The Chiropractor Gets Healthy
I have always considered myself a fairly healthy person. That being said, I do have some health concerns. To begin with, since I am a chiropractor I will declare that I have my bouts with neck pain, back pain and the occasional headache but for the most part I am pain free. Since college I have suffered from a mild case of office hypertension – meaning that my blood pressure was borderline high but I attribute that to the anxiety I get from taking my blood pressure. Another thing worth mentioning is that some days I would get a little spacey from mild hypoglycemia, but this would only happen on days where my diet suffered from poor planning. Overall, for my age (44) my health compared favorably to most of those in my age group. On a superficial level it all looked pretty good.
One day here about two weeks ago my assistant Linda told me that she had a representative from Standard Process coming to the office to discuss nutritional products. At the time of this appointment, I really had no expectations of where this would go. I figured that since I exercised and ate right (for the most part) that we would be discussing products for my patients.
By the time the appointment with the Standard Process representative ended both Linda and I had committed to doing a 21 day purification program. It was at this point where I really started looking at my diet. What I found was that vegetables and fruits were a good part of my diet but so were bean rice and cheese burritos, occasional cheeseburgers, potato chips, an occasional soda pop and lots of coffee. All of this stuff would have to go under the guidelines of the purification program.
Basically, the purification program involves taking whole food supplements to stimulate the kidneys, liver and intestines to eliminate toxins, supplementing whey protein for animal protein sources and eliminating all caffeine, dairy and processed foods.
Today is the thirteenth day of our purification program. I am embarrassed to say that even as a doctor with extensive schooling in nutrition that I have been taken back by the dramatic positive changes in my health as a result of this purification program. To begin with, what I thought was office hypertension is gone. Since the third day of this program my blood pressure reading has ranged from a low of 115/74 to a high of 121/80. This reading is accompanied by a calmness that I have rarely if ever felt as an adult. In addition to lower blood pressure, my digestion is significantly better – no more bloating, my blood sugar has been stable and my sleep is much improved.
I attribute these improvements in my health to three simple changes that seem so elementary. Stop putting junk in, eat a clean healthy diet and get the toxins stored in our bodies out.
I have been asked what I plan to do after the 21 day program is over. At this point, I can’t imagine not continuing with a healthy diet and taking whole food supplements. The taste of that BRC burrito or that morning cup of coffee will not be missed in the least.
The chiropractor finally got healthy!
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic and Nutrition
In my San Diego chiropractic office, I try to encourage health betterment beyond the obvious chiropractic treatment that we provide for neck pain, back pain and headaches that represent the bulk of my patients’ concerns.
As that old medical saying goes; “Simply not being sick does not equate to being well.”
I always explain to my patients that in the absence of some catastrophic injury, most cases of neck pain and back pain begin as a slight irritation that we are totally unaware of. With time and additional stresses, these slight irritations can become magnified to the point where they become symptomatic.
Our diets effect on our bodies act the same way. A few poor meal choices won’t destroy your health by themselves, but frequent poor meal choices over longer periods of time can have a significant negative impact on your health. You only have to look at a McDonalds or Burger King drive-through to see the long lines of people making poor food choices. These people who make frequent poor food choices (fast foods in this example) probably won’t suffer anything more than a little indigestion as a result of each meal. However, the accumulation of the effects of all of these poor food choices will do damage down the road.
Unfortunately, this all becomes more apparent as we age. We pay for our poor eating habits as we age for a couple of reasons. First of all, poor eating choices become habitual. Like any bad habit, changing poor eating habits is difficult. Secondly, with normal aging, our metabolism slows making our poor eating habits more detrimental than they were when we were younger and more active.
Regaining your health takes work on several fronts. Some of these things you can accomplish yourself and other things you need help with.
Patients that come to my chiropractic office for treatment for their neck pain or back pain often find this task one of the easy parts of getting healthy. In order to get help with pain, all the patients have to do is come to the office for their treatment.
The difficult part of restoring health is dealing with the bad habits that result in unhealthy diets, smoking, drinking and the like. Overcoming bad habits takes an exceptionally motivated person. Focus and you can overcome them and have a healthier body to show for it.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Chronic Neck And Back Pain and How it Affects You
When was the last time that you felt pain?
I treat people with back pain, neck pain and various other pains on a daily basis.
Pain is a very complex sensation. The body’s interpretation of pain involves both nerve and chemical processes that are relayed to the brain for interpretation. In my San Diego Chiropractic office, I hear my patients complain of neck pain, back pain, headaches, sciatic pain etc. Some of these patients suffer from acute pain while others who are less fortunate complain of chronic long lasting pain.
A study completed recently in Chicago revealed some very interesting things about brain activity in people suffering with chronic pain.
Brain scans taken of people in chronic pain show a constant activity in areas of the brain that are at rest in those who don’t suffer with chronic pain. Researchers said that this finding could help explain why chronic pain patients have higher rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders.
Apparently they found that chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain. They found that enduring long periods of pain affects brain function even with tasks that demand minimal attention.
Studies have shown that in healthy people, certain regions of the brain take over during a resting state, something known as a default mode network. “It takes care of your brain when your brain is at rest,” Dr. Chialvo said.
When a person performs a task, this default mode network quiets down, but not in people with chronic pain.
Instead of quieting down, a front region of the cortex of the brain associated with emotion is constantly active. This constant activity disrupts the brains’ normal equilibrium.
To study this specific brain activity, Dr. Chialvo did a type of brain scan on 15 people with chronic back pain and on 15 healthy people.
In this study, volunteers were given a simple attention task — tracking a moving bar on a computer screen – in order to observe the brain shifting out of default mode to handle the task.
Both groups performed the task well but when they measured areas of the brain that were activated, the differences emerged.
“Where we were surprised is the difference in how much brain they used to do the task compared with the healthy group. It was 50 times larger,” Chialvo said.
They said disruptions in this brain activity could explain why pain patients have problems with attention, sleep disturbances and even depression.
So there you have it. If you feel a little off or if someone you work with or care about has trouble focusing or staying on task because of pain, your observations are correct. Give yourself and others a break.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
Benefits of Fish Oil Suppliments To Your Vision
Chiropractic care is often thought of as treatment just for the back. While chiropractic care is extremely effective for neck pain, back pain, headaches, etc., chiropractors are also concerned with the overall health of our patients.
Nutritional concerns play a very important role in our general health. One of the common suppliments that our patients take is fish oil.
We always stress the importance of fish oil for the heart and the digestive tract, but you probably haven’t heard that people who eat the most fish have the fewest eye problems.
The impact of fish oil on vision was a topic at this week’s meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. They reviewed evidense that showed that fish oil consumption extended to two very serious eye problems.
The first of these problems helped by fish oil is age-related macular degeneration. Macular degeneration is the disruption of the center of the retina where the fine nerve complex at the back of the eye essential for all fine visual tasks rests. Macular degereration is the leading cause of age-related blindness.
Fish oil protects the eyes from age-related macular degeneration because of a component of fish oil called docosahexaenoic acid also known as DHA. DHA is one of the omega-3 fatty acids linked to other health benefits. DHA helps vision by building up in the eye near light-sensing nerve cells.
