Aligning Your Spine

When you lie on your mattress at night, you want it to support your spine in a neutral position, which means that your no part of your back is twisted, torqued, or turned in any way that puts pressure on your spine. If you’re not in a neutral position, your back may eventually hurt.

Think about it this way: if you hold your wrist at a funny angle, you’re fine for a few minutes. After that, though, it gets extremely uncomfortable. The same is true for your spine on your mattress. You may or may not feel it when your spine is unsupported. If you’ve gotten used to sleeping on an old mattress, that may feel normal to you now.

If you’re not sure how your bed measures up, you can try to lie down in your normal sleeping position. Have someone take a photograph of your spine. Look at the photo and see if your back is generally in a straight line, or if your mattress is sagging on the job somewhere. If it is, you’ll want to find one that works better for your back.

Choosing the Best Mattress for Your Back Pain

Different back pain sufferers have different mattress needs. In general, you want to avoid a mattress that is too soft, because it lets your body fold in on itself in uncomfortable ways. The majority of people with back pain seem to do better on medium-firm mattresses. These keep the body from folding without putting too much pressure on it the other way, either.

When you’re looking for a mattress, do your best to try it out before you buy it. You may want to check into a hotel that advertises that they have a certain type of mattress. Most beds also come with trial periods. You’ll have to purchase the mattress, but you’ll have a set number of days where you can sleep on it to test it out. If it doesn’t work for you, let the company know, and they’ll help you get rid of the mattress and give you your money back.

You may have to try several mattresses before you find one that works for you. While this takes some time and energy on your part, it’s all worthwhile when you are sleeping all night and waking up without pain.

Back pain can be anything from a nagging frustration to something that stops your life completely. However, there are things you can do to improve your situation. When you get a mattress that supports your spine, you may find that your back pain diminishes.

Thanks to our friends at The Sleep Help institute for this guest blog! Find out more about them by visiting their site at this link

For example, back surgery. Sufferers of chronic back pain are often told by general physicians and even specialists that to fix a spinal problem would require back surgery in order to diminish their ongoing pain.

Unfortunately, with back surgery, there are invasive procedures that can carry an even bigger risk for potential setbacks that could develop during the recovery process. Back surgery is very risky, to say the least. And, even when the procedure itself is done and over with, the road to recovery will be paved with extensive physical therapy, painkillers, and the sheer possibility that something just won’t heal right.

With all the intimidating prospects that back surgery can present, the possibility that you might not even need to go under the knife is the scariest of them all.

Surgical Approach

Back surgery begins with identifying the area of the spine that needs attention. Once the plan of action is determined in regards to surgical approach, the problem can finally begin to be resolved. If the plan is fusing the vertebrae, you’re admitted to the hospital and sedated before going under the knife.

Your road to recovery begins, usually with painkillers, shortly after coming out of anesthesia. As the pain persists, you’ll pop pills, attend physical therapy sessions, and start paying on your extensive medical bills because back surgery isn’t cheap!

In a few month’s time, if all goes according to plan, you should be properly healed and pain-free. The pain of lingering bills may persist if you still haven’t paid them off, but your physical pain should be gone. Unless, of course, you fall into the 33.3% of people who were recommended the wrong surgical approach.

Chiropractic Approach

In choosing a chiropractic approach, you’ll visit with a chiropractor who will order the necessary images of your spine, including your hips and shoulders. After examining the images thoroughly, the chiropractor will then pinpoint misalignments and show these to you, explaining the significance of the issue. Utilizing the data of your spine, the chiropractor will begin to formulate a plan to realign it.

With the treatment plan tailored to your needs in place, you will start visiting with a chiropractor several times a week over the course of the next few weeks, and quite possibly even months if absolutely necessary. Every visit to your chiropractor will only be a fraction of the costs of a hospital visit and each time your spine will be adjusted closer to its ideal posture. With time, these minor adjustments will add up and the results will be outstanding!

