Eight out of every ten adults experience back pain at one time or another. Seven out of ten children have at least one instance of back pain. Why is this? Lots of people are like the tree that fell, they only appear to be totally healthy. When a strong enough force comes along their back buckles and pain begins. The true problem, a bent or twisted spine, has been there for a long time. Then as they bend to tie their shoe or pick up a glass of orange juice the force against their spine is just enough for injury to occur. The pain has just begun, but the problem began long before.
Spinal injuries rarely occur solely from a major trauma. It is true that car wrecks and industrial accidents can cause many spinal problems. However, the vast majority of people who have back problems can't remember any injuries until they reached for that glass of juice. Are people's backs that weak? Was the glass made of lead crystal and therefore very heavy? Or is there some other reason so many people suffer from the same type of problem?
There is a saying that is very often used to describe how spinal problems start. "As the twig is bent so grows the tree." This saying applies to spines in different ways. First, many problems start as a child with a fall or a bicycle accident. The child's spine then heals in a bent or twisted position. Over years the force of gravity will pull the body further into that unhealthy position. Then the person's body is just like a tree waiting for a strong enough wind.
Another way that spinal problems start is by unhealthy posture. Have you ever seen bushes that have been pruned and trained to look like animals or letters? These bushes have grown into these shapes as a result of outside pressures put on them. Spines react the same way to pressure. If you sit slumped over your desk at work or carry heavy building supplies around on one shoulder all day you can be training your spine to stay in an unhealthy position. The twisted or bent position will get worse until pain is the result, just like the uprooting of a tree that is bent by the shape of the ground it grew in.
Nobody has the time or energy to have pain or other symptoms. Pain takes the pleasure out of life. When you hurt work is difficult and productivity goes down. Relationships with friends and loved ones suffer because people in pain tend to be grouchy and on edge. Many people also have to give up hobbies or sports that they normally would be involved with during their leisure time due to pain. Who needs pain to have this kind of affect on their life? Fortunately there is something that can be done.
Check your posture the next time you look in the mirror. Close your eyes and shake your head. When you feel as though you are looking straight ahead open your eyes. Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder higher than the other? These are signs of spinal misalignment because if your posture is crooked or twisted then your spine will be too. If your spine is crooked, or misaligned, there will be pressure on the nervous system and it will not be able to function correctly. If the nervous system is not functioning correctly then we cannot truly be healthy. Like the tree that grew crooked in the woods your spine is just waiting for a big enough "wind" to come along. Pain will be the result.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. Chiropractic care is an important part of health because by correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and not only be pain free but truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
Unless a person has recently had some kind of trauma, like a car accident, a bad fall, or some other obvious injury, they may think that there is no reason for them to be feeling the way that they do. Although trauma is one way that pain may begin it is far from the only way. Pain is more frequently a sign of problems that have been present in a person's body for many years and have only recently gotten to the point of causing symptoms. So how can we have had a problem for years and not know about it? It's easier than it may appear.
Anyone who has children knows that they are constantly falling, tripping, crashing on their bicycles and many other forms of minor trauma. Kids are trauma machines! One way that problems start for many people is that they have a minor accident as a child which puts them into a bent or twisted posture. There may be some minor soreness associated with the accident and the child heals quickly and forgets all about it. But what has happened is that the child has healed in this bent or twisted posture. Twenty years of the unbalanced position of their body and more specifically, their spine, and they begin to have back pain. A new problem? No, as their unbalanced posture had been with them for years. Look at yourself in the mirror. Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder higher than the other? Check some old pictures and you'll probably see the same things. Spinal misalignment could have been there for a long time. But childhood trauma is not the only way for us to have an unbalanced posture and the spinal misalignment that goes with it.