“National Eye Institute researcher John Paul SanGiovanni, ScD, and colleagues analyzed dietary data from 4,513 60- to 80-year-old participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study. Those who ate fish more than twice a week were half as likely to get macular degeneration as those who ate no fish at all. More than one weekly portion of broiled/baked fish or tuna lowered the risk by a third.
“The risk for [age-related macular degeneration] was significantly decreased for the highest versus the lowest quintiles of total [omega-3 fatty acids] intake,” SanGiovanni and colleagues write in their abstract.”
In another study, fish oil was found to protect the eyes from dry eye syndrome. Dry eye syndrome is a condition in which a person’s eyes don’t make enough tears. Dry eyes can lead to scarring of the cornea and vision loss.
A study of 32,470 female health professionals found that women whose diets had the most omega-3 fatty acids were far less likely to have dry eye syndrome.
Women who ate two to four servings of tuna a week had an 18% lower risk of dry eye syndrome than those who ate less tuna. Eating five or six four-ounce servings of tuna every week lowered this risk by 66%.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Back Pain, Sitting and Chiropractic in San Diego
From a postural standpoint, one of the worst things that we can do to our bodies is slouch while we sit. Sitting seems like such an innocent, non-injurious activity. This is far from the case.
I have been practicing chiropractic in San Diego for the last 15 years and what I have seen in practice regarding back injuries would be surprising to most people in non-medical careers. The average person that I speak with regarding back pain and injuries is of the mind set that low back pain is the result of jobs that require heavy lifting or contact sports, golfing or car accidents.
In reality, it is the constant stress and strain of postural stress that is the biggest burden on our spines. The postural stress of sitting for hours on end in a task chair in front of a computer can become overwhelming. When our bodies are exposed to a specific stress over a long period of time, the effects that the stress places on our bodies has a cumulative effect. Over the course of months or years that cumulative stress expresses itself as pain, stiffness, pinched nerves or more serious symptoms.
When I am explaining the ongoing cumulative effects of postural stress to my chiropractic patients I like to use the classic example of the Chinese water torture. Those first couple hundred drops of water on the forehead aren’t bothersome – but a few hundred drops more will make you truly miserable. The same process happens to your low back as the minutes, hours, days, months and years pass with you sitting in a computer chair.
There is a chart floating around that I have come across in several texts that relates your bodies posture with the amount of stress that each particular posture generates on the discs in the lower back. As the chart demonstrates, the level of stress increases as the subject transitions from a prone position to a standing position to seated position to a slumped forward seated position. The chart shows the pressure in the discs to equal 100% of your body weight while standing, approximately 125% of your bodies weight while sitting and over 140% of your body weight when sitting in a forward slumped position.
The reason that sitting is so hard on your back from a postural standpoint is due to the anatomy of the lower back vertebra. When we are standing, your lower back naturally has a forward sweeping curve with the concavity of that curve facing rearward. That curve acts to efficiently divide the weight of your body between the discs that separate your vertebra and the joints that run down the back of your spine. When you assume a seated position, that curve straightens out transferring some of your weight from the posterior joints to the discs. Slumping forward transfers even more weight resulting in more compression of the discs and more stress on the low backs discs.
As time passes, this increase pressure causes irritation of the overloaded spinal structures eventually leading to inflammation, spasm and pain. This is the basic process with many injuries to the body that result from ongoing exposure to some irritating or stressful activity.
How is this postural stress negated? Well, unfortunately, all if it can’t be. But it can be limited by practicing good posture and the right ergonomic principals. A brief ergonomic evaluation of your work area can give you loads of valuable information that will help minimize the effects of your work environment on your body.
Sitting is a sedentary task but like most things in life, if you don’t do it properly there will be undesirable consequences.
Work Safe!
Dr. Jones
http://www.jonespainrelief.com/blog1/
Chiropractic and Lower Back Pain
Lower back pain is one of the most frustrating things for patients to deal with. I have had what I consider bad lower back pain, bad neck pain and other injuries that get my full attention. Of all of these conditions, I think that lower back pain has been the worst spine complaint that I have had. Since I became a chiropractor in San Diego, I have taken informal surveys of my patients regarding the area of their backs that create the greatest level of disability when aggravated and more often than not the answer is lower back pain.
Chiropractic care for lower back pain is pretty straight forward. Usually low back pain is accompanied by muscle spasms which have to be addressed first. Most low back pain patients do very well with treatment that begins with the application of hot packs and electrical muscle stimulation. Electrical muscle stimulation sounds intimidating to some people but it is a very comfortable, relaxing form of therapy that is excellent at soothing muscle spasms.
Once the muscles have been relaxed as much as possible, the affected joints of the lower back can be adjusted. Much like the sound of electrical muscle stimulation, some people find the sound of having their joints manipulated intimidating. In fact, the overwhelming majority of even first time chiropractic patients find the joint manipulations to be comfortable and soothing to their back pain.
Chiropractic care is delivered as a series of treatments rather than a single session. That is not to say that you may not attain 100% relief with one session, but you shouldn’t count on it. The rule of thumb in regards to how much care you may need for a low back issue is that you must allow for one week of active care (2 to 3 visits per week) for each month that you have had a particular problem. This level of frequency and consistency will ensure the greatest level of recovery with chiropractic care.
More Coming Soon
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic and Stretching
Try to be More Flexible in 2009 – Stretching and Chiropractic.
The headline of this article could be interpreted in a variety of different ways. For the purposes of this blog post it will address our physical flexibility. Flexibility is an important measure of our physical fitness. Flexibility is just as important to our overall health as is strength, endurance, aerobic capacity and body composition.
One of the big problems that I encounter with my patients in my San Diego Chiropractic office is a lack of flexibility in the joints. Strong muscles that span flexible joints is ideal for everything from mundane household chores to weekend athletic adventures. A lack of stretching catches up to us when we perform movements beyond the normal for our lifestyles or activities. In some cases, an extreme movement can be something as simple as reaching to the table behind you for your cup of coffee. Neck pain, back pain, arm pain and leg pain can all occur as a result of injuries due to inflexibility.
As a general rule, as our bodies age, our physical fitness degrades. Regarding flexibility, we tend to loose it. That is why it is very important to develop flexibility when we are younger and maintain it as we get older. Even those of us in our forties or older must try to regain some and maintain most of our flexibility even though we are not 20 something anymore.
I always tell people to think about how much strength, endurance or in this case flexibility that they have lost in the last 10 or 20 years. I know that I am not as physically fit as I was when I was 20 or even 30 years old. There is no way that I want that same trend to continue over the next 20 years. In order to prevent the atrophy of our bodies we have to maintain them through stretching and exercise.
In addition to perhaps regaining the ability to touch your toes, becoming more flexible will also help in the following ways.
1) Helps Relieve Stress: Flexible muscles are loose and relaxed muscles. Loose, flexible muscles are less likely to tighten up during stressful, tense situations.
2) Helps Improve Posture: Loose muscles help your body maintain better posture. Avoiding unnecessary postural stress will help you feel better.
