of pain if your trip lasts more than an hour or two.
What You Can Do to Prevent Pain
Fortunately, pain can be avoided, or at least decreased, by following a few of these suggestions:
Do you have a long trip planned soon? Chiropractic care can enhance your comfort. Contact our office to schedule your pre- or post-trip visit.
Sources:
Edmunds: Creating the Perfect Fit: New Car Seat Design
Spine Health: 7 Tips to Alleviate Back Pain on Your Road Trips, 9/12/19
How to Stay Comfortable on Long Drives, 5/24/18
5 Conditions That Can Be Improved with Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care offers more benefits than you may realize. Whether you're suffering from back pain, fibromyalgia, temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ), or another condition, chiropractic treatment can ease your pain and reduce or eliminate other symptoms. These five conditions are among the many that chiropractors treat every day.
1. Back and Neck Pain
Back and neck pain may occur as a result of a car accident, fall, arthritis, spinal disc degeneration, poor posture, or even looking down at your cell phone for hours every day. No matter what the cause, back and neck pain can interfere with your sleep, make you feel irritable, and prevent you from carrying out your usual daily activities.
The pain may be a result of a misalignment of the vertebrae in your spine called a subluxation. In addition to pain, you may notice tingling, numbness, or burning in your back or neck if you have a subluxation. Misaligned vertebrae can also increase tension on your muscles and press on your nerves, worsening your symptoms.
Spinal manipulation is one of the treatments chiropractors use to treat subluxations. The hands-on treatment uses quick thrusts to move vertebrae back into alignment. Your chiropractor may also use several other treatments to ease back or neck pain, including massage, soft tissue manipulation, heat, ice, ultrasound therapy, and electrical stimulation.
2. Headaches and Migraines
Headaches and migraines affect the quality of your life and can make it difficult to function at work or school. Head pain is a particularly common complaint. In fact, 50 to 75 percent of adults have suffered from headaches during the last year, according to the World Health Organization, while 30 percent have experienced migraines.
Chiropractic treatment eases the pain of both migraine and tension headaches and may reduce the number of headaches you get. In a case series published in the March 2019 edition of Global Advantages in Health and Medicine, researchers explored whether chiropractic care could be helpful in treating migraines.
One patient reported a 50 percent decrease in headache intensity after treatment with spinal manipulation, spinal mobilization, and soft tissue release. Migraines decreased from three to four a week to just one per month in another patient who received chiropractic treatment.
3. TMJ
TMJ affects the muscles, bones, and ligaments in the hinge joints in your jaw, causing pain that increases when you open or close your mouth or chew. Headaches, facial and ear pain, and muscle spasms can also accompany TMJ.
Your treatment may involve soft tissue techniques that relax muscles and tissues in the jaw and break up scar tissue. Gentle pressure may also be used to improve the alignment of your jaw joints.
4. Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia causes tender points all over your body, in addition to fatigue, limited range of motion, and difficulty sleeping. Pain relievers, anti-depressants, and anticonvulsants are typically used to treat fibromyalgia symptoms. Unfortunately, these medications, like all drugs, can cause unpleasant side effects.
Spinal manipulation and ischemic compression treatments may reduce pain, eliminate muscle spasms, and improve nerve health. Ischemic compression involves applying pressure to a trigger point, or knot, to deactivate it.
Twenty female fibromyalgia patients received 20 sessions of connective tissue manipulation and ultrasound therapy of the upper back in a study published in The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapies. The women reported better sleep and less intense pain after their treatments.
Sources:
Spine Universe: What Disorders Do Chiropractors Treat?
WebMD: Chiropractic Care for Back Pain
Are Your Shoes Causing Back and Spine Problems?
Have you been wondering why you have back pain? Your shoes may be to blame. Unfortunately, the most stylish choices don't always offer the best support or comfort for your feet and spine.
What Happens When You Select the Wrong Type of Shoes
Your feet support the weight of your entire body, absorb the shock generated when you run and walk, and help keep your spine properly aligned. If you choose shoes that don't offer adequate support or place too much pressure on one part of your foot, the vertebrae in your spine may soon become misaligned.
Misalignments, called "subluxations" by chiropractors, cause back and neck pain, muscle tension, spasms, stiffness, and reduced range of motion. Hands-on spinal manipulation can improve spinal alignment, but subluxations may continue to occur if you don't make a few footwear changes.
Some Shoes Are More Likely Than Others to Cause Problems
High heels are particularly troublesome because the shoes place extreme pressure on the front part of your foot. A one-inch heel increases pressure by 22 percent, while pressure rises by 76 percent with a three-inch heel, according to UPMC Pinnacle.
When you put on a pair of high heels, your posture changes completely. Due to the unnatural position of your feet, your lower back moves forward slightly, disrupting the natural curve of your spine. Wearing the shoes every day will increase wear on tear on the discs between the vertebrae that absorb shock and may strain the joints and ligaments in your back. Knee and muscle pain, tight calf muscles, and Achilles tendons are other consequences of wearing high heels.
Both high heels and flip flops can affect your gait, which is the way you normally walk. Gait changes may alter spinal alignment, cause balance problems, and trigger knee, hip, and back pain. Auburn University researchers reported that an altered gait due to flip flop wear makes walkers take shorter steps and affects the vertical force of the heels.
Lack of arch support is a common problem when you wear flip flops or flats. Arch support helps stabilize your feet, legs, and spine, and is essential to proper spinal alignment. Without proper support, your feet and your back may begin to ache by the end of the day.
How to Select Shoes That Protect Your Spine
Keeping these tips in your mind will help you select spine-friendly shoes:
Are you suffering from back pain? We offer treatments that will realign your spine and relax your tight muscles. Contact our office to schedule an appointment.