Almost everyone has to work. A person doing household chores or a computer programmer are just as likely to have spinal problems as movers lifting heavy furniture. The reason for this may not be obvious. People tend to use the same motions repetitively when doing the same things many times. This can lead to an unbalanced posture and spinal misalignment. Think about the things you do every day. Do you always lift things on the same side of your body? Is your workstation set up so that you are always in a slouched position with your head turned to one side? Do you talk on the phone a lot with the receiver held between your ear and your shoulder? Any of these things can cause your posture to shift slightly and stay that way. When the posture is shifted the spine is shifted and uneven wear begins in joints and spinal discs. It may take years for symptoms to show up, but the problem has been there all along. The bad posture keeps getting worse each day too. So what can we do to change the problem? Get a new job? Win the lottery? These might help, but there is another answer.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to correct spinal misalignment. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally. The abnormal wear no longer occurs and your body can become healthy and stay that way!
It is easy to see that our posture can have a big effect on how we feel and our level of health. True health is when all of the body is working at 100% , always. By correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
There are several reasons for having a sense of pain. Pain keeps us from doing harmful things to ourselves. If we touch something hot our pain sense tells us to pull away. If we have an injury the pain we feel keeps us from activities that might hurt us further. Most importantly, however, pain is a warning signal that tells us when there is a problem with a part of our body.
If pain is a warning to us that there is a problem, is the problem gone once the pain goes? Many times the answer is no. For people who have back or neck pain the symptoms may come and go many times. It may start as a slight twinge or stiffness at first, become back spasms that come and go, and turn into intense back and shooting leg pain as a "Grand Finale". This usually happens over a course of many years. What can be done to stop this march toward agony? Simply treating the pain itself may not be enough.
If you were driving down the road in your car and the oil light came on you would know that you had engine trouble. How would you fix the problem? Would you stop the car and cut the wire to the oil light? If you did you probably wouldn't have an engine for very long. But this is what we are doing to our bodies every day when we take medication for our various aches and pains. Our pain is telling us that we have a problem. By masking our pain with aspirin, ibuprofen, or worse, we are able to keep going. Are we helping the real problem? Or, are we cutting the wire to our warning light?
In many cases the cause of our pain is a spine that is twisted or bent out of its proper position. Look at yourself in a mirror. Do you lean to one side? Is one shoulder higher than the other? These are signs of a spine that is misaligned. Medication may temporarily relieve aches and pains, but it cannot do anything to put the spine back in its correct position. This incorrect position can cause wear in your spine the way a car's tires wear when its front end is out of alignment. This wear takes place over many years and keeps getting worse over time. So the most important question is, how do we get realigned before we wear out?
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to correct spinal misalignment. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally. The abnormal wear no longer occurs and your body can become healthy and stay that way!
It is easy to see that there is more to being healthy than just being free of pain or other symptoms. True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. By correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
Legend has it that the chiropractic profession began in 1895 in Davenport, Iowa when D.D. Palmer felt a bone that was out of place in a man's back and pushed it back into place, thus giving the first chiropractic adjustment. The man was suffering from back pain, right? Wrong. Harvey Lillard, the man who received the first adjustment was 90% deaf. He had no pain, he just couldn't hear. Guess what? After he was adjusted his hearing returned! Was it a miracle? Is D.D. Palmer going to be up for sainthood? I don't know about the sainthood because the miracle was that Harvey Lillard's body started working the way it was made to.
The human body was created with the ability to heal itself from almost any malady. So what happened with Harvey Lillard all those years ago? The adjustment allowed something in his body to heal. It sounds amazing! But all it really takes is taking pressure off nerves and allowing them to function correctly. But how is adjusting a bone in the back going to affect the ears? To understand that we need to know a little more about how the body works.
What is it that controls everything in the body? Nerves do. And where do almost all of the nerves come from? The spinal cord. Guess where you find the spinal cord. It is protected and supported by the spine. Nerves are delicate things. In scientific studies it has been found that pressure equal to the weight of a quarter will cut the ability of a nerve to work in half. If a spine is twisted out of place there will be parts of it that will be putting pressure on the nerves that come out from it. It is easy to see that this pressure can cause problems with the way the nerves will work.