3) Helps Increase Circulation: Increased circulation comes as a result of consistent stretching. Improved circulation helps bring nourishment to your muscles while removing toxic build-up of lactic acid and other waste products.
4) Helps Improve Coordination: Stretching will improve your joints range of motion providing for better balance, mobility and coordination. Improved coordination will help us with all athletic activities and help prevent falls as we age.
I always recommend stretching in the form of Yoga. Stores like Target have many instructional DVDs on Yoga. I have always found that Rodney Yee produces better than average DVD courses on Yoga. If you are not experienced in Yoga you will need to start with a beginners course, many people look at Yoga and assume that it is easy. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Yoga is not only a great stretch but an excellent work out and you can hurt yourself if you over-do it.
Some guidelines for safe stretching include:
1) Warm up Before You Begin
2) Don’t Bounce While Stretching
3) Avoid Pain While Stretching – It Should Feel Like A Good Stretch – Not A Painful One
4) Stretch Both Sides
5) Stretch Both Before and After Exercise
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Origins of Low Back Pain
How did I hurt my back doc?
I was asked this question by a new patient the other day. The funny thing about this question was that he was a new patient for me but he had been going to different chiropractors for nearly 40 years. Neck pain, back pain and headaches that occurred after various falls, work injuries and car accidents were what created his need for a life time of chiropractic treatment.
Certain types of injuries can cause chronic symptoms. Various physical issues that never fully return to their pre-accident state cause chronic symptoms.
For instance, whiplash type injuries leave about 25% of the patients with chronic ongoing neck pain. In these cases, the muscles that move and support the neck have been stretched and sometimes torn. When muscles tear they heal with scar tissue. Scar tissue does not move, stretch or contract like healthy muscle tissue.
Because of the different properties of scar tissue that has formed within the healthy muscle, the joint that is moved by that muscle becomes dysfunctional. As the joints movement alters, it has the potential to become irritated and inflamed. These irritated and inflamed joints then become painful, restricted in their movements and the muscles that move that joint tighten and spasm as a protective mechanism.
Chiropractic care is the perfect solution for painful joints and spasmed muscles. Through manipulation or adjustments of the affected joints, the muscle spasms are calmed and the pain is relieved. For some patients, ongoing chiropractic care helps prevent the onset of pain and stiffness that is associated with chronic injuries.
This example above is just one of the reasons that some chiropractic patients come in for treatment on a regular basis.
As for the patient above, he said he has been coming in for chiropractic for neck pain and back pain for years. He receives treatment for both health maintenance reasons as well as for control of specific symptoms that come up from time to time.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Low Back Pain in San Diego
I am often asked the question “how do you think I hurt my back?” Believe it or not, in the absence of some recent significant injury / accident, this question isn’t so easy to answer.
My chiropractic practice in San Diego helps people recover from back pain, neck pain and all types of work and auto injuries. Work and auto injuries often provide a single, identifiable explanation for pain.
Many patients simply wake up with back pain that wasn’t there when they went to bed, or they throw their backs out while reaching for a cup of coffee or picking a sock up off the floor. These scenarios are typical.
The truth is that our backs are very strong. Some of the ligaments in our backs are capable of withstanding over 700 pounds of tension. That is a lot of force.
Yet somehow we manage to injure ourselves with mundane events.
The answer to many of these injuries involves postural stress. Postural stress is dangerous to the health of our spines. It can result in lost days of work, disability and worst of all – loss of recreation and fun.
Postural stress results from poor posture, awkward bending and lifting, too much sitting, poor eyesight (makes us lean forward to see what we are doing) and many other activities of daily living.
These stresses that we endure are compensated for in other areas of our spines. However, with time and enough exposure to the stress previously mentioned, the joints in our backs become irritated and inflammed leading to muscle spasms and pain.
I like to use the analogy of stacking the straws on the camels back with injuries like this. In other words, these instances of stress are nothing by themselves but the effects of the stress is cumulative. As the stresses build, the body’s’ chance of a breakdown increases. Eventually you suffer a breakdown.
Chiropractic care can help you control the effects of postural stress. When our backs hurt, that is a clear indication that inflammation is present. Inflammation always stimulates scar tissue formation which limits your spines’ flexibility and causes pinched nerves and pain. Chiropractic adjustments breakdown the inflammation caused scar tissue and improve your spines flexibility. Improved flexibility keeps your spine healthier and much less likely to be aggravated by your activities of daily living.
If your job requires sitting for more than four hours per day, monthly chiropractic adjustments are very important in controlling the accumulating stress in your back.
There are other obvious steps that you can take toward improving the health of your spine and preventing episodes of back pain. Eating a healthy diet and exercise are very important in reducing the chances of suffering a back injury.
Being careful when lifting and carrying heavy objects and making sure that you don’t sit in one position for longer than twenty minutes is also helpful.
More Coming Soon
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic Treatment for Hip Pain
Hip Pain means different things to different people. I treat many people for hip pain in my San Diego Chiropractic center.
In my first paragraph I wrote that hip pain means different things to different people. What I meant by that is that usually the patients who complain of hip pain would point to their lower backs when I ask them to point to the pain. When I ask them at that point if it is actually lower back pain that they are feeling they will usually think for a moment and then say, “Yes, I guess it is low back pain.”
When patients complain of hip pain they are usually referring to pain in the area of the sacroiliac joint. The sacroiliac joints are two large joints that are positioned just to the sides of the bottom vertebra in the back right at the level of the beltline. I believe that people refer to this as hip pain because it is typically at its worst when walking.
True hip pain found in the joint where the femur joins with the socket found in the pelvic bones. The typical patient will identify hip pain by pointing to the front of the body, below the beltline and off to either side of the midline of the body.
Sacroiliac joint pain is often brought on or aggravated by prolonged sitting, bad lifting habits and direct injuries such as those that occur with sports or auto accidents. The sacroiliac joints are the largest joints in the spine and can heal slowly after an injury.
Chiropractic care supported by ice pack applications, light stretching and avoidance of know aggravating activities (if it hurts don’t do it) will usually eliminate the pain.
Chiropractic care is also effective for true hip pain but the approach is somewhat different. Since hips are joints, chiropractic care is also quite effective in relieving hip pain as well.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic Treatment for Headaches
I don’t know about you, but I am a headache wimp. I hardly ever get headaches, when I do I don’t handle them very well. I get moody and I tend to “snap” at people that really mean me no harm.
In addition to my San Diego chiropractic office treating patients with neck pain and low back pain, we see many people with headaches. Headaches have many causes and there are many different types of headaches as well.
The most common types of headache that we provide treatment for are migraine and muscle tension headaches.
Muscle tension headaches typically begin in the muscles of the neck and upper back. When these muscle become tense, they pull on the muscles that cover your head. This tension results in a headache.
Muscle tension headaches can result from postural stresses such as long hours of computer work, they can develop as a result of whiplash type car accident injuries, pinched nerves or just plain old work and home stresses.
One common reason for chronic, on going tension in the muscle is miss-aligned vertebra. When the vertebra become miss-aligned due to postural stress, awkward sleeping positions, accidents, etc., the muscles around that vertebra tighten up as a protective mechanism. The tight muscles are commonly the root cause of the muscle tension headache.