Your chiropractor will assist you in developing healthy habits in terms of sitting properly, your standing posture and strengthening exercises that will help solidify the effects of your adjustments as your spine comes back into position. When all is said and done, you’ll have a healthy spine, you’ll no longer suffer from pain associated with your back, and you will have a collection of exercises to help you stay in proper form!

We tend to have the unrealistic belief that children are somewhat invincible in regards to physical hardships that are the main leading causes of spinal misalignments and postural damage, but would you believe that this isn’t true?

Sure, kids don’t lift heavy objects, move furniture or even get stuck changing a flat tire, but their bodies do, in fact, go through a good bit of physical trauma merely by them being kids. Imagine carrying around a heavy backpack filled with books every day at school just to be subject to the unpredictable measures of the playground day in and day out. Before you know it, these variables begin to wreak havoc on their feeble little bodies, leading to spinal misalignments. If left untreated, these minor issues will blossom into something much more serious, including not just chronic pain but organ dysfunction, compromised immune system, and even depression.

There are no age limits in terms of chiropractic care. By taking your kids to see a chiropractor regularly, parents can be certain that their kids’ spines are in good health, and any minor misalignments that are caught early enough and treated quickly will prevent a manifestation that would lead to something more serious.

It’s difficult to think that our children need chiropractic care, but staggering numbers reveal just how serious this problem really is. By bringing your children in regularly, you can help to alleviate issues that would otherwise present life-long consequences. Give us a call today!

5. Increased Health and Well-Being

Chiropractic care is far more than just a solution for pain relief. It is also good for your health. Regular chiropractic care increases the quality of life and is beneficial for our wellbeing. We periodically ask our patients what changes they might notice once they are out of pain. Here I will provide some of the responses we hear every day:

I have an extensive amount of energy!

I’m able to garden again without discomfort!

I have my life back!

I have been able to get a full night’s sleep! I feel so refreshed!

When we are feeling good, staying healthy and doing things that make us happy we tend to look forward to every day with a tremendous amount of optimism.

6. Decreased Incidence of Falling

Injuries that are extremely common in the elderly population often involve falling. As claimed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 90% of falls are the cause of 850,000 bone fractures occurring annually amongst Americans ages 65 and older. Chiropractors normalize the mechanoreceptors of the cervical spine by administering chiropractic adjustments, which in turn, reduces the risk of falls. Stretching and exercise programs are often prescribed as well so that patients can increase their strength, flexibility, mobility, balance, and coordination.

7. Keeps Seniors Out of Nursing Homes

In 1996, Dr. Ian Coulter, a graduate from Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College, published an interesting study in the Journal, “Topics of Clinical Chiropractic” called “Chiropractic care for the Elderly.” He was also involved in many research projects pertaining to the benefits of chiropractic care and exercise.

The key points he noted in this study were:

• opposed to the 66% in the non-chiropractic care group, 44% of those who used chiropractic care reported having arthritis.
• strenuous levels of exercise were more than likely to be done by individuals receiving chiropractic care
• during a three-year follow-up, a staggering 48% of those who did not use chiropractic care lived in a nursing home, whereas less than 5% of those who did use chiropractic care lived in a nursing home.
• during a three-year follow-up, 48% of those in the non-chiropractic group were hospitalized compared to the measly 26% of those who used chiropractic care

Seniors do not need to suffer unnecessarily. Chiropractic care provides amazing benefits whilst having an outstanding record of effectiveness and safety. Ready to find out more? Visit us today!

1. Pain Relief

Chiropractic care is the safest and most effective approach when dealing with pain due to spinal related conditions in terms to health care. Abnormalities of the spine and the surrounding soft tissue structures, which is the most common cause of spinal disorders, are best treated with chiropractic as it is the most effective solution when dealing with spinal related injuries. Chiropractic Doctors are trained specifically to identify and treat subluxations (misalignments of the vertebrae) and their subsequent effect on the central nervous system, whereas anti-inflammatory medications and pain relievers merely mask the symptoms and often have undesirable side effects.