Nerves start in the spine and then spread all over the body. Nerves that come out of one level may control not only muscles and pain sensors, but blood vessels and internal organs as well. In Harvey Lillard's case his problem was with nerves that went from his upper back into his skull to control things inside. So what happened is this; the adjustment was given taking pressure off the nerves going to the skull. The nerves were then able to tell the area around the ear to work correctly again. What happened next made history...the ear started working the way it was supposed to!
Chiropractic simply unlocks the body's ability to heal itself. As a chiropractor I don't heal anyone, but simply help them to be able to do it themselves. So how do you find out if you could use this kind of help? It's actually quite simple. The next time you brush your hair, tie your tie, or put make-up on take a minute to do a quick posture check. First close your eyes and nod your head up and down. Stop when you feel like you are looking straight ahead. When you open your eyes look at your ears. Do you see more of one than the other? Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder noticeably higher than the other? If so you could be seeing the reason for your symptoms...poor posture that comes from a misalignment of the spine.
Abnormal posture and the spinal misalignment that goes with it causes pressure to be put on the nerves. This pressure can cause many different types of problems, as D.D. Palmer first learned with Harvey Lillard. These problems can come on very suddenly but what caused them, the bad posture, was there for years for all to see. Just check an old photograph! So if the problem is the poor posture then what can be done? Should we all sit up straight? There is more to truly becoming healthy than that.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine nerves are no longer under pressure and once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. By correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
Chiropractors are well known as specialists in relieving low back pain. This alone is reason for 80% of adults and 74% of children to visit a chiropractor's office. So, eight out of ten adults need chiropractic care. How many of the remaining 20% of people never have headaches, neck pain or pain in their upper or middle back? Probably not many. These are only the most obvious reasons for receiving chiropractic care and we've already covered most people! But chiropractic care does much more.
In my last article I told the story of the first chiropractic adjustment and why it was given. If D.D. Palmer, the father of chiropractic, had only been concerned with low back pain then chiropractic may never have come about. The first adjustment was given to a man with serious hearing loss. Guess what? His hearing returned. For the past 100 years chiropractors have been treating people with many different afflictions and getting great results. Why would chiropractic help people with problems other than back pain? The answer is more simple than you might think.
All medical doctors take the Hippocratic Oath on graduation from medical school. Hippocrates is regarded as the father of modern medicine. Did you know that he also practiced an early form of chiropractic? Hippocrates practiced using manual manipulation of the spine, what we now call adjustments. He told his students to "Look to the spine for the cause of all disease." For thousands of years we've had this knowledge. How can it be explained?
The human body was created with the ability to heal itself from almost any malady. So how could an adjustment affect somebody's hearing? The adjustment allowed something in his body to heal. It sounds amazing! But all it really takes is taking pressure off nerves and allowing them to function correctly. But how is adjusting a bone in the back going to affect the ears? To understand that we need to know a little more about how the body works.
What is it that controls everything in the body? Nerves do. And where do almost all of the nerves come from? The spinal cord. Guess where you find the spinal cord. It is protected and supported by the spine. Nerves are delicate things. In scientific studies it has been found that pressure equal to the weight of a quarter will cut the ability of a nerve to work in half. If a spine is twisted out of place there will be parts of it that will be putting pressure on the nerves that come out from it. It is easy to see that this pressure can cause problems with the way the nerves will work.
In the spine nerves start in one place and then spread all over the body. Nerves that come out of one level may control not only muscles and pain sensors, but blood vessels and internal organs as well. What this means is that chiropractic care can have an effect on any part of the body. So if you have thought that you haven't ever needed a chiropractor you might want to think again. Have you ever had a cold? How about unexplained stomach problems? Pains or aches for no apparent reason? Fatigue or loss of energy? Other symptoms which you can't explain? Chiropractic care may help you.