Chiropractic care re-aligns the joints of the spine causing a relaxation of the surrounding muscles. When the joints in the neck are re-aligned, the muscles that move and support that particular vertebra relax and return to their normal functions.
When the muscles are relaxed, the muscle tension subsides and the headache goes away. Treatment for muscle tension headaches usually requires a series of treatments but you should notice a decrease in the frequency and the severity of your headache with subsequent treatment.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Dieting, Chiropractic and Your Health
In my San Diego chiropractic office, I try to encourage health betterment beyond the obvious treatment that we provide for neck pain, back pain and headaches that represent the bulk of my patients’ concerns.
As that old saying goes; “Simply not being sick does not equate to being well.”
I always explain to my patients that in the absence of some catastrophic injury, most cases of neck pain and back pain begin as a slight irritation that we are totally unaware of. With time and additional stresses, these slight irritations can become magnified to the point where they become symptomatic.
Our diets act the same way. A few poor meal choices won’t destroy your health by themselves, but frequent poor meal choices over longer periods of time can have a significant negative impact on your health. You only have to look at a McDonalds or Burger King drive-through to see the long lines of people making poor food choices. These people who make frequent poor food choices (fast foods in this example) probably won’t suffer anything more than a little indigestion as a result of each meal. However, the accumulation of the effects of all of these poor food choices will do damage down the road.
Unfortunately, this all becomes more apparent as we age. We pay for our poor eating habits as we age for a couple of reasons. First of all, poor eating choices become habitual. Like any bad habit, changing poor eating habits is difficult. Secondly, with normal aging, our metabolism slows making our poor eating habits more detrimental than they were when we were younger and more active.
Regaining your health takes work on several fronts. Some of these things you can accomplish yourself and other things you need help with.
Patients that come to my chiropractic office for treatment for their neck pain or back pain often find this task one of the easy parts of getting healthy. In order to get help with pain, all the patients have to do is come to the office for their treatment.
The difficult part of restoring health is dealing with the bad habits that result in unhealthy diets, smoking, drinking and the like. Overcoming bad habits takes an exceptionally motivated person. Focus and you can overcome them and have a healthier body to show for it.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Health Benefits of Cinnamon
In our Chiropractic office in San Diego California, we like to stress the importance of natural holistic healthcare. Although our office is delivering chiropractic care for neck pain, back pain and the like, we also encourage our patients to use natural remedies at home as well. There are many benefits of using cinnamon in our diets. There are also many different forms of cinnamon. I recently came across this article and thought I would share it with you.
A new report suggests that the equivalent of a spoonful of cinnamon a day can significantly lower blood sugar, cholesterol and lipid levels. This could be good news for people with diabetes.
Sixty people with type 2 diabetes were divided into six groups; three groups received daily doses of cinnamon (1, 3 or 6 grams, respectively), while the other groups received placebo capsules containing wheat flour. The cinnamon was consumed for 40 days, followed by a 20-day washout period. Blood glucose, triglyceride, LDL cholesterol and total cholesterol levels were all significantly lower in patients receiving cinnamon compared to those given a placebo.
While adding cinnamon to the diet won’t cure a person with diabetes, it may help protect diabetic patients from some of the worst complications that arise from the condition, such as blurred vision, heart disease and kidney failure.
Here are a variety of ways that cinnamon can be incorporated into a person’s diet, try adding it to your morning coffee or try eating oatmeal (which is very good for cholesterol) with a teaspoon of cinnamon, or making a tea out of boiling water and cinnamon stick.”
Reference:
Khan A, Safdar M, Muzaffar Ali Khan M, et al. Cinnamon improves glucose and lipids of people with type 2 diabetes. Diabetes Care December 2003;26, pp3215-3218.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Dealing With Pain Through Chiropractic
When was the last time that you felt pain?
I treat people with back pain, neck pain and various other pains on a daily basis.
Pain is a very complex sensation. The body’s interpretation of pain involves both nerve and chemical processes that are relayed to the brain for interpretation. In my San Diego Chiropractic office, I hear my patients complain of neck pain, back pain, headaches, sciatic pain etc. Some of these patients suffer from acute pain while others who are less fortunate complain of chronic long lasting pain.
A study completed recently in Chicago revealed some very interesting things about brain activity in people suffering with chronic pain.
Brain scans taken of people in chronic pain show a constant activity in areas of the brain that are at rest in those who don’t suffer with chronic pain. Researchers said that this finding could help explain why chronic pain patients have higher rates of depression, anxiety and other disorders.
Apparently they found that chronic pain seems to alter the way people process information that is unrelated to pain. They found that enduring long periods of pain affects brain function even with tasks that demand minimal attention.
Studies have shown that in healthy people, certain regions of the brain take over during a resting state, something known as a default mode network. “It takes care of your brain when your brain is at rest,” Dr. Chialvo said.
When a person performs a task, this default mode network quiets down, but not in people with chronic pain.
Instead of quieting down, a front region of the cortex of the brain associated with emotion is constantly active. This constant activity disrupts the brains’ normal equilibrium.
To study this specific brain activity, Dr. Chialvo did a type of brain scan on 15 people with chronic back pain and on 15 healthy people.
In this study, volunteers were given a simple attention task — tracking a moving bar on a computer screen – in order to observe the brain shifting out of default mode to handle the task.
Both groups performed the task well but when they measured areas of the brain that were activated, the differences emerged.
“Where we were surprised is the difference in how much brain they used to do the task compared with the healthy group. It was 50 times larger,” Chialvo said.
They said disruptions in this brain activity could explain why pain patients have problems with attention, sleep disturbances and even depression.
So there you have it. If you feel a little off or if someone you work with or care about has trouble focusing or staying on task because of pain, your observations are correct. Give yourself and others a break.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
Does Chiropractic Work?
As a chiropractor, I am always asked “Does chiropractic really work?” This is an unfair and a loaded question. Chiropractic care is a very effective form of treatment for some things and not for others.
Being a Chiropractor in San Diego, I see sports related injuries all year round. Running injuries, falls from bicycles or rollerblades, golf injuries, basketball injuries – you name it and most likely we have seen it. More often than not these injuries result in typical sprain / strains that result in neck pain, back pain, sciatica etc.
The types of injuries that I just listed are a few of many joint injuries / symptoms that chiropractic care is very effective in treating. You might say that chiropractic care was made for such injuries. The reason that I say this is because of the nature of these types of injuries.
The typical sprain / strain injury usually results when a fall or an accident forces a joint through an excessive or abnormal range of motion. This type of injury stretches the ligaments and muscles that move and support the spine. The result of this type of injury is irritation and inflammation of the joint and scar tissue formation.
Without chiropractic treatment, the scar tissue from sprain / strain injuries restricts and or alters normal joint motion which can cause pain and stiffness. Chiropractic manipulations help to restore full, normal joint motion by breaking down scar tissue that would otherwise cause stiffness and pain.