2. Increased Range of Motion of the Spine and Extremities

Increasing a person’s range of motion will have a positive effect that will be quite noticeable by the individual themselves as well as those around them. Increasing the range of motion will allow the individual to do daily tasks that, at one point and time, may have seemed impossible to do before. For some, bending over may be effortless. Lifting heavy objects may be painless and walking for long distances can be possible without experiencing great discomfort. Chiropractic care has been proven to increase not only the range of motion within the spine but also in the extremities as well, once again, making chiropractic the more plausible solution in terms to your health and well being. In many cases, an increase in range and motion immediately follows chiropractic adjustments, which is why we see many professional sports teams have their own team of chiropractors.

3. Increased Balance and Coordination

Injury and degenerative changes to the cervical spine (neck region) are often the cause of balance and coordination issues within the aging population, thus the need for chiropractic care to occur more frequently. Structures known as mechanoreceptors, which are located in the posterior (back) joints of the cervical spine, are responsible for providing the brain with information essential for balance and coordination. The Mechanoreceptors in the cervical posterior joints provide crucial input regarding the position of the head in relation to the body. With aging, mild flaws will hinder mechanoreceptors from functioning which will result in a loss of proprioception (sense of body awareness). With the decrease in proprioception, body positioning in space will be impaired and the patient will become reliant on their vision to know the location of a limb.

The feet are kept wider apart than usual to compensate for the loss of proprioception (sense of body awareness) in the legs, resulting in irregular and uneven steps. As the impairment intensifies, the patient will become incapable of compensating for the loss, and in severe cases, may be unable to get up from a chair or rise after a fall without some form of assistance.

Studies have shown that chiropractic care can help restore balance, as well as coordination, by stimulation of the joint receptors (mechanoreceptors) in the cervical spine. This form of stimulation is thought to restore and/or normalize joint receptor functioning which, in turn, leads to improvement in both balance and coordination.

4. Decreased Joint Degeneration

A misalignment, also known as a subluxation, in the spine is much like a misaligned wheel on an automobile. This misalignment will cause the spine (and the wheel) to wear out prematurely. Eventually, since all the moving parts will wear down over time it is important to get your spine aligned periodically. Spinal degeneration, as well as other arthritic changes, will lessen with regular chiropractic care by normalizing the spinal alignment and reducing spinal stress.

Please check out our next article where we talk more about whether chiropractic care is right for seniors.

A holistic approach to pain relief, chiropractic treatment focuses on aiding numerous health issues through massage, spinal manipulation and adjustment of the body’s soft tissues and joints, predominantly in the back. But is it effective against migraines?

In February 2000, a study published by Dr. Tuchin et al. [1] cited the possible benefits of chiropractic treatment in alleviating or easing both the pain and frequency of recurring migraines. The study used a sample of 127 migraine patients, all of whom suffered from at least one migraine per month; this sample was divided into two groups – one control group who received inactive treatment, while the other group received chiropractic treatment, focusing on aligning and treating specific areas of vertebral swelling and misalignment. The study concluded that those who received chiropractic treatment experienced subsequent improvement in the duration of the study, showing reduced pain and frequency of their migraines within two months of treatment. The latter group also reported a decline in the need of migraine medications. Further results from the same study found that one in five sufferers from the chiropractic treatment group had a 90% reduction of migraine frequency, while 50% found significant improvement in the severity of their migraines.

Recent studies conducted by R. Bryans et al. published in 2011 [2], concluded that chiropractic care, including spinal manipulation, were found to improve both cerviocogenic headaches as well as migraines. A systematic literature search on controlled clinical trials on the topic of migraines and headaches involving chiropractic treatment, published through August 2009, was conducted using a selection of medical and alternative therapy databases. Research found that chiropractic treatments such as spinal manipulation and massage could significantly help patients who suffer from chronic or episodic migraines, whereas sufferers of tension-type headaches did not respond to such treatment.

While using alternative methods of treatment such as chiropractic care can help sufferers to gain more control over their migraines, it should be treated as another form of support or extra help, instead of completely overlooking conventional medical care.