Chiropractic simply unlocks the body's ability to heal itself. As a chiropractor I don't heal anyone, but simply help them to be able to do it themselves. So how do you find out if you could use this kind of help? It is actually quite simple. The next time you brush your hair, tie your tie, or put make-up on take a second to do a quick posture check. First close your eyes and nod your head up and down. Stop when you feel like you are looking straight ahead. When you open your eyes look at your ears. Do you see more of one than the other? Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder noticeably higher than the other? If so you could be seeing the reason for your symptoms...poor posture that comes from a misalignment of the spine.
Abnormal posture and the spinal misalignment that goes with it causes pressure to be put on the nerves. This pressure can cause many different types of problems, as D.D. Palmer first learned 100 years ago. Hippocrates knew it long before that! These problems can come on very suddenly but what caused them, the bad posture, was there for years for all to see. Just check an old photograph! So if the problem is the poor posture then what can be done? Should we all stand at attention? There is more to truly becoming healthy than that.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine nerves are no longer under pressure and once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. By correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
Physical fitness is a topic that gets a lot of discussion. Does a person need to have huge bulging muscles or buns of steel to be fit? Some fit people have these attributes, but they are not required. Simply starting to take walks each day can have a large improvement in a person's fitness level. If you are huffing and puffing after climbing stairs or walking short distances then your heart and lungs are unfit. For many people a quarter mile walk is a difficult task. This same walk may be the first step in a program that can add years to a person's life.
You don't have to have buns of steel to be fit, but at the same time you can't have abs of flab. You are what you eat as the saying goes. Some folks feel like Twinkies and guess what makes up a big part of their diet? You don't have to eat plain pasta and salads without dressing to have a good diet, but common sense must be used. A balanced diet that is low in fat, especially saturated fat, is very important. The elimination of processed sugar is essential. This is not to say that an occasional desert is out of the question. It has been shown, however, that people who have diets that are well balanced as well as being low in fat and sugar have a lower incidence of heart disease and diabetes.
Most people live with stress. Stress is part of being human to one degree or another. How we deal with our stress is an important part of staying healthy. In the days of the cave man when stress came up, often in the form of a wild predator, there were two ways it was dealt with, fight or flight. The fight or flight reflex is still present within us. Our options in dealing with this reflex are more limited now however. If our boss or spouse is the source of our stress running away or beating them up are not options if we are functional members of society. Meditation and recreational activities are ways of relieving stress. Proper rest is just as important. If we don't rest we can't heal from every day trauma and our bodies can't rebuild what our normal activities break down each day. We must rest both body and mind to remain healthy.
Physical health is more than just exercise, diet, and rest however. For us to be truly healthy we must have a fully functioning nervous system. The nervous system tells everything in the body what to do! How can you tell if your nervous system is working correctly? Check your posture the next time you look in the mirror. Close your eyes and shake your head. When you feel as though you are looking straight ahead open your eyes. Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder higher than the other? These are signs of spinal misalignment because if your posture is crooked or twisted then your spine will be too. If your spine is crooked, or misaligned , there will be pressure on the nervous system and it will not be able to function correctly. If the nervous system is not functioning correctly then we cannot truly be healthy.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. Chiropractic care is an important part of health because by correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
Chiropractic care is well known for its ability to help adults with back pain. There has been some press lately, however, about chiropractic care for children. Why would kids need chiropractic care? Isn't back pain an adult problem? Isn't it dangerous to adjust a developing spine? The truth of the matter is that back pain is not just an adult problem, and the best time to begin care is when the spine is developing. Let's find out why.
Most people would never think that kids could have trouble with back pain. They don't have hard physical jobs or wreck their cars do they? Shoveling snow can't affect a kid's back can it? The truth is that many kids have pain very frequently but parents either don't find out about it or it isn't bad enough for most to do anything about. Recently a research study was published showing that as many as 75% of children experience back pain. More than half of children have several bouts of back pain. How can this possibly be? The answer is actually quite simple.