Chiropractic care is an excellent form of therapy for reducing the effects of postural stress from sitting at a computer, poor lifting habits, poor posture and a variety of other stresses that we expose ourselves to on a daily basis.
So, does chiropractic work? The only way to know is go visit one and see. Chiropractors want their treatment to work and are reluctant to take on cases that may not properly respond to their therapy. No doctor that I know wants to have unsuccessful treatment sessions during the course of their work day. A good chiropractor can look at your history, perform an examination and make a sound determination on how well you will respond to care.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic Care and Athletic Performance
Chiropractic Care in San Diego is utilized for both crisis care and for wellness care / preventive care.
Our population has a passion for fitness and exercise. Chiropractic treatment helps keep neck pain, back pain and other body aches from slowing us down.
Neck pain and back pain typically respond very well to chiropractic treatment. Chiropractic care helps restore normal joint motion which is vital to a healthy neck and back.
One of the wonderful benefits of chiropractic treatment is its ability to help active people avoid neck pain, back pain and other spinal injuries.
Getting chiropractic adjustments in a regular basis helps your spine maintain its full range of motion and flexibility. Typically, it is a loss of normal range of motion and flexibility that exposes us to injuries. Chiropractic care that is delivered prior to an aggravation, in other words “when the patient is not in pain” is a perfect example of preventative healthcare.
Chiropractic adjustments gently push the joint through its entire range of motion. When your joints are moved through their full range of motion by a trained chiropractor, tight muscles associated with that joint are stretched out and scar tissue that has formed in and around those joints is broken down.
Usually, having your spine adjusted is not a painful procedure. Most of the time, the patients in my San Diego chiropractic clinic feel a sense of pressure relief and relaxation in their backs when they are adjusted.
This feeling of pressure release and relaxation is due to a number events that occur during an adjustment.
When the spine is adjusted, there is a reflexive relaxation of tight muscles that occurs. Relaxed muscles are much more comfortable than tight, spasmed muscles.
Another event that takes place with an adjustment involves the “pain gate”. Adjustments trigger the “pain gate” in the nervous system which, as it implies, decreases our sensations of pain.
On a mechanical level, chiropractic care stretches tight muscle and ligaments and helps breakdown restrictive scar tissue. This effect improves our spines’ range of motion resulting is feeling of increased flexibility.
As a chiropractor in San Diego, I notice that a healthy percentage of my treatments revolve around spinal maintenance and improving athletic performance.
Chiropractic treatment is a vital part of maintaining your health.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
Arm Pain, Neck Pain and Chiropractic Treatment
Have you ever slept on your arm and had it fall asleep? Imagine if it felt like that all of the time.
A few months ago I had a young lady come to my San Diego Chiropractic office with these complaints. In addition to numbness and tingling, she had neck pain, shoulder pain, arm pain, wrist pain and hand pain. She also complained of weakness in her left hand, which was resulting in clumsiness and was affecting her work as an executive secretary.
These complaints are seen with regular frequency in my chiropractic office. The process is a familiar one and common with many musculoskeletal conditions that involve the nervous system. Usually, postural stresses such as leaning over a desk or computer will eventually irritate a specific joint in the spine. The irritation of the joint causes inflammation of the muscles and ligaments that move and support that joint. This inflammation will cause compression of the local nerves and blood vessels resulting in pain and muscle spasm. If the nerve compression persists, numbness, tingling and weakness of the related muscles will follow.
This patient was displaying signs and symptoms of long-term nerve root compression that involved her left arm and hand.
We treated her with chiropractic manipulations that were delivered with the specific goal of eliminating the nerve root compression. She was also treated with ice packs, hot packs, electrical muscle stimulation and ultrasound in order to address the soft tissue inflammation. In addition to in office care she was given a set of stretches and exercises for at home therapy and advised to use ice packs daily for twenty minutes per session.
It took approximately eight weeks of active care, which is three treatment visits per week, to relieve 90% of her pain and 90% of her left arm weakness. The rest of her symptoms will resolve with at home therapy and chiropractic care delivered on an as needed basis for flair-ups that will occur in the future.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic Care, Nutrition and Health
Being a Chiropractor in San Diego brings special challenges. In addition to our population leading more active and physically demanding lifestyles, they also are more likely to seek out alternative health care.
Neck pain, back pain, headaches and sciatica rule the symptoms that instigate new patient and returning patient visits.
What do they all want? Chiropractic adjustments of course!
Most of my patients consider themselves to be purveyors of natural health care. However, when asked about nutrition, most of them don’t have a good handle on it. Hence the topic of this blog post.
I thought that I would do a very brief overview of vitamins.
Vitamins are essential for us to maintain a healthy body. They regulate metabolism and assist the processes that release energy from digested food. The body needs vitamins in much smaller amounts than it needs carbohydrates, fats, proteins and water. Vitamins are considered MICRONUTRIENTS.
Vitamins act as coenzymes that work with enzymes that are the foundation of all humane bodily functions. They are the catalysts or activators in all of our chemical reactions.
Vitamins exist in two categories; water soluble and oil soluble. Water soluble vitamins must be taken into the body daily. Water soluble vitamins cannot be stored in the body and are usually utilized and excreted within 24 hours. Vitamin C and the B vitamins are examples of water soluble vitamins.
Oil soluble vitamins are stored for longer periods of time in our fatty tissues and in the liver. Examples of oil soluble vitamins include A, D, E, and K.
Both types of vitamins are necessary for maintaining health and fitness.
Vitamins are a small piece of nutrition. Just as important as taking vitamins is the ability to resist the urge to eat junk.
Soda, deep fried foods, tobacco, alcohol, refined sugar and many others steal our health.
True health maintenance has to include examining our nutrition.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
What to do in Case of an Auto Accident
Do you know what and what not to do after an auto accident?
It is that time of the year again. You know, when the roads are wet with rain and half the people on the road drive like it is dry (FAST) and the other half slow down to half the posted limit. People who live in San Diego only see an average of 11 rainy days per year. That is about 3 percent of the time. Until your car loses traction and you hit another vehicle, most don’t realize how quickly and easily it can happen. While an accident usually starts and ends in matter of seconds, the neck pain, headaches, back pain, etc. can continue for weeks, months or sometimes, years.
In addition to the typical physical aches and pains associated with auto accident injuries, there are legalities to consider as well. Sometimes there are disputes as to who is the guilty party that is responsible for the accident. Many people will deny their responsibility even though their role in the accident is obvious. If you have been involved in an automobile accident, there are a number of things you can do to preserve your legal rights.
The following is a summary of some of the most important things you can do to protect your legal rights after an automobile accident:
1. Do not leave the scene. If you leave the scene of an automobile accident, you may be criminally prosecuted. You are required to provide your name, address, driver’s license and auto insurance information to the other driver.
2. Assess yourself for injuries and then, if you are able, help the injured if there are any. If someone has been injured in the accident, you should call for an ambulance / paramedics and assist them to the extent you are qualified. Before calling for the ambulance, be prepared to give an accurate location of the accident and a count of the number of individuals injured.
