Chiropractic Care and Its Many Benefits

31 Jul

Primarily, chiropractic focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of neuromuscular disorders with an emphasis on treatment utilizing manual adjustments and other types of manipulation and/or mobilization of the spine. Chiropractic is classified as a form of primary care, as anyone can choose to see a doctor of chiropractic without a referral.

A 2010 meta analysis reviewed a number of published studies to determine the strength of scientific evidence regarding the effectiveness of manual treatment for both musculoskeletal (MSK) and non-musculoskeletal (non-MSK) conditions.

Lead author Dr. Gert Bronfort reviewed 49 relevant systematic reviews and 16 evidence-based clinical guidelines and concluded that he and the other authors of the analysis found SMT/mobilization to be effective in adults for the following: acute, subacute, and chronic low back pain; migraine and cervicogenic headache; cervicogenic dizziness; and several extremity joint conditions. Interestingly, Dr. Bronfort and his team noted thoracic manipulation/mobilization as effective for acute and subacute neck pain, but the evidence available at the time was inconclusive for cervical manipulation/mobilization alone for neck pain of any duration.

The evidence was also inconclusive for SMT/mobilization for mid back pain, sciatica, tension-type headache, coccydynia, temporomandibular joint disorders, fibromyalgia, premenstrual syndrome, and pneumonia in older adults. Additionally, they found SMT/mobilization was not effective for asthma, dysmenorrhea (when compared to sham SMT), or stage 1 hypertension when added to an antihypertensive diet. In children, the evidence was inconclusive regarding the effectiveness of SMT/mobilization for otitis media and enuresis, and they also noted SMT/mobilization was not effective for infantile colic and asthma when compared with sham SMT.

In a 2014 follow-up study, lead author Dr. Christine Clar confirmed most of the previously “inconclusive” or “moderate” evidence ratings of the 2010 evidence report. However, the availability of new research motivated Dr. Clar to note moderate evidence for these conditions: manipulation/mobilization (with exercise) for rotator cuff disorders, spinal mobilization for cervicogenic headache, and mobilization for miscellaneous headache.

These two meta-analyses are significantly helpful for those considering chiropractic care for specific conditions. Reviews like this are planned for the future, and the list of conditions that respond well to chiropractic care should expand as areas that need further study are determined and more research is published.

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Dr. Brent Binder
4909 Louise Drive, Suite 102
Mechanicsburg Pa, 17055

Member of Chiro-Trust.org

This information should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice. Any and all healthcare concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history.

Chronic Pain and Whiplash

24 Jul

Most sprains and strains typically take six weeks to recover, provided the patient receives proper care, which may include self-management strategies. However, something is different about a whiplash associated disorders (WAD) injury in that many patients do not recover.

At the Whiplash 2017 Symposium held in Australia, Dr. Michele Sterling stated, “Whiplash associated disorders are a costly burden to Australian society. Up to 50% of people who experience a whiplash injury will never fully recover. Whiplash is resistant to treatment and no early management approach has yet been shown to prevent chronic pain. We are hoping this study will provide a promising treatment for chronic pain.”

Experts in the field presented important information about the development and prevention of disorders associated with a WAD injury such as chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and depression after trauma. The University of North Carolina’s Dr. Samuel McLean reported that approximately 30% of people present to the emergency room (ER) in developed countries after trauma exposure (such as car accidents) and approximately nine out of ten are discharged without proper evaluation of these common neuropsychiatric problems. One problem in making a neuropsychological diagnosis is that these conditions often develop sometime after the initial presentation to the ER.

Dr. McLean and his team are currently researching the biological basis of brain injury in a new unprecedented study.  Participants will be enrolled at the immediate post-trauma level and will receive a comprehensive evaluation including genomic, neuroimaging, neurocognitive, behavioral, and symptom assessments. Dr. McLean states that WHEN the biology of PTSD, depression, and chronic pain is understood, then proper tools can be developed to identify the disorders and interventions to treat them can be achieved.

The problems associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are not new, but TBI is rarely dealt with until long after the WAD injury. Part of this is due to a lack of understanding of TBI on the doctor’s part and the other is a reluctance to discuss the symptoms of cognitive dysfunction on the patient’s part. This is because the symptoms are often vague, hard to describe, or somewhat embarrassing.

Questions specifically related to TBI include: Do you have problems staying on task? Do you easily lose your place during a discussion or thought process? Do you have to review your work more times than usual? Does it take longer to process information that you hear or read? Do you have mental fog?

Often, only when these questions are asked will the patient and doctor realize that there may be the need for a thorough neuropsychological evaluation. This study hopes to be able to develop new tools for evaluating TBI and to develop new interventions to help these patients.

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Dr. Brent Binder
4909 Louise Drive, Suite 102
Mechanicsburg Pa, 17055

Member of Chiro-Trust.org

This information should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice. Any and all healthcare concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history.

