Posts Tagged ‘Back Injury’
Zombie Chiropractic – At Your Service!
After 18 years in practice I finally had a self proclaimed zombie stagger into my office the other day.
We have all seen zombie movies depicting the living dead stumbling around with awkward walk postures and body positions. Yesterday, a patient came into my San Diego chiropractic office who jokingly asked if I had any experience with treating zombies. This man had injured his back and walked with a staggering gait and had not slept in two days yet maintained enough of a sense of humor so as to compare himself to a zombie.
Since I have been a zombie movie fan for many years I replied ‘of course we treat zombies! I only ask that during your visit that you try not to take a bite of my staff, another patient or myself.’ No Biting immediately became my newly adopted rule for zombies entering my office for care.
I examined this patient and found that he had a completely locked up sacroiliac joint that was causing his pain and his staggering zombie-like gait.
A little therapy and a few good low back adjustments later and this patient was on his way back towards joining the ranks of the living – at least he walked up to front desk looking like a more comfortable zombie.
I definitely enjoyed this patient’s creative self diagnosed zombie-ism but I don’t think that his diagnosis would be accepted as a new diagnosis in the medical coding book. In the mean time I will always welcome zombies to my San Diego Chiropractic Clinic.
Yours in good health,
Dr. Steve Jones
(619) 280-0554
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
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
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 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
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
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