Walk It Off

Child bumping their head, smashing your finger with a hammer, a baseball player getting hit with a pitch what do these all have in common? Well they hurt but something else that they have in common that you may or may not realize is that they all three do once thing similar.... the use movement to help it feel better.

When a child bumps their head a mom will almost as a reflex tell the child to rub it. Don't go trying it but when you smash one of the first things you'll to is start shaking your hand in the air. Coaches alway tell their players no matter the situation to get up and "walk it off". Why is that you ask? What makes movement so important that we do it almost on instinct when we are injured?

To understand first you have to know a bit about how our nervous system works. There are millions upon millions of nerves that go to and from every part of our body. These nerves have different jobs with out getting too complicated we'll talk only about two types ones that send pain from your body to your spinal cord and brain that sense movement.

The first type there is easy enough to understand their job. when you smash your finger with the hammer these nerves let your brain know it.

The other type have special movement detectors (mechanoreceptros) When they detect movement they let your body know. That is how you are aware that you are moving, walking, jumping or whatever it may be. These nerves as well as sending a signal to your brain informing it of movement it also send substances (neurotransmitters) into the spinal cord that help to block pain signals. This is why in the before mentioned scenarios rubbing it or walking it off helps you feel better. It also it why we feel so good getting a massage.

Movement is important for keeping our joints healthy, keeping us physically fit and now you know that it also helps with dealing with pain. Chiropractic adjustments help to decrease pain (short term affect of care) and improve the motion of joints in your body to improve or maintain proper movement and keep the joints and you healthy and functioning well.

I enjoy being a chiropractor and helping people feel and function better. If you or someone you know wants to talk about how chiropractic care can help please email me.

Are your electronics killing you

Have you ever watched a person text or work on their mobile phone or hand held device for an extended period of time? If you have maybe you have noticed some of the following things; The longer a person texts the lower and lower the head may go down and you may even see their head start to stick out more and more. Also they tend to roll their shoulders and slouch their upper back forward. Another common thing is to see their arms wrist of fingers sore from the constant tapping of the keys or with a lot of devices now they are not even keys just a continual tapping on the screen accessing the virtual keyboard.

Some of the above are things that I notice in me and others who use their mobile device a lot to work and play. In myself I notice that using the phone a lot to text and write emails causes the muscles in my neck and upper back to get very tight and I can even on occasion start to feel a headache come on.

In the article Your Body is Sending You a Message by Dr. Dean Fishman, it's mentions that the Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that young people 8-18 years old spend in excess of seven-and-a-half hours a day using some form of mobile media. The continual head forward position among other things will be a cause of aches in pains for years to come. In the book Physiology of the Joint Volume 3 by Kapandji it explains that every inch of forward the head is from its normal position over the shoulders can equate to increasing the weight of the head by 10lbs!! reach back and feel your traps, is Kapandji talking about you? The forward head posture can also lead to long term muscle strain, disc degeneration, and even nerve impingement (Mayo Clinic Health Letter, March 2000).

Now if you are like me you are probably not going to go as far as to get rid of your phone, PDA, PSP or whatever your device of choice may be. Our phones are great we just have to learn how to use them and still take care of our body. The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) has a few simple guidelines that one can use to help you get the most out of your electronics while saving your neck and back. A few of them are the following:

Sit upright, keeping your ears over your shoulders.
Look down with your eyes and gently tuck your chin in, not forward.
Never pinch the phone between your ear and shoulder.
Using a headset
Minimize the time you bend the elbows to hold the screen up to see it.
Instead of returning all your e-mails on the phone, wait until you can

use the computer.
Avoid leaning on the flexed elbow while talking on the phone or in the car.

If after trying these tips you still can't seem to get rid of pain or discomfort that you may be feeling its may be a sign that you need to get help from a health care professional. This type of mechanical pain is a big part of what I as a chiropractor deal with day in and day out. Chiropractors are a great cost effective way to treat this and similar types of pain. if you need helping finding a chiropractor near you I would be more than happy to help. Also if you would like to have a copy of the article for the ACA with more information and tips you can email me and I can send it to you in PDF format at DrCarpenterDC@gmail.com

taking out the batteries

Chiropractors first and foremost are physicians. we receive training in all the same general areas of health care as a primary care M.D. does. A couple things that make us different are the following:

First chiropractic as a profession has chosen not to use medications and our scope of practice in all 50 states do not allow us to do so either. Also one of the differences between chiropractic and medical school is that as chiropractors we don't receive nearly the amount of education in toxicology and pharmacology as a medical doctor does. (and thats totally ok by me :P)

Second the medical model of health care is usually to just take a pill to help with what is bothering you and then another pill if that pill bothers you. Now that is a generalization not all medical doctors think or believe that is the way to practice health care. but its kind of the road that medical doctors end up going down with their patients. However taking pill after pill for what ails you in a sense is like being in a house fire where instead of getting out of the house and putting the fire out you just go around and take the batteries out of all your smoke detectors. Thinking that if the smoke detectors stop sounding an alarm then you are ok is as flawed of thinking as if "I'm not in pain I must be ok now." A chiropractic physicians goal is to get you out of pain yes but that is only the first step. once you are out of pain then its easier to address the source of the problem be it biological, physiological, bio-mechanical or whatever it may be.

In a perfect world a chiropractor would want to find the source of the problem, fix it and that would be the end of it. However sadly chiropractors are usually not the patient's first choice we are usually the patient's last resort. When fixing the problem isn't an option a chiropractor then turns to maintaining the highest level of function with the lowest amount of pain for the patient. Different chiropractors use different methods to accomplish the above but what I think all will agree on is that the way to truly be healthy is not just get rid of pain but improve the body's function because the lack of function (of one kind or another) is what caused them to have pain in the first place.