As a chiropractor I laud that benefits of exercise to all my patients. In fact, I offer community lectures on the subject because I believe that a regular routine of both aerobic and weight-bearing exercises is important for overall health and longevity. Many of my patients use lightweight dumbbells in their workouts and that’s great. But, it’s important to use them correctly in order to avoid injury. So, I’m happy to pass along an exercise that outlines the proper use of dumbbells, offered by Karen Voight, the creator of a line of fitness DVDs, including “Sleek Essentials.”

• Grasp a 3- to 5-pound dumbbell in each hand and stand with your feet hip-width apart, toes facing forward. Bend your knees and sit back on your heels to avoid putting stress on your lower back. Begin with your elbows bent and tucked in to the sides of your body, palms facing forward.

• Use your abdominal muscles to support and brace your spine as you simultaneously bring your left arm in front of you and your right arm behind you.

• Pause when your dumbbells are at shoulder level and make sure your elbows do not “lock out.”

• Bend your arms and return to the start position. Repeat the exercise, this time extending your right arm to the front and your left arm to the back.

• Continue to alternate arms for a total of 16 repetitions. Rest for 30 seconds and repeat for a second set.

For more information, write Karen Voight

Posted via email from chiropracticforever’s posterous

Santa Barbara Chiropractor

You have, no doubt, heard the old saying, “Growing old isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” However, it’s nothing to joke about if the aging process is causing you pain! As a chiropractor in Santa Barbara, I give care to many individuals suffering from age-related challenges that might not have taken place if the original cause had been addressed earlier in life, particularly when it relates to musculoskeletal breakdowns. Poor posture, improper gait, and repetitive overuse commonly produce undue stress in the back, neck, hip, knees, and even the feet that can result in painful problems over time. If we only knew then how our aging body would feel today, eh? However, as they say, “hindsight is 20-20.”

As you can see from the list areas of pain above, there are a large number of musculoskeletal problems that can, and often do, develop as we get older, however painful back problems are one of the most prevalent. Age-related back pain is most commonly produced by spine osteoarthritis, or Spondylosis, a degenerative disorder.

Spondylosis is caused by prolonged deterioration and weight-bearing stress on the spine that, over time, does harm to the discs, joints, and surrounding ligaments. The specific area(s) and degree of the degenerative process of spondylosis varies from person to person. The areas likely to be affected are the cervical (neck), thoriacic (mid-back), or lumbar (low back). Spondylosisi symptoms very from person to person and depend on the severity of the degeneration, and can range from low-amplitude pain and numbness to gross sensory loss and muscular atrophy.

Calcium is deposited in the tissues around the vertebrae as the result of repetitive stresses that negatively affect the cartilage around the joints These calcific deposits, known as bone spurs, can constrict adjacent nerves, blood vessels and soft tissue. This particular of compression is at the root of Spondylosis.

Even if you are not suffering from spondylosis, regular chiropractic adjustments and overall chiropractic management can considerably delay the aging process of your spine. It may be true that “you can’t un-ring a bell” or “turn back the hands of time,” but it isn’t too late to give your spine the consideration it deserves. Chiropractors are experts when it comes to treatment of the spine. See your Santa Barbara Chiropractor today, for the health of your spine.

Technorati Tags: age-related back pain, chiropractic, chiropractor, spine osteoarthritis

Corona Chiropractor

When it comes to hip pain relief, your chiropractor in Corona provides potent non-surgical, drug-free treatment. Whenever possible, surgery should be seen as a last resort. Therefore, before you schedule a surgery to replace that hip, consider the following questions: Is it out of the question for you to get a good night’s sleep because your hip pain wakes you up at night? When you arise in the morning, and/or when you get out of your car, are you stiff and do you find it initially hard to get your legs moving sufficiently? Do you feel pain whenever you rotate or twist them or when you cross your legs? If so, you may have asymmetries and alignment problems in your lower extremities that, in addition to causing your hip pain, can lead to degenerative joint disease in your hips in the future if not treated. The good news is that whether or not degenerative changes have already begun, chiropractic treatment can help!

It may be true that you’re getting older and your hip joints just aren’t what they used to be. Even so, did you know that your hip pain (and related problems), which usually point to age-related degenerative conditions, may not actually be created by osteoarthritis? That’s right. In the majority of cases, instead of being the root cause of your pain, osteoarthritis of the hip joint is more often than not the result of a past injury (or injuries) to your hips.

Hip problems oftentimes have to do with asymmetry or imbalance when you are in motion, like walking for example. If you tend to walk “pronated” like a duck, with your toes pointing away from your body, sooner or later you will develop pain in your hips as a result of the asymmetrical tension on your hip joints as your body attempts to compensate. Fortunately, you can make changes in your gait pattern at any age, and your chiropractor in Corona can show you how to do it.