3. Avoid additional collisions. Make sure your vehicle is not presenting a safety hazard to other motorists. If possible, it should be moved so that it is not obstructing traffic. You can further warn oncoming traffic to proceed with caution by setting flares, turning on your hazard lights, and raising the hood and trunk of your vehicle.
4. Notify the police. Typically the police will prepare a report that contains specific information regarding the accident and the parties involved. While you may not be required to call the police, the accident reports they produce could be helpful to you later.
5. Do not admit liability. You should not admit responsibility for the accident to the other drivers, passengers, or to the police for that matter. You may convey facts concerning how the incident occurred; however, it is best not to comment on your responsibility (or liability) for the accident. This is a legal matter that is not always readily and easily ascertainable.
6. You should get the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of any individuals involved in the accident, as well as any witnesses to the accident. You should also obtain the name of the insurance company and policy number of the other drivers involved. If possible, you may take photographs to document the accident scene including skid marks, road obstructions, and damage to the vehicles.
7. Notify your insurance company. If you do not give your insurance company prompt notice, your policy may provide that the insurance company may deny coverage for your claim. Accordingly, you should give your insurance company notice by way of telephone and by written notice that provides you a means of proving such notice was given, such as by facsimile or by certified mail. You should provide your insurance company with all information they request concerning the facts of the accident.
8. Consult a chiropractic doctor to evaluate your neck and back for injuries. Some injuries may not manifest themselves until some period of time after the accident; the fact that you do not immediately feel as though you have been injured does not necessarily mean that no injury has occurred. You should consult your insurance agent to see if the cost of seeing a doctor in connection with the accident is covered by your insurance policy. You should not settle your claims for injuries arising from the accident until you have been advised by your chiropractic doctor as to the full extent of your injuries.
I hope that you find this information helpful. Drive safe!
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Reaching and Workstation Ergonomics
Have you ever noticed how tight your neck, upper back and shoulders are after a long day of sitting at the computer?
There are a number of factors that contribute to this tightness. Simply the stress of deadlines, an overbearing boss or an annoying co-worker can make your shoulders rise up and your head push forward. And this stress is the result of just the emotional stress of work. When you add the real physical strains of a poorly designed work station on top of the emotional stresses that already exist you have a perfect recipe for a repetitive stress injury.
A large part of designing an ergonomically friendly workstation revolves around limiting the “reach” for items that are frequently accessed.
The distance that you have to reach for any object in your workspace can have major implications on your health. In general, workers should have the items that they use on a regular basis through the day such as the mouse and keyboard for computer users or the telephone for a receptionist or a sales person, positioned close to their bodies so as to avoid awkward or overreaching.
As a general rule, the best positioning for your keyboard and mouse allows you to operate them while your shoulders hang straight down at your sides and elbows are slightly extended. This position reduces the stress of overreaching and allows for completion of your tasks with less muscular effort.
There are many ergonomic apparatus that allow for proper placement of your computer input devices. Pull out keyboard trays, split keyboards, mouse platforms and even foot controls help reduce the ongoing stresses of computer input.
Even with these devices, it takes awareness to maintain an ergonomically friendly work environment.
For a nice selection of high quality ergonomic office products you can visit www.comfortkeyboard.com.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Bad Posture and Back Pain
Have you ever injured your back and scratched your head and wondered – how did this happen when my back has felt fine up until now?
Patients present to my San Diego Chiropractic clinic on a regular basis with neck pain, back pain and other related symptoms that not only lack a history of pain in that area but also have no recent injury or accident to explain their current painful symptoms.
This is frustrating for the patient yet a typical presentation that I see in my Chiropractic office.
When patients come in for care with this type of history recent injury, my inquiries usually lead to a situation that involves excessive postural stress for that patient.
Ongoing postural stress affects our body much like the old analogy of the straws on the camels back. Our bodies are capable of compensating for quite a bit of stress before symptoms appear.
This is good and bad.
The good part of this situation is that if we didn’t compensate for all the little stresses that we are subjected to, we would be uncomfortable all the time. The bad part about compensation is that we often are not keen enough to recognize when our bodies are being exposed to ongoing low levels of stress.
Once the stress levels build to a certain point, the body part in question reacts with irritation, inflammation and muscle spasm. This combination produces pain and tightness and usually is the reason that patients call my office.
Postural stress can place an amazing amount of stress on your spine. One of my reference books has a chart that describes how different body positions affect the amount of pressure on your discs in the low back. The differences are amazing.
When standing straight up with ideal posture, the pressure in the discs of the low back is 100%. When lying flat on your back the pressure is at 24%. While sitting straight with good posture, the pressure is at 140% but when slouching forward with poor posture the disc pressure goes to a staggering 190%.
Considering that most of us sit for a good portion of the day, simply sitting becomes a significant source of stress for the lower back.
This kind of ongoing stress combined with an awkward twist or bend can generate a crisis for the low back leading the patient to wonder exactly how turning to pick that cup of coffee off the desk behind him / her lead to such a severe back pain and spasm.
Here’s To Your Health
Dr. Jones
Repetieve Stress / Cumulative Trauma Injuries – Continued
In addition to neck pain, back pain and headaches, my San Diego chiropractic office provides treatment for many patients with various types of repetitive stress injuries. This post will continue from where the last one left off and will describe what repetitive stress injuries are.
A Repetitive Stress Injury is a kind of catch all phrase for many conditions. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Tenosynovitis / DeQuervain’s Syndrome, Tendonitis, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, Trigger Finger, Myofascial Pain Syndrome and Chronic Sprain / Strain are some of the actual diagnosis that are rendered in my office. All of these conditions are serious and in many cases can cause great pain, permanent disability and sometimes loss of employment.
Repetitive Stress Injuries occur from repetitive movements involving a specific set of muscles and joints. RSI injuries are the result of an accumulation of stress and strain that causes irritation, inflammation, and eventually pain or other disability. A good analogy used to characterize the onset of RSI would be the “straws on the camels back” saying.
Initially, RSI affects the soft tissues of the involved joint(s). Soft tissues include muscles, nerves, ligaments and tendons. However, if left untreated for long periods of time, the involved joint can become arthritic and form bone spurs resulting in permanent damage to the joint.
While various occupations ranging from meat cutters to construction workers develop RSIs that result from the typical duties of their professions, the most frequent cause of these injuries involve computer work. The constant muscular demands of keyboarding and mousing combined with the postural stress of confinement in an office chair with one’s neck and back held in prolonged fixed positions has resulted in an epidemic of injuries that includes hand pain, wrist pain, arm pain, neck pain, back pain and shoulder pain.
I hope that you are finding this information helpful. My next post will continue this series and will describe the basics of workstation ergonomic set-ups.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Chiropractic Care and Computer Work
Does computer work seem much more difficult (physically) than it should be?
The patients in my San Diego chiropractic practice often seem perplexed by the fact that they can be injured doing such sedentary work as computer work. Most are of the opinion that it takes a forceful and traumatic incident to result in injury.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. National statistics point to the computer as a major contributor to lost days at work due to injury. I see the same thing in my San Diego Chiropractic office. Neck pain, shoulder pain, wrist pain, hand pain and back pain are common among those who don’t have the proper ergonomic set-up of their computer stations. That being said, some people get these symptoms regardless of their ergonomic set-up and must evaluate many other contributing factors in order to relieve the stress.