Many chiropractors who specialize in pediatrics are members of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA) and have attended postgraduate courses that focus on the care of pregnant mothers, infants and children.  The ICPA is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1986 by Larry Webster, DC.  The association offers advanced training workshops and seminars for healthcare professionals, in addition to its chiropractic certification.  It also has a referral service for parents and publishes a wide variety of materials designed to educate the general public about chiropractic medicine for children and adults.

How Children May Benefit From Chiropractic Care

As children enter school and begin interacting more with other kids in a different setting, they become susceptible to having their spine and nervous system compromised.  From poor sitting posture in the classroom to heavy backpacks in the hallways and rough-housing on the playground, there are a variety of new health risks.  Chiropractic care can help address these sorts of risks as well as others that may seem less obvious.

For instance, there is evidence that chiropractic care may help prevent or relieve many common cold and allergy symptoms, including sneezing, coughing and itching or watery eyes.  This is not to say that a visit to the chiropractor will “cure” the common cold or that the underlying illness will be eliminated, even temporarily.  However, the research suggests that spinal manipulation and other therapies frequently used by the chiropractor may help to strengthen a child’s immune system over time.

Treating Infants

Chiropractic treatments are tailored to every child according to their specific circumstances, including their height and weight.  There is no minimum age and even newborns may safely benefit.  In fact, chiropractic care is encouraged for babies as a chiropractic physician may be able to detect spinal problems that could lead to colic, ear infection or asthma.  Early detection may help prevent the development of these conditions and other complications while improving a young patient’s quality of life.

Communicating with Members of Your Child’s Healthcare Team

As both adults and children are turning to alternative medicine as a way to prevent or treat common ailments, there is an increasing need for patients (or their parents) to communicate effectively with members of an expanded healthcare team.   In most cases, your child’s  primary care doctor (usually a pediatrician, general practitioner or chiropractic physician) will play a key role in coordinating care.  Remember that a good chiropractor will always tell you when a particular condition may be outside his or her scope of practice and will refer you to other specialists as appropriate.

Studies have shown that children who visit the chiropractor on a regular basis are likely to grow up with better posture and have fewer illnesses than their classmates.  If you’d like to find out more about children and chiropractic care, please call our office today to make an appointment.

While a wide variety of over-the-counter and prescription medications have been developed to relieve this pain, they generally do little to address the underlying cause of the problem.  In addition, many of these compounds can have unwanted side effects, particularly if they’re used often, over a prolonged period of time or in combination with other medicines.  A growing awareness of both the limitations and risks of pharmaceuticals has led many headache sufferers to explore alternative approaches to managing them, including chiropractic.

Understanding Headaches

Headaches occur for many reasons and can vary greatly in their intensity and duration.  They may arise on their own (these are termed “primary headaches” and account for about 90% of all headaches) or be triggered as a result of some other health condition (described as “secondary headaches”).  Chiropractic physicians most commonly encounter three types of headaches in their work:

• Tension headaches are primary headaches that are brought on by unrelieved muscular contractions in the head, neck and shoulders, usually as a result of stress that cannot find an outlet.  These muscular contractions can themselves become the source of broader tension and stress throughout the body, setting in motion a feedback loop that eventually produces a headache.

• Migraine headaches are also primary headaches.  They are sometimes referred to as vascular headaches because they happen when blood vessels in the head suddenly expand, or “dilate”.  However, we know that the nervous system and genetic factors are also leading contributors.  Sufferers report a wide range of triggers and related symptoms.  Research into the exact cause of migraines is ongoing, and the condition has stubbornly resisted efforts to find a pharmaceutical “silver bullet”.

• Cervicogenic headaches are secondary headaches produced when pain begins in the neck or back of the head and is referred to the forehead or the area behind, in and around the eyes.  Trauma, chronic tension and disease are some of the more common initial sources of neck pain that is referred to the head.  Trigger points in the neck, shoulder blade and spine may also be sources of these headaches, though they can be much more difficult to identify.

How Chiropractic Can Help

There is a large and growing body of medical research that suggests chiropractic care can be effective in preventing or reducing the frequency and severity of primary headaches.  There is also some evidence that it may have benefits for cervicogenic headache sufferers.

