One of the most common things I hear people who have never been to a Chiro say is – “Why do you have to keep going?  It’s like once you start Chiropractic you need to keep going forever.”

The answer to this is very simple.  People who start visiting the Chiropractor regularly begin to see it a bit like exercising, or eating a good diet.  Do you ever have to stop exercising?  You can stop exercising but you will lose your fitness and your quality of life will suffer.  For people who see Chiropractors regularly, chiropractors help them to manage their spine throughout their life.  As I have mentioned in previous blogs, how you age physically depends a lot on structure and weight bearing.  Chiropractic helps you to maintain good structure which helps you maintain the best quality of life that you can.  The reason people decide to keep seeing the chiropractor is that they know it keeps them doing the things they like, like playing sport or playing with the grand kids, and keeps them feeling their best.

Do you have to keep seeing the chiropractor?  No.  Chiropractic can be used for crisis care alone – to get you out of pain when you are in pain, but there is no long term benefit to this.  And as people who visit the dentist find out pretty quickly – if you keep waiting until you have a hole in your teeth before you do something about it, pretty soon you run out of teeth.  The same is true for your back.  If you just use Chiropractic for crisis care alone there is a point where chiropractic will have limited effect for your problems.

I saw this incredible story and had to share it.

The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden's trio of two-week-old Malayan tiger cubs is doing well.

“They’re fed by nursery staff six times a day and have already graduated from two to three ounces per feeding,” Mike Dulaney, the zoo's curator of mammals and the vice coordinator of the Malayan Tiger Species Survival Plan (SSP), said in a news release. “Before they open their eyes, they usually just eat and sleep. Now that they can see where they’re going, they will start to become more active.”

But one of the cubs needed a little help from an unexpected source: A local chiropractor. Cub No. 1, as it has been deemed until its gender is known and a name has been given, was having trouble holding its head up.

“It was obvious to me that something wasn’t right," Dawn Strasser, a 35-year veteran in the zoo’s nursery, said in the release. “The cub’s neck appeared to be stuck at an odd angle. Massaging the neck muscles helped with the stiffness, but the cub was increasingly lethargic and not suckling well.”

Strasser brought in Dr. Mark Sperbeck, a chiropractor who works on both humans and animals. He determined that the cub’s top cervical bone (C1), through which 95 percent of the body's nerve impulses travel, was out of alignment.
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After three adjustments, the cub's neck and spine are back in place. It's eating well and has actually gotten a little bigger than its littermates.
 

I posted this last year but it has come up again recently so I wanted to repeat then post.

Car headrests

In a motor vehicle accident where your car is rear ended, you suffer less neck injury if your head is touching the head rest at the time of impact.

The makers of expensive cars have noticed that in the population, forward head carriage is quite prevalent and now, they are making their head rests with the rest forward of the seat which in their mind is helping the buyers of their cars to suffer less injury.

However, they are in actuality causing them to have problems.

Forward head carriage has been scientifically proved to contribute to tension headaches, pins and needles in the hands, neck pain, mid thorasic pain, lower back pain, shoulder pain, dizziness and the list goes on.

Consequently I have had more people appearing to my office suffering these sorts of symptoms after having long drives in their nice new cars.

So what do you do?

We should drive with our seats in an upright position and the head rest level with the top of the car seat.  Your head should be touching the rest in this position.  Try and achieve this with your car, and if you are looking to buy a new car, make sure this can be achieved with the new car.  If you can’t achieve this with your car, contact your dealer – DON’T REMOVE THE HEADREST ENTIRELY – this would cause you severe damage should you be involved in an accident.
 
Additional note for women – hair clips and hair style while driving.
If your wear thick bull clips at the back of your hair, or have a hair style such as a thick pony tail or plait that starts at the back of your head, you should take this out while driving as it creates the same forward head carriage as would occur with the headrest forward of the car seat, and it will also promote the same symptoms.

Recent research at the George Institute for Global Health reviewed the findings of 35 clinical trials of 6,000 patients using anti-inflammatory pain relieving drugs.

The findings:
"Compared with placebo, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) do not provide a clinically important effect on spinal pain," Associate Professor Manuela Ferreira said.
Researchers found six patients had to be treated with anti-inflammatory drugs for one patient to achieve a clinically important benefit in the short-term, and the drugs have side effects.
Dr Ferreira reports, "Our safety analysis revealed NSAIDs increased the risk of gastrointestinal side effects by 2.5 times, compared to placebo."

The study was published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

Conversely, hundreds of studies expound the virtues of Chiropractic care and manipulative therapy in reducing back pain, so if you are a sufferer of back pain, it would seem a good idea to stop taking medication and call your local Chiropractor.