Computer ergonomics is the study and / or implementation of workstation design with the purpose of reducing or eliminating physical stress.
My interest in repetitive stress syndromes began approximately 10 years ago when my practice started seeing a much greater number of people suffering from the effects of computer / keyboard work. Despite all of my training and continuing education related to these types of injuries, I quickly realized that traditional treatment for this type of injury was marginally successful at best.
Any type of therapy was going to have to include the application of basic ergonomic principals to the patient’s work environment.
I am of the opinion that treatment alone or application of ergonomic principles by themselves is not going to resolve a repetitive stress injury.
Over the next several weeks I will write a series of articles that will address the implication of workstation ergonomics and injury resulting from postural stress secondary to use of the computer mouse.
Specifically, the following will be addressed:
1) What repetitive stress injuries are
2) What role do work station ergonomics play in injury
3) How reaching for the mouse sets the stage for injury
4) What are the symptoms of repetitive stress injury
5) How you can avoid mouse reaching injuries
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Arthritis and Back Pain
Arthritis is a scary word to most people. It is also a condition that most of think we will never be afflicted with.
In my San Diego Chiropractic clinic, I see people every day who suffer from the effects of arthritis. Besides the fact that arthritis slows you down and limits your physical abilities, it also causes pain. Neck pain, back pain, knee pain, shoulder pain and even headaches (secondary to the neck pain) are common complaints from people with arthritis.
Most of the patients that we provide chiropractic treatment for are suffering from a type of arthritis know as osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is also known as degenerative joint disease, degenerative arthritis and wear & tear arthritis. The term osteoarthritis describes a type of arthritis that occurs because of a wearing down of the joint. Other types of arthritis such as rheumatoid are due to a more aggressive auto immune response that destroys the joints much faster than osteoarthritis.
In some cases, osteoarthritis is the result of some injury to the joint that resulted in unnatural or awkward movements of that joint. In the medical community we refer to these abnormal movements as “bio-mechanical abnormalities” In many cases, a joint has to be exposed to bio-mechanical abnormalities for years before the joint becomes laden with arthritis.
In my chiropractic office, we treat many patients for automobile accidents. I always tell these patients that while I am not trying to minimize the pain that they are currently suffering from, the most important aspect of their entire treatment program is to help restore normal bio-mechanics of the spine. This is because eliminating the pain associated with car accident injuries is important but the initial pain that comes with a car accident is only a fraction of the long-term discomfort that comes with bio-mechanical abnormalities (arthritis).
Of course I am referring to a process that involves whiplash of a joint leading to scar tissue formation causing abnormal biomechanics that results in arthritic joints.
We do provide effective treatment for the PAIN of arthritis but there is no treatment that CURES it.
The bottom line is this: If you have neck pain or back pain now, get treatment for it before it becomes an incurable disorder like arthritis.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Building a Strong & Healthy Spine
Have you ever wondered what it takes to build a healthy spine?
Being a Chiropractor in San Diego, I see many types of injuries. These injuries result in symptoms such as neck pain, back pain, chronic headaches, etc. The cause of these injuries ranges from car accidents and work or sports injuries to injuries caused by more domestic duties that result from around the house chores and sometimes things as simple as sleeping in an awkward position.
Of these injured patients, I would say that at least for the moment, while they are in pain, at least 75% of them ask “what can I do for myself to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?” This question served as the inspiration for this article and I will address in this post.
To begin with, pain is a great motivator. When people are in pain they take a proactive approach to their health. People often inquire about what kind of stretch or exercising that they can start right away. Unfortunately, the best thing that you can do while your injury is new is to apply ice packs to the injured area and rest. More often than not, over my 15 plus years in practice I have seen enthusiastic patients ignore this advice and end up giving their conditions major set backs. The time to start exercising and stretching your back for most of us is when it is out of its acute stage of pain.
My biggest struggles in practice have been dealing with my patients exercise and diet habits. Exercise is one of the few things that a patient can do at home, outside of chiropractic care, to help prevent or diminish the chances of developing back pain.
After an injury, you should approach exercise cautiously – almost to a point where the exercise that you are performing feels like it is doing nothing. If you can get through a few low intensity exercise sessions like this without aggravating your condition, you should slowly add resistance which allows you to build confidence and strength at the same time.
This is a sensible approach to exercising after a back injury. Slow and cautious – and under the advise of a health care professional. Strong muscles add strength and support to your spine and can only serve you in a beneficial way.
More Coming Soon
Dr. Jones
Back Yard Cooking and Your Health
Chiropractic care is a very safe form of medical treatment. That being said, it does carry some risks. Thankfully, through the use of thorough history taking, complete examinations and a focused approach I have not had any malpractice issues in my 15 years of practice.
Little did you know that a true risk to your health was located right in your backyard. Chances are that you have even invited your closest family members and your best friends to partake in your distribution of ill health.
You all probably figured out that I am talking about the barbeque. I first heard of potential cancer causing agents being generated by cooking food over charcoal way back in the 80s when I was in college taking Pre-Med courses. That was so long ago that at the time I had no idea that 20 years later I would be running a chiropractic practice in beautiful San Diego and reading an article about the evils of barbequing as if they were just discovered.
Many of us look forward to the weekend when we fire up the grill and throw on a burger or a steak. As millions of backyard chefs ponder whether or not the meat is done, perhaps they should be wondering if the meat is over-done. Research indicates that there is a link between eating grilled meats, especially those that are well done, and the risk for some cancers especially breast and colorectal.
The primary concern revolves around two types of carcinogens that can be found in high concentrations in grilled meats. One of these carcinogens is heterocyclic amines which are formed when beef, pork, poultry and fish, are cooked at high temperatures, as they are when grilled. Another type of carcinogens, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, are formed on the surface of meats by smoke and flame flares which occur when fat and juices drip down onto the heat source below and erupt in a flash flame.
Minimizing your exposure to carcinogens when grilling meats can be accomplished by follow these suggestions:
” Remove meat before it’s well done. Another strategy is to start the cooking process in the microwave, then finish on the grill.
” To reduce grill flare ups, use lean cuts of meat and trim any visible fat before grilling.
” Marinate your meat. Studies indicate that marinating reduces the build up of some carcinogens.
” Carcinogens are concentrated in the charred portions of meats. Trimming and discarding those pieces before eating will reduce the risks.
I don’t mean to cause any fears with this article. It is mostly FYI as the studies that I read did not even begin to examine the amount of over cooked meat that would have to be eaten in order to cause cancer. That being the case, if you plan to barbeque every weekend for years to come you might want to pay attention to this articles content.
More Coming Soon!
Dr. Jones
Back Pain San Diego
Have you ever had an episode of low back pain? How about low back pain with sciatica? Neither of these is good.
Many patients are seeking back pain reliefwhen they visit my San Diego based chiropractic clinic.
That is not unusual since most people consider chiropractors as back pain specialists. That being said, we treat patients for a variety of ailments including neck pain, headaches, sciatic pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc. While all of these conditions sound like very different conditions, they are actually very similar.