Furthermore, you may have undergone gait changes because of an ankle sprain or knee strain, and since “the knee bone’s connected to the hip bone,” these biomechanical accommodations cause hip pain. There is no doubt that, if not treated, your hip joints will suffer further consequences, like wear and tear that produces degenerative changes.

Other situations that can occasionally injure the hip joints are starting a new job or beginning a new sport that necessitates your moving your body in unfamiliar ways. Also, carrying a child (or grandchild) on one hip can generate hip pain. Even the way you sit or driving for long periods of time on a routine basis can cause hip injury and pain.

See? Not every pain is caused by “old age,” though we may experience more pain due to the progressive capacity of untreated injuries.

In addition to your adjustments, as an integral part of your chiropractic management, your Corona Chiropractor will recommend individualized rehabilitative exercises that include gentle muscle stretching and strengthening, and will also analyze your gait and may recommend simple pattern changes.

Your hip pain won’t vanish by itself. Hip pain is a sign that there’s a problem that requires correcting. If put off, it is very likely that you will eventually require that hip replacement surgery. So, don’t wait until it’s too late. Your chiropractor in Corona can get you out of pain, get your body back into balance, and help you get to back to enjoying your life again!

Technorati Tags: chiropractic, chiropractor, hip pain, osteoarthritis

Cincinnati Chiropractic

At my Cincinnati Chiropractic Clinic I treat a lot of elders who suffer from balance problems. In fact, dizziness, “wooziness,” and other balance-related challenges affect at least nine percent of adults, aged 65 and over. Good balance is crucial, of course, in helping seniors to stay independent and to avoid falling down and sustaining injuries that are commonly extremely serious or even fatal. But, it may surprise you to know that falls are the cause of a large percentage of work-related injuries for individuals younger than 65 years of age, including workers in their twenties and thirties. That’s right! No one is exempt from to balance challenges, no matter how young they may be. That is why those who work in”precarious locations” like construction workers, roofers, oil platform employees, windows cleaners, or any other place where a ladder is required are in danger of serious injury if their balance is “off.”

The principal function of good balance is to help us to manage and maintain our body position, whether we are standing still or moving, and whether we are on the ground or high up on a platform. Good balance helps us to walk without faltering, arise from a sitting position without teetering, and to climb stairs without tripping. To sum it up, then, good balance is extremely important to our health and well-being.

What come as a surprise to you is that you could have a balance problem without being aware of how threatening it is. On occasion an individual is able to “shake off” a dizzy feeling and the sensation may not return for a while. The problem is that when sudden dizziness occurs at a decisive moment, it is too late to shake it off and a fall is often unpreventable.

Vertigo is the medical term for the sensation that you, or objects around you, are spinning. About 40% of individuals in the U.S. will have at least one experience of dizziness that is serious enough to seek out help from a health professional, such as your Chiropractor at Cincinnati Chiropractic. That said, if you are involved in any of the activities listed above, having a chiropractor check your balance before an episode of dizziness, make corrections if needed, and then aid you in maintaining good balance, may save you from serious injury or worse.

Balance disorders at any age are serious. If you feel as if you may have a possible balance disorder, it is essential for you to be diagnosed and treated without delay. Often guidelines are helpful. Therefore, if you can answer “yes” to any of the following questions, even if the experience is seldom or infrequent, it is highly recommended that you discuss the symptom(s) with a chiropractor as soon as possible:

• Have you experienced a feeling of being “unsteady?”

• Has the room seemed to spin around you?

• Has there ever a time when you felt as if you were moving when you knew you were standing still?

• Have you lost your balance and/or fallen down?

• Have you ever felt as if you were falling?

• Has your vision ever become “blurred?”

• Have you ever felt disoriented, or lost a sense of time, place or identity?

It is important for you to remember that balance problems are not isolated to a particular age group. Our falling down is an ever-present possibility from the time we learn to walk until we take our final step All the more reason to have your balance checked if you work in a job that makes your falling down a “critical” issue. Don’t wait until it’s too late! Call a Chiropractor today, and if you’re in the Cincinnati area, I’d love to be your Cincinnati Chiropractor!

Technorati Tags: balance, chiropractic, falls, vertigo

Wichita Chiropractor

As a Wichita Chiropractor for more than twenty years, I have assisted a significant number of individuals suffering from sciatic pain, so I know from experience just how incapacitating the pain from sciatica can be. Sciatica sufferers are regrettably all too familiar with the deep radiating pain that persists during the day and interferes with almost all of their daily activities.

