Posts Tagged ‘Herniated Disc’
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
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