Most of my patients that suffer with headaches also complain of neck pain or stiffness. In fact, many headaches are related to muscle tension that originates in the neck. The muscle tension or spasm in the neck triggers the headache. Therefore, by treating the neck with a combination of chiropractic adjustments, hot packs, ice packs, muscle stimulation and ultrasound; the muscle tension in the neck can be resolved preventing the headache.
This is just an example of how one problem in a specific region of the body can be responsible for symptoms in a separate area. Likewise, sciatica is most often related to irritation of joints and muscle spasms in the lower back. Similarly, carpal tunnel syndrome results from a process involving joints in the wrist and the surrounding muscles and ligaments.
All of the conditions that I listed above as well as many unlisted conditions follow the same path to becoming symptomatic. Either through some specific injury or ongoing trauma (such as keyboarding, mousing or improper lifting techniques), the joint becomes irritated and inflamed causing pain and muscle spasm. If the pain and spasm affects a specific nerve, the patient may experience additional symptoms such as sciatica or arm / hand pain.
Any pain that travels from the back or down down an arm or leg is an indication of a more advanced problem that requires immediate evaluation and treatment.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Auto Accident Treatment
Have you ever had chiropractic care for injuries from an auto accident?
At my San Diego based Chiropractic Clinic I provide treatment for many patients with neck pain, back pain and headaches. In many cases, the cause of these aches and pains are related to auto accidents or other types of personal injury.
More often than not, the accident in question occurred years earlier and the initial symptoms were not taken seriously by the patient. Most people don’t take the time to seek treatment for themselves yet they scramble to get their cars fixed. This thought process extends into other injury / treatment scenarios as well. I once had an acquaintance who smoked but proudly proclaimed that she didn’t smoke inside her car because she didn’t want to ruin the interior!
I don’t know why so many of us carry these kinds of thought processes. In the case of auto accident injuries, the little bit of neck pain or the slight headache or the lower back pain is often overlooked or dismissed and minimized as being un-important. This is flawed thinking. Imagine if we treated other health conditions with such disregard.
The injury mechanisms in whiplash type accidents are complex. Muscles are stretched and torn, ligaments can sometimes partially tear or rupture, intervertebral discs can become herniated and spinal fractures can occur. These injuries can lead to a vast number of symptoms that can cause anything from slight irritation all the way to severe disability.
While the mechanism of injury in whiplash cases is complex, the typical resulting spinal injuries follow a well established path. Initially, the muscles and ligaments in the injured area are irritated. This irritation leads to inflammation. Inflammation is not only responsible for many of the initial symptoms that you experience but it is also responsible for scar tissue formation which can make your symptoms permanent or chronic.
Statistically, 25% of all auto accident / injury victims will suffer from some ongoing symptom related to their accident. Chiropractors are experts in dealing with the types of injuries that occur as a result of auto accidents. The best way to insure that you are not a member of this group of 25% is to get an examination and possibly treatment, if recommended by your chiropractor.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Nutrition and Your Health
So you’ve had a Birthday and you’re thinking about your youth that’s slipping away. I would like to go back to 30 myself. Of course there are some things we can do to help feel more youthful and have more energy. Proper nutrition is one thing that you can start today to make you feel better tomorrow.
Some San Diego Chiropractic offices include nutrition in their practices. Nutrition is a logical component of helping patients regain and maintain their health. That being said, I don’t have a good grasp of some of the concepts employed by chiropractors and other doctors regarding testing for nutritional deficiencies. Many doctors that sell nutritional products decide that you need them based on their need to sell them to you.
I have always liked measured outcomes. Granted, in health care, many times “improvement” in a patients’ condition is driven by the patients’ symptoms.
In other words, when the patient is out of pain, they are done with care!
This is seldom a good call, most of the time it isn’t. Even doctors are advised against making judgments regarding delivery of care for their own illnesses. After all, many patients are riddled with cancer or have major blockage in their hearts’ arteries yet the patient has no symptoms. Like any of these conditions, treatment for even seemingly minor symptoms is best when delivered until the illness is completely resolved.
Our state of wellness is fleeting and worsened when we ignore signals that we are losing our health.
We can develop mild symptoms like insomnia or anxiety or fatigue for example and attribute them to something other than some internal issue. Often our symptoms are attributed to things such as work stress or relationship problems. While those stresses are contributors to our symptoms, diet and ultimately nutrition take the lead role in producing symptoms of ill health.
I recently made the decision to have a hair analysis performed for mineral content. The lab that we are now using for hair analysis uses state of the art equipment to analyze the hair sample then they generate a report containing specifics regarding their findings. They also include recommended supplements and gobs of information regarding the consequences of their findings.
Having considered myself above the average as far as my health goes, I was shocked by the reports findings.
This report is exactly what I need to drive my nutritional supplement schedule. It provides a measure of where I am and what I should take to get where I need to be.
For those of you who have dismissed the findings of a hair analysis as inaccurate, advances in this procedure over the last ten years have made the results as accurate as blood tests.
So get serious about getting healthy, do yourself a favor and get a hair analysis. It will do wonders with guiding your nutritional plan and it will keep you on track toward better health!
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
Better Health Through Chiropractic
I believe we all want to be healthy. The question is, however, what is health? And, how do we “get” healthy?
In my San Diego chiropractic office, I always try to encourage health beyond the obvious treatment for neck pain, back pain and headaches that represent the bulk of my patients concerns. Most of my patients at least entertain the idea of making lifestyle changes for the sake of better health. Some want nothing to do with it. In their mindset, being out of pain is good enough for them.
I always explain to my patients that in the absence of some catastrophic injury, most cases of neck pain and back pain begin as a slight irritation that we are totally unaware of. With time and additional stresses, these slight irritations can become magnified to the point where they become symptomatic.
Our diets act the same way. A few poor meal choices won’t destroy your health by themselves, but frequent poor meal choices over longer periods of time can have a significant negative impact on your health. You only have to look at a McDonalds or Burger King drive-through to see the long lines of people making poor food choices. These people who make frequent poor food choices (fast foods in this example) probably won’t suffer anything more than a little indigestion as a result of each meal. However, the accumulation of the effects of all of these poor food choices will do damage down the road.
Unfortunately, this all becomes more apparent as we age. We pay for our poor eating habits as we age for a couple of reasons. First of all, poor eating choices become habitual. Like any bad habit, changing poor eating habits is difficult. Secondly, with normal aging, our metabolism slows making our poor eating habits more detrimental than they were when we were younger and more active.
Regaining your health takes work on several fronts. Some of these things you can accomplish yourself and other things you need help with.
Patients that come to my San Diego chiropractic office for treatment for their neck pain or back pain often find this task one of the easy parts of getting healthy. In order to get help with pain, all the patients have to do is come to the office for their treatment.
Part of restoring health is complicated with bad habits that result in unhealthy diets, smoking, drinking and the like. Overcoming bad habits takes an exceptionally motivated person. Focus and you can overcome them and have a healthier body to show for it.
Your’s In Good Health
Dr. Jones
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