Chiropractic manipulation of the spine and neck is used to improve the alignment of the spine and relieve muscle tension.  It also reduces nerve irritation and improves vascular flow.  Your chiropractic physician may also include massage and other therapies as part of a well-rounded treatment plan.  He or she will likely suggest exercise, stretching and relaxation techniques as well as nutritional strategies designed to help prevent future headaches.

If you or someone you know is looking for lasting relief from chronic headaches, we encourage you to call or come in to see Dr Lane today.  The sooner you make the call, the sooner he can help you find the relief you deserve.

Consider this: “The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission calculated that carrying a 12-pound backpack to and from school and lifting it 10 times a day for an entire school year puts a cumulative load on youngsters’ bodies of 21,600 pounds,” The New York Times reported, “or the equivalent of six mid-sized cars.”

No wonder experts warn that kids are putting themselves at risk of even more serious conditions like stress fractures in the back, inflammation of growth cartilage and nerve damage in the neck and shoulders.

“Over time, the heavy weight of a backpack can cause an unnatural alignment of the spine as students are forced to offset the pressure by arching the back or bending forward at the hips,” said Sherry McAllister, DC, executive vice president of the not-for-profit Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, adding that students who are already prone to slouching may experience further pain from sitting at a desk for prolonged periods.

Doctors of chiropractic, who have a minimum seven years of higher learning, specialize in providing drug-free, hands-on care that helps to naturally align and strengthen the spine. And since they also routinely advise on proper body positioning — especially important to ensure while children are still growing — the foundation knows from whence it speaks on these backpack-related tips:

* Limit packs to no more than 10 percent of a kid’s weight.

* Packs with padded straps and multiple compartments help distribute weight.

* Explore options that allow your child to opt into a book-free program. Many school districts are beginning to see the benefit of loaner tablet programs both from a cost and health perspective. Speak up and let your district know your children deserve this option.

When it comes to helping your children stay healthy, make sure to include chiropractic checkups. The stressors they experience in school are enough without the added stress of heavy backpacks. For more information on how chiropractic care can benefit your children, feel free to contact Lane Chiropractic today.

There are benefits to following a treatment plan that is coordinated with you and others of your health care team including chiropractic care. Pregnancy has its own set of issues that causes discomfort, fatigue, emotional changes and more. Thus, seeking help to alleviate some of these issues is a reasonable part of maintaining and enhancing your health during this time. Talking with your chiropractor to see what he/she can offer is the first step. Even if you haven’t seen a chiropractor it isn’t too late to add this as part of your health care during pregnancy.

Talking with your OB physician is the second step prior to beginning a new care regime. If you already see a chiropractor then they may have spoken with you about continued care and the benefits you will receive. Safety is always their first concern for you and your baby so don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Benefits:

• Decreasing issues with pelvic balance allowing more room for the developing baby.
• Restoring poor posture problems caused by the shift in body alignment due to the enlarging abdomen.
• Decreasing the amount of back and neck discomfort caused by extra weight in the abdomen.
• Assisting to control pregnancy symptoms such as nausea.
• Reduction of labor and delivery time.

Women receiving regular chiropractic care find that their bodies are better prepared for labor and deliver. There are so many changes that the body goes through during pregnancy physically and hormonally that finding a good balance and a program to help them through this difficult yet joyful time is beneficial. This is true not only for the mother but also for the developing baby.

Chiropractors receive training during their course of study that helps them to understand the needs of the pregnant woman and the developing baby. They are highly trained to gently provide adjustments for women who are pregnant. Many chiropractors not only have special techniques to help keep moms safe and comfortable during adjustments, but tools such as pregnancy pillows to help them as well.

Pregnant moms who take the time to visit a chiropractor are in general much more comfortable as well. Being more comfortable allows you to spend more time just enjoying the pregnancy and preparing for the new addition to the family.

Have more questions about the benefits of chiropractic care during pregnancy? Contact us today for info on what services we offer you during this time. As always talk with your physician as well to be sure there are no restrictions or problems following this approach in your health care plan.