There is a way to figure out if your low back pain is generated by sciatica. You are more than likely experiencing sciatica if your pain travels from your low back, through one or both sides of your buttocks, down the large sciatic nerve in the back of your leg(s), and possibly shoots into your knee(s). Also, sitting, as well as movement, can be painful. Frequently lying down will lessen, or sometimes even temporarily eliminate the pain. Even so, it’s important for you to know that sciatica will not go away without appropriate management.

Radiculopathy

One of the clinical diagnoses of sciatica is called a “radiculopathy”, a medical term that means simply that a disc has protruded from its natural position in the vertebral column and is putting pressure on the radicular nerve (nerve root) in the lower back, which forms part of the sciatic nerve. This kind of pressure is extremely painful.

Added pressure on the intervertebral discs, as well as imbalances in the muscles encompassing the spine, can happen during and after long periods of sitting, particularly in an awkward position. Usually, a particular event or injury doesn’t cause sciatica, instead sciatica tends to develop over time as a consequence of everyday wear and tear on the structures of the lower spine. Eventually the lower spine can lose its ability to function normally during ordinary stresses.

When this happens, the intervertebral disc develops small fissures or cracks that then allow the soft nucleus to protrude the disc outward. Pain is produced as the disc pushes on sensitive tissues. This condition is often known as a ruptured, or slipped, disc. Sciatica is the result of the disc pressing on the spinal nerve. With chiropractic manipulation and management, which often includes postural exercises, most disc conditions, including sciatica, can be completely relieved.

Periformis Syndrome

Another cause of sciatic pain is periformis syndrome. Periformis syndrome develops when the periformis muscle, for whatever reason, goes into spasm and irritates the sciatic nerve, which runs “deep to the muscle.” Along with chiropractic manipulation, this type of sciatica can be significantly relieved by sciatica stretches that your chiropractor can recommend.

If you are experiencing sciatic pain, it is extremely important for you to seek chiropractic attention. If you are in the Wichita area, as your Wichita Chiropractor, I look forward to helping you to get out of pain and get your life back!

Technorati Tags: chiropractic, chiropractor, sciatic pain, sciatic stretches, sciatica

Advantages of in-house chiropractic internet marketing

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Chiropractors everywhere will tell you the same thing: Conservative chiropractic treatment should always be considered prior to any back surgery. In fact, an entire chapter in a newly released textbook published by Springer Science+Business Media, Surgery For Low Back Pain, is dedicated to chiropractic treatment. The book was edited by a consummate group spine surgeons from Europe. The inclusion of chiropractic methods in clinical decision marks another example of the global growth and acceptance of healing benefits of chiropractic treatment.

Posted via email from chirohealthnews’s posterous

I was talking with a new patient of mine, a fifty-year-old woman who’d come to my chiropractic clinic for relief from hip pain, and as we were discussing her health history, she mentioned that she “used to have” high blood pressure, but now that she was on medication, it was “normal.” She said that she was very happy that she no longer needed to worry about her high blood pressure. She was surprised when I explained to her that her medication merely “regulated” her condition, but that it did not eliminate problem. As this woman was obese, I explained to her that her weight, in addition to causing her hip pain, was also the culprit that continued to cause the high blood pressure for which she needed the medication. I told her that as a chiropractor, I could temporarily relieve her hip pain with chiropractic treatment, but that it would likely come back again unless she lost some of the excess poundage she carried around each day.

Obesity is a serious condition that causes innumerable health problems such as heart disease, risk of stroke, Type 2 diabetes, and a plethora of musculoskeletal problems that, more often than not, lead to osteoarthritis. The only prevention is weight loss. The only “cure” is weight loss. The only hope for a healthy outcome is weight loss. Pharmaceuticals may regulate the symptoms of conditions caused by obesity, and chiropractors can help to temporarily relieve the pain, but there is not a traditional or alternative therapy that can rectify obesity.

There’s no getting around it, either. Losing weight is hard work and the more an individual needs to lose, the harder it can be. And, the indisputable fact is that no one can lose weight for you. But, the health “rewards” are worth it. Just ask anyone who’s lost a significant amount of weight. Health-wise, it’s a life-changer. And, studies have shown that many people with high blood pressure problems who lose their excess weight are often able get off their blood pressure medications altogether.