Chiropractic Care and Headaches

17 Jul

The cervical spine is often implicated in the onset and/or presence of headaches. This is due in part to the first three cervical nerve roots exiting out of the spine and enter the back of the head through a particularly thick group of muscles attached to the base of the skull along the nuchal ridge.

Anything that tightens up the upper cervical musculature can give rise to headache, and certainly stress has the unique characteristic of increasing neck muscle tension. Cervicogenic headache and tension-type headache are the two most commonly used terms associated with neck dysfunction.  Migraine headaches are a vascular type of headache, and these too can be greatly helped by spinal manipulation of the upper cervical region, though the mechanism of how this helps is less understood.

When patients see a chiropractor to treat their headaches, the paperwork they complete may include questionnaires regarding how their headaches impact both their wellbeing and their day-to-day activities. This data can be used to monitor a patient’s progress over time. Similarly, patients may be asked for data at each visit regarding the frequency, intensity, and duration of their headaches since their last visit in order to determine if a new approach to treatment should be considered.

Chiropractic offers multiple types of treatments with the goal of reducing neck and headache pain, restoring function to the vertebrae in the cervical spine—especially in the upper cervical region—and teaching the patient preventative methods of self-management such as exercises, ice and/or heat, and dietary modifications.

Because chiropractic includes an evaluation of the entire musculoskeletal system, a doctor of chiropractic may spot biomechanical faults lower in the body that may play a role in the headache process. A good example of this is a flat foot with ankle pronation, which creates a knocked-kneed effect and a drop in the pelvis on the same side. This can affect the curvature of the spine, causing stability issues up into the neck. In this case, prescriptive foot orthotics to correct the ankle pronation problem and/or a heel lift to correct a short leg can have dramatic benefits for headache sufferers, not to mention other spinal complaints such as low back pain.

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Dr. Brent Binder
4909 Louise Drive, Suite 102
Mechanicsburg Pa, 17055

Member of Chiro-Trust.org

This information should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice. Any and all healthcare concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history.

The Knee Cap and Knee Pain

13 Jul

The knee can be divided into four compartments—the front, inside, back, and outside—which intimately interact with each other. The compartment located in the front of the knee includes the knee cap (or patella), the groove in which it slides in, and the muscles that attach to the patella. The patella is the body’s largest “floating bone” (technically called a sesmoid bone). The function of the patella is to act as a kind of pulley that allows the knee to fully and easily extend. This area of the knee is often referred to as the “extensor mechanism”, as it is responsible for allowing the knee to extend or straighten.

When full extension cannot be accomplished, this is referred to as “extension lag” or “flexion contracture.” Extension lag is often caused by weakness of one of the four quadriceps muscles called the vastus medialis oblique (VMO), and depending on the cause of the weakness, exercises that specifically address this problem are very important in regaining the ability of the knee to fully lock out in extension.

Flexion contracture results in a similar inability to fully extend or straighten the knee, but the cause is not due to muscle weakness but rather the shortening or “contracture” of the muscles that flex the knee called the hamstrings, which are located behind the leg and knee. This can happen when patients are bed-bound, and it can become a permanent impairment if the hamstrings are not used or properly stretched on a regular basis.

Another problem associated with the patella is a softening of the cartilage behind the knee cap, which is called chondromalacia patella (CP). One symptom associated CP includes burning pain in the front of the knee, especially when the knee is bent for a prolonged period of time. Symptoms can be very intense but usually improve quickly once the knee is straightened out or the person can stand or walk.

The shape of the patella as well as the shape and depth of the groove in which the knee cap glides can be altered by trauma and/or genetic reasons. This can also predispose the patient to problems in this compartment of the knee. A common genetic example is an excessively knocked knee (technically called genu valgus). This results in the disproportionate rubbing of the patella on the outer ridge of the femoral groove, which can be painful.

Doctors of chiropractic are trained to assess, diagnose, and treat patients with knee pain utilizing manual therapies, modalities, exercise, and orthotics for foot/ankle conditions, as well as the application of braces and/or taping of the knee.

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Dr. Brent Binder
4909 Louise Drive, Suite 102
Mechanicsburg Pa, 17055

Member of Chiro-Trust.org

This information should not be substituted for medical or chiropractic advice. Any and all healthcare concerns, decisions, and actions must be done through the advice and counsel of a healthcare professional who is familiar with your updated medical history.

The Most Important Principles for Staying Young: One Regulation You Should Keep…

10 Jul

Our basic premise is that your body is amazing.  You get a do over. It doesn’t take that long, and it isn’t that hard if you know what to do.  In these notes, we give you a short course on what to do so it becomes easy for you and for you to teach others. We want you to know how much control you have over both the quality and length of your life.

In recent months, I shared a summary and some secrets from of our new book AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip (released February 28th, 2017—thank you to all of you who bought a copy). This month, I want to bring up a concern that may help you (and the rest of America or whatever country you’re from) be AgeProof: Don’t let them ruin your food by doing away with the regulation on Trans Fats.