Recently a case came to me of a girl who was sixteen years old who had just had major surgery for her scoliosis.  The girl had needed to steel (Harrington) rods inserted into her back to prevent her scoliosis from advancing further and giving her catastrophic health issues.  There is no doubt that this particular girl needed this surgery as her scoliosis had advanced to the point where no other form of treatment we know about yet would have helped.

However, I am always sad to see these cases, and other scoliosis cases that are allowed to progress until people are in the mid-teens, mostly because that can often be helped and in many cases corrected if caught early enough.

Chiropractors are experts in the detection of scoliosis and this is a great reason to get your children checked at least every six months if nothing else.  If you have a history of scoliosis then you ABSOLUTELY should do this as there is a genetic link with scoliosis - it does run in families.  With early detection, you can be referred to the correct specialists who can often correct scoliosis PERMANENTLY without the need for surgery but only if it is detected early.

Please be aware that not all cases can be corrected with conservative care but all the research points to early detection and intervention giving the best hope of success.  Once a child is 16 or seventeen, it is too late.

Pain in the centre of your lower back, or on either side of your lower back that doesn’t radiate to the leg, and that hurts more when you go from sitting to standing is usually a sprain of the joint in the lower back.

This type of pain is easily improved and corrected with chiropractic care, and is improved by movement, so if you are suffering from this kind of pain, avoid being still for long periods as your back will get more painful.  Using ice or an anti-inflammatory cream to massage into the site of pain can also help as this relieves swelling in the area.
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(NB - pain that is worse while you sit may be a disc so definitely get this checked as soon as possible.)

Viewed from behind the ideal structure of a human spine should be straight from top to bottom with level shoulders and a level pelvis – no exceptions.

Simply put, scoliosis is a curve in the spine to the left or the right when viewed from behind.  But there is more to the story...

When someone is diagnosed with a true scoliosis (or an idiopathic scoliosis) they are being diagnosed with a growth condition.  In these types of scoliosis, the growth plates in an individual’s vertebrae are growing at different rates and this causes the spine to bend and twist to compensate.  This is a very serious condition and the only chance you have to correct it is while the spine is growing (ie in a child or an adolescent).  Once growth is complete the condition is permanent and often causes ongoing problems throughout life.  This alone is reason to have your children checked at regular intervals because, just like check-ups to the dentist, in most circumstances if this condition is caught early it is easy to fix.  But catching it late can mean extreme treatments of even surgery.

For more information on scoliosis and treatments for idiopathic scoliosis go to: http://www.sydneyscoliosisclinic.com.au 

Bad posture, or having one leg shorter than the other, can cause a curve or lean in the spine which is not a true idiopathic scoliosis.  This sort of curve is also termed a scoliosis but because the vertebra are not deformed from uneven growth these scoliosis’ can often be resolved quickly and easily with chiropractic treatment.  Your chiropractor will know how to assess for the different forms of scoliosis and if need be, the right people to refer you to for the best possible treatment.

Tennis elbow (Lateral Epicondylitis) is a condition where the muscles that extend the wrist (Bend the wrist backward) become chronically tight.  All of these muscles have a single tendon (The common extensor tendon) which attaches to the outside of elbow.  This chronic muscle tension causes the common extensor tendon to pull away from the bone here creating inflammation, pain and weakness in the muscles.  This is tennis elbow.
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Tennis elbow can become so debilitating as to make picking up a cup of tea too difficult to do.  Treatment is fairly straight forward.  Icing the point of pain on the elbow will reduce the inflammation and relieve any pain.  The muscle tension in the forearm extensor muscles must be relieved in order to facilitate healing of the tendon.  Resting the arm during this period is helpful, but if this is not possible due to the need to work or play sport, then a tennis elbow support (shown below) can reduce stress on the tendon during activity and assist the healing process.

Pins and needles in the back of the hand can often be due to tennis elbow, or trigger point referral from the muscles of the forearm.
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NB There are other causes of pins and needles in the hand.  This is intended as a guide for the most common causes, and should not be considered as an absolute diagnostic tool.  Any pins and needles condition that lingers in your body should be checked to be sure it is not from a more sinister cause.

Part 3 – Trapped nerve in the neck

If you have pins and needles, numbness and pain in your hand in any distribution it is likely due to a nerve compression in your neck.  Often in this case the sensation is worsened/relieved by movement of the head in different positions.
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This condition should be checked ASAP as if left, this condition often gets worse and may need surgery, but if caught early it can usually be effectively treated with conservative management.