Sources:
American Osteopathic Association: The Real Harm in High Heels
UPMC Pinnacle: The High Price of Heels, 5/10/19
Spine Universe: High Heels and Flip-Flops Cause Back Pain, 8/1/18
American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons: That Pain in Your Back Could Be Linked to Your Feet
Do You Have a Herniated Disc?
A herniated disc, also called a "slipped" disc, could be the source of that nagging pain in your lower back or legs. Fortunately, your chiropractor offers several treatments that can help ease your pain.
How Do Herniated Discs Cause Pain?
Rubbery, round discs cushion the spaces between the vertebrae in your spine and serve as shock absorbers when you jump, bend, twist, walk, and run. Each disc is composed of a soft, jelly-like core covered by a tougher outer layer. A herniation occurs when the softcore protrudes through a tear in the outer layer of the disc.
If the herniation is minor, you may not notice any symptoms. Larger herniations press against the nerves in your spinal column, triggering pain and other symptoms.
Although an injury or fall can cause a herniated disc, the condition is often related to wear and tear that happens as you age. Discs naturally degenerate over time and become stiffer, flatter, and more prone to tearing. One day, you may bend to pick up your dropped keys and feel an unexpected pain in your back.
In addition to age, gender can be a factor in the condition. Men between the ages of 20 and 50 are more likely to develop herniated discs, according to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgery.
Other risk factors include:
What Symptoms Will I Experience if I Have a Herniated Disc?
Symptoms vary depending on the location of the herniated disc. If the problem disc is in your neck, you might notice neck pain that radiates to your shoulder, arm, and hand, along with numbness, tingling, and weakness.
The lower back is a common site for herniated discs. If the inner core of the disc presses on the nerves that travel to your legs, you may experience numbness, tingling, weakness, and pain in your back, legs, or feet. Your symptoms might be worse at night or may worsen if you've been sitting or standing for a while.
In severe cases, herniated discs can affect your ability to control your bowels and bladder or make walking difficult.
What Can Be Done to Ease Herniated Disc Symptoms?
Rest and heat or ice packs can decrease pain and inflammation. Although resting as much as possible may seem like a good idea, it's best to start moving after a day or two. Too much rest can lead to muscle spasms and stiff joints.
If your pain continues despite home care measures, your chiropractor can offer treatments that may be helpful including:
Are you struggling with back pain? We can help you relieve your pain naturally. Contact us to schedule an appointment.
Sources:
Harvard Health Publishing: Don’t Take Back Pain Sitting Down, 3/20
Chiropractic Treatment Can Protect Your Health as You Grow Older
No matter how carefully you care for your body, chances are it won't function quite as well at 70 as it did at 30. Wear and tear on your joints and weakening muscles may lead to poor balance and coordination, while digestive problems, insomnia, and other issues can affect your quality of life. Fortunately, chiropractic treatment offers a simple solution to these and other age-related issues.
Chiropractic Treatment Relieves Pain Naturally
Playing tennis, participating in hobbies, gardening, or playing with your grandchildren become difficult when your joints and muscles hurt. Pain medication dulls the ache but only temporarily. Relying on medication can lead to addiction issues or increase your risk of stomach ulcers.
Chiropractic treatment offers an effective way to ease pain and decrease your reliance on medication. Spinal manipulation, massage, soft tissue manipulation, and other treatments relieve pain and inflammation and increase flexibility and range of motion. Chiropractic therapies help your body manage pain naturally by triggering the release of endorphins. These chemicals relieve pain and stress while improving our mood.
Treatments can be helpful if you have arthritis, disc issues, spinal stenosis, muscle pain, bursitis, tendonitis, and other painful conditions.
Digestive System Function May Improve with Chiropractic Treatment
In addition to joint and muscle pain, digestive problems become more common as you grow older. In fact, 40 percent of older people have at least one digestive symptom every year, according to WebMD. If you've been struggling with heartburn, constipation, gas, diarrhea, acid reflux, or another gastrointestinal problem, a visit to the chiropractor may help you control your symptoms.
In some cases, gastrointestinal problems are caused or worsened when misaligned vertebrae press against the nerves that serve your digestive system. Spinal manipulation, a chiropractic treatment commonly known as an "adjustment," realigns your vertebrae, decreasing pressure on the nerves.
Worried About Falls? Your Chiropractor Can Help You Improve Your Balance
Flexible joints and strong muscles are essential for balance and coordination. Unfortunately, age-related changes stiffen joints and cause loss of muscle mass and strength. The problem can be worsened by imbalances caused by the misalignment of your spine.
Chiropractic treatments restore normal alignment and relieve tension on muscles, ligaments, and tendons, helping you keep your balance. Treatments may also reduce dizziness and improve the function of joint receptors in your neck that help you keep track of the position of your limbs.
Visiting the Chiropractor Can Improve Your Quality of Life
When your joints and muscles no longer ache and your constipation or acid reflux are under control, staying home on the couch is no longer the only option. Chiropractic treatment can help you stay active, participate in the activities you enjoy, and boost your energy level.
Do you find it difficult to fall asleep or stay asleep? Chiropractic treatment might improve the length and quality of your sleep. Researchers who published a 2010 literature review in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine noted that patients who received chiropractic treatment noticed an improvement in insomnia symptoms. They recommended additional research to study just how chiropractic therapies affect sleep problems.
In addition to eating a healthy diet and exercising often, chiropractic treatment can help you stay healthy as you grow older. Let us know if you're ready to schedule your appointment.
Sources:
WebMD: Aging and Digestive Health
Chiropractic & Manual Therapies: The Role of Chiropractic Care in Older Adults, 2/21/12
BMC Geriatrics: The Profile of Older Adults Seeking Chiropractic Care: A Secondary Analysis, 4/23/21