In 2013, New York banned trans fats in restaurants.  As the ban rolled out over a three-year period, counties that went with the new rule right away experienced a 6.2 percent decrease in hospital admissions for myocardial infarction (heart attack) and stroke compared with counties that hadn’t yet adopted the restriction.

A United States-wide ban on trans fats would save about a $150 billion dollars a year in just hospital costs, not to mention the productivity loses that would be averted by fewer people having cardiovascular events. The federal government itself would book over $60 billion in savings.

Thanks to the FDA listing trans fats as not generally regarded as safe (GRAS), as well as docs and healthy eating advocates getting the word out that partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (that’s what trans fats are) are unhealthy, Americans now consume 80 percent fewer trans fats than they did a decade ago! And in 2018, we’re set for a nationwide ban.

Trans fats got into the food supply as a way to extend the shelf life of packaged edibles by infusing hydrogen into vegetable oils, transforming them into a more solid state and extending the shelf life of prepared foods and baked goods (and shortening yours—maybe that’s why they call it shortening).

So get trans fats off your plate now. How? Read labels. Don’t eat or buy foods with “partially hydrogenated ” anything on the ingredients list. Understand that the labeling law allows products to claim “0 grams of trans fats” if they contain less than 0.5 grams of trans fat per serving. Eating several portions of foods containing some trans fat may boost your total intake to a level high enough to affect your health. Your best bet: Stay clear of prepared and packaged baked goods and foods. You’ll be living with more energy and a younger RealAge.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to send questions—to  AgeProoflife@gmail.com

Dr. Mike Roizen

 

NOTE: You should NOT take this as medical advice.

This article is of the opinion of its author.

Before you do anything, please consult with your doctor.

You can follow Dr Roizen on twitter @YoungDrMike (and get updates on the latest and most important medical stories of the week).  The YOU docs have two newly revised books: The patron saint “book” of this column YOU Staying Young—revised and YOU: The Owner’s Manual…revised —yes a revision of the book that started Dr Oz to being Dr Oz.  These makes great gifts—so do YOU: ON a Diet and YOU: The Owner’s Manual for teens.  

Michael F. Roizen, M.D., is chief wellness officer and chair of the Wellness Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. His radio show streams live on http://www.radioMD.com Saturdays from 5-7 p.m. He is the co-author of 4 #1 NY Times Best Sellers including: YOU Staying Young.

Important Carpal Tunnel Syndrome Facts

6 Jul

Carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) occurs as the result of the median nerve being trapped or squeezed as it passes through the carpal tunnel, which is located in the wrist. Nine flexor tendons with their covering or sheathes, blood vessels, and connective tissue also pass through the carpal tunnel, creating a tight passageway between the forearm and hand. Therefore, swelling of tendons and/or their sheathes, leaking of synovial or joint fluid from the many carpal joints, or bone spurs, cysts, and/or systemic swelling can each impinge on the median nerve. Basically, ANYTHING that increases the pressure inside the tunnel can cause the symptoms associated with CTS.

Symptoms associated with CTS include pain, numbness, tingling, a “half-asleep” feeling, swelling, and a weak grip (such as difficulty unscrewing the lid from a jar). Sleep interruptions are common as we often sleep with a bent wrist, which further increases the pressure on the various soft tissues in the area.

Some people have a greater risk of developing CTS. For example, women are three times more likely than men to develop the condition due to a smaller tunnel and wrist as well as a slightly different tunnel shape. The following can increase the risk of developing or worsening CTS: diabetes, hypothyroidism, birth control pills and/or other hormonal replacement therapies, pregnancy, and some types of inflammatory arthritis.

Jobs that require fast, repetitive work without enough rest time and those that require forceful gripping also carry an increased risk for CTS. Ergonomic factors such as certain job tasks, tool handle shape, body position on a line or machine, prolonged sitting (especially when the head/neck is not in a neutral position), and work that requires telephone use (especially without headsets), must be addressed to gain proper control of the condition.

The diagnosis of CTS is made from a combination of a careful history and physical examination of the hands, arms, shoulders, and neck, as it is VERY IMPORTANT to make sure it is truly CTS and not a group of conditions or something totally different. Hence, your doctor may run a series of tests to differentiate between the many possible causes of CTS. Typically, a careful evaluation can lead to a successful diagnosis of CTS but occasionally, further tests are necessary.

The chiropractic treatment approach for CTS includes the typical rest, ice, night splints, exercises, and job modifications that most healthcare providers utilize. The unique feature that separates chiropractic from medical-based, non-surgical care is the use of manual therapies applied to not only the forearm, wrist, and hand, but also frequently the elbow, shoulder, and neck, as these areas frequently contribute to the patient’s symptoms and must also be managed for a successful outcome.

FOR A FREE NO-OBLIGATION CONSULTATION CALL 717-697-1888

Dr. Brent Binder
4909 Louise Drive, Suite 102
Mechanicsburg Pa, 17055

Member of Chiro-Trust.org

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