Kids by their nature are trauma machines. It all begins when a child starts to walk. The first thing that happens after the first step is usually the first fall. At this point a life of physical trauma has begun. Kids can't move fast enough for their own liking. They run everywhere! Unfortunately this also means they trip and fall a lot. We don't think twice about it but imagine if the same number of falls happened to an adult! It would probably put them in the hospital. Kids are very resilient, but this doesn't mean that this type of minor trauma has no affect. The cumulative effects can be much greater than you might think. These traumas are important to be conscious of, but they are not the only ones that a child's spine must deal with. There is one major stress that all people must go through just in order to come into the world.
Birth is the one physical trauma that all people go through. Even if your birth was by Cesarean section it doesn't mean that it was easy. Birth can be likened to having a 36 foot tall, 5000 pound man grab you by the head and pull you through a wall as he twists your head to get you through. Kids are tough, but anyone would have trouble with that kind of trauma. Birth trauma can begin a lifetime of spinal problems. One research study links misalignment of the upper part of the neck with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The study showed that in every case infants who had died had significant spinal misalignment. With birth being the trauma that it is, it isn't hard to understand why.
Scoliosis, a large curvature of the spine, is a common form of spinal misalignment that afflicts many people. It is particularly common among females. Scoliosis screenings are commonly done at the grade school level. What is done when scoliosis is detected however? Typically the curvature is monitored and when it gets bad enough the child is given exercises or a brace. The thought is to control the curvature and hopefully keep it from getting worse during the growth spurt. What if there was a way to reduce or eliminate the curve before this point? Wouldn't it be worth checking into? Fortunately there is something that can be done.
Checking your child for spinal misalignment is actually a simple thing to do. First, have your child stand in front of you with their eyes closed and tell them to pretend that they are looking at something right in front of them. Is their head tilted or turned to one side? Is one shoulder higher than the other? These are signs of spinal misalignment. To check for scoliosis is also simple. Have your child remove their shirt and then bend to touch their toes. Stand behind them and look at the row of bumps that run down the middle of their back. Do they run in a curve? Are the ribs higher on one side than the other? If so your child could have a scoliosis. If your child's spine is misaligned it is important to get them checked by a chiropractor.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. Chiropractic care is an important part of health because by correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your child's posture means more than you may think! Have them checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!
The next time you brush your hair, tie your tie, or put make-up on take a second to do a quick posture check. First close your eyes and nod your head up and down. Stop when you feel like you are looking straight ahead. When you open your eyes look at your ears. Do you see more of one than the other? Is your head tilted to one side? Is one shoulder noticeably higher than the other? If so you could be seeing the reason for your symptoms...poor posture that comes from a misalignment of the spine.
Abnormal posture and the spinal misalignment that goes with it cause unequal pressure to be put on the muscles, spinal discs, and nerves. This pressure can cause wear and tear in the same way that a misaligned front end on a car wears out tires. Muscles get tired and sore, discs "slip" or herniate and nerves cause shooting pain or numbness. These symptoms can come on very suddenly but the problem that caused them, the bad posture, was there for years for all to see. Just check an old photograph! So if the problem is the poor posture then what can be done? Should we all sit up straight? There is more to truly becoming healthy than that.
Chiropractic treatment by a doctor who practices the Chiropractic Biophysics method is designed specifically to change improper posture. A combination of postural adjustments with specifically designed exercises over a period of time will cause a change in the posture. When the posture is changed the position of the spine will be changed. With the change in the position of the spine sore muscles can relax, discs in the back are no longer under uneven pressure, and nerves once again can work normally.
True health is when all of the body is working at 100%, always. Chiropractic care is an important part of health because by correcting spinal misalignment a chiropractor can help the body to have 100% function. At this point the body is able to heal and truly be healthy. Your posture means more than you may think! Have yourself checked for spinal misalignment now. True health is worth it!