Posted via email from chirohealthnews’s posterous

San Diego Chiropractor

As a San Diego Chiropractor, I counsel many individuals who come to my clinic who want to lose weight. I know how hard it can be, and I also know how important it is to lose those extra pounds. Have you been telling yourself that an extra pound or two doesn’t matter? Over the years, they can add up to a large number of health challenges from heart and pulmonary diseases and diabetes to back pain and joint degeneration. Extra pounds put harmful stress on organs, like the heart, and on joints in the low back, hips, and knees. Over half (62%) of American adults are overweight or obese, according to recent studies. That is a substantial percentage and an enormous problem (no pun intended).

Though it is able to compensate to some degree the human body has not evolved to schlepp around excess weight in the form of body fat. Just 20 or 30 extra pounds can, in point of fact, overload and encumber the musculoskeletal system. Excess weight in the belly, for example, requires that the body compensate (counterbalance the weight) by tilting the pelvis forward. This angle produces compression in the joints of the low back. Painful inflammation results as this joint compression restricts nerve activity. A larger percentage of men and women that have a heavy midsectionexperience low back pain caused by  an impingement of the sciatic nerve or misalignments of the spinal column that constrict nerves due to weight-bearing stresses. If ignored, misaligned vertebra not only persist in irritating the degenerative changes that have taken place already, but can produce new arthritic changes in the spine in the future.

How can chiropractic help? To begin with the obvious, a “normal” body weight is required in order for the musculoskeletal system to function in the way it is designed to. That said, in addition, chiropractic adjustments relieve nerve impingements in the spine and assist in getting movement back into the joints of the musculoskeletal system, especially in the low back, hips, and knees. And, of course exercise and physical activity are a lot easier, and more beneficial for the body, when the spine is in alignment and the joints have good motion. The added benefit of exercise the, in addition to helping with weight reduction, it can actually reduce degenerative changes as over the years.

Healthcare professionals, like your chiropractor, can talk to you about your diet and exercise options. In addition to helping men and women suffering from back pain and joint inflammation, chiropractors can provide proficient advice on the particular lifestyle modifications that can help a person to stay healthier, more vital, and more active through the years. Arthritis and immobility due to aging don’t have to be inevitable. The structure of the human body is intended to carry a person through an entire lifetime of pain-free movement.

So, if those extra few pounds have started to add up to a lot of pain, as your chiropractor in San Diego and someone who cares deeply about your overall health, I can help. Make an appointment today!

Technorati Tags: arthritis, back pain, chiropractic, chiropractor, excess weight, joint inflammation, weight loss

Chiropractic Marketing

Social Media is the “hottest” topic on the Internet today. If you’ve been thinking about getting on board, but don’t know where the platform is, let’s take a minute to talk about the “Who, What, When, Where, and How” of social media and you, that’s “Who.” Then you can decide if you want to add Social Media to your chiropractic marketing strategy.

Social media marketing may seem familiar in some aspects to other chiropractic marketing strategies you’ve engaged in in the past, but still unfamiliar at the same time. In the “familiar” category, you’d never consider trying any type of marketing plan without making an effort to understand what it is and what you want to get from it. What are your goals? Once you’ve decided what you want, you’ll be able to use social media to your best advantage.

When you are ready to begin your social media effort, but before you start, it will be necessary for you to make certain that you “own your name” on all the social media outlets, which is to say, make sure that your name or the name of your clinic is attainable so that you can use the identical same name on every one of the social channels you decide to use. There is a service that is free and will assist you with your search when you’re ready. That who is knowem.com. This service will research where your name is and/or if it’s attainable or not on a substantial number of social media sites.

The next step, once you have all your social media accounts “captured”, is to choose where you ought to be active. Because you have a clinic to run and patients to see, in the beginning only a few social media sites is preferable and may well be all you’ll need. That way you won’t get unduly busy in too many channels. How do decide which sites are best for you? The big ones (where most of the action is) are facebook, twitter, linkedin, and Youtube.

What your social media activity mission should be is to build a true presence in your community. What you should never do “sell” on your social media sites, that means don’t sell your clinic, don’t sell services or products, don’t sell anything! The purpose of social media is for you to go out and network with the community. By all means, inform them about what you do, but do it by participating in the conversation. Social media works the same way as social networking offline. It is important to be clear on this point, people on social media do not want to be sold to! What might be a beneficial idea to think of social media sites like a neighborhood backyard barbecue. People are standing around chatting about who they are and what they do, and then a participant asks you what you do. Or, perhaps you begin the conversation by (just) stating, “Hi, I’m Dr. ____. The same kind of interaction applies with social media. “Work” your social media sites in the same way you’d work your offline networking communities, which is to say, answer the questions and concerns that let people know who you are and gets them interested in the who that’s you!

Technorati Tags: chiropractic marketing, facebook, linkedin, social media, social media marketing, twitter, Youtube