Posts Tagged ‘Back Pain New Fairfield’
Welcome to Chiropractic Life and Wellness Center's Back Pain New Fairfield Archive. Here you can learn more about Chiropractic Life and Wellness Center, Chiropractic, and Dr. Brandon Chorney, today's choice for Chiropractors in New Fairfield, CT. Read Dr. Brandon Chorney's Chiropractic Back Pain New Fairfield for the health of it.
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by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Jun 27, 2013 | Health Articles
We are often asked questions about various treatment options and which ones offer the best outcome and chance for success. Over the last several years Spinal Decompression Therapy has become one of the most popular treatments that patients ask about. Is spinal decompression therapy a good treatment option? Well the answer is that it really depends on your condition and more specifically the condition of your spine.
Spinal decompression therapy is a treatment option for people with long-term back pain, sciatica, leg pain, degenerative disc disease, herniated discs, numbness and other conditions that have not responded to initial treatments such as chiropractic adjustments, manipulation and physical therapy. Compressed discs can lead to herniation, bulging or brittleness of the discs. The problem is often perpetuated because the compressed disc restricts the flow of nutrients to itself which it needs to heal. In addition to the pressure and compression, the nerve itself may not be able to receive the nutrients it needs to heal and work properly. Often, surgery is used to decompress the spine, which is invasive, painful, and carries significant risks. Medications to reduce pain are also often used, but they do not treat the source of the pain and only mask it.
Spinal decompression therapy is considered to be a non-invasive, non-surgical alternative that offers gentle decompression of the spine through the use of specially designed, FDA-approved equipment. Prior to treatment, patients are thoroughly examined both manually and through the use of imaging technology in order to determine which spinal discs are compressed, and if the treatment is suitable and has a high likelihood of success.
Patients are placed on a decompression table in a comfortable posture that depends on which area of the back needs treatment. The treatment applies a specific force to the compressed discs, and a computer alternates the decompression force with relaxation periods. Usually, there is a series of 10-20 alternating decompression and relaxation cycles, for an individual treatment times between 15-30 minutes. This process serves to gently elongate the spine and to create a vacuum that pulls the disc back into its proper location and shape within the vertebrae. Realigning the discs in this manner can reduce pain and promote healing. However, on average it will require 20 treatments to experience significant improvement with a compressed disc.
Is everyone with back pain a good candidate for spinal decompression therapy? Of course not. Research has shown it to be very effective for high percentage of patients but some patients it is not effective at all. At this point it is not entirely clear which people it will work best on. Therefore, it is important to work carefully with your chiropractor to be sure you have a good chance of successful treatment. Your chiropractor may precede each treatment with soft tissue muscle work to reduce the body’s natural reflex reaction and prepare the muscles for the traction forces. He or she will also work with other health professionals as needed to determine the precise nature of your back pain and the type of treatments that are most likely to resolve your pain at its source.
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Jun 18, 2013 | Health Articles
Speeding Up Recovery Time
For most people, recovering from a broken bone is an exercise in patience. For an active person, being told that you have to significantly reduce or cease activity in order to let the bone heal is equivalent to torture. However, there are a few things you can do to help speed the healing process so you can get back to your normal activities as soon as possible.
Stop taking NSAIDs (Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) for Pain Relief
When cells are damaged in a fracture, large amounts of prostaglandins are released. Prostaglandins are a group of lipids made at sites of tissue damage or infection that are involved in dealing with injury and illness. They control processes such as inflammation, blood flow, the formation of blood clots and the induction of labor. Although this is what causes you to feel the pain, the production of these lipids are also instrumental to the early stages of tissue repair.
Here is the catch. In order to alleviate pain, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are prescribed to stop the action of prostaglandins, but the prostaglandins are quintessential to the healing process. The best suggestion would be stop taking the NSAIDs as soon as possible after suffering a broken bone. Alternatively, you could take a non-NSAID pain medication such as acetaminophen for pain relief, for it does not have the same effect on prostaglandins.
Stop Smoking
The broken bones of people who smoke take longer to heal. The smoke reduces blood flow, therefore reduces the amount of nutrients and oxygen getting to the injury site. The chemicals released in the blood from smoking damage the cells that form bone. This process and significantly decrease healing time or prevent complete healing altogether.
Get more Calcium, Magnesium, Vitamin D and Vitamin K
These vitamins and minerals are all integral to healthy bone growth. We have all heard about how important calcium is in the diet, but if you take a lot of calcium without accompanying it with magnesium and vitamins D and K, much of that calcium will not be absorbed by your bones. Dark green leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale, collard greens and Swiss chard are among the best sources of not only calcium, but magnesium and vitamin K as well. If you live in a sunny climate, you can get a good supply of vitamin D by sitting in the sun for 15-20 minutes a day with arms and legs exposed and using no sunblock. For those who live in less sun-drenched locations (and those of us waiting out the winter months), you can get vitamin D from fortified milk products or you can take a vitamin D supplement.
Reduce Your Sugar and Caffeine
Caffeine and sugar both increase the excretion of calcium from the bones by 25-50 percent. So try avoid the comfort foods!
Increase Your Intake of Protein Rich Foods
Nearly half of the compounds that make up your bones are comprised of protein. In order to give your bones the building blocks they need to speed healing and minimize further bone loss, incorporate more healthy protein into your diet, such as beans, nuts and fish or chicken.
Healing takes time but if you keep these simple tips in mind, you may find yourself up and about before you know it!
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Jun 4, 2013 | Health Articles
Oh those teenage years of frustration
If you have ever wondered why the teenage years are so difficult for parents (and often the teens themselves) you need look no further than their brain. The brain undergoes rapid and profound development during the teen years, much more so than during most of childhood. It is a time when the areas of the brain involved in the calculation of risk, rewards and decision making go through increasingly major changes. This may explain why late adolescence (between ages 15 and 19) has a six times greater mortality rate than those in late childhood and early adolescence (between ages 10 and 14).
Research conducted by scientists using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) from early childhood through adulthood has mapped the many changes that the developing brain makes as it matures. They have found that the brain continues to develop into a person’s early 20s, with the frontal lobes that are responsible for reasoning and problem-solving being developed last.
Although the teenage brain is more impulsive and willing to take risks, it is also dynamic, vulnerable and stimulated by positive feedback. The reason for this is that the reward centers in teenage brains are highly responsive, while at the same time, the region of the brain associated with self-control is still not developed fully.
Dr. Jay Giedd, Chief of Brain Imaging at the Child Psychiatry Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, says “The most surprising thing has been how much the teen brain is changing. By age six, the brain is already 95 percent of its adult size. But the gray matter, or thinking part of the brain, continues to thicken throughout childhood as the brain cells get extra connections, much like a tree growing extra branches, twigs and roots.”
Although the brain grows in gray matter significantly during childhood and early adolescence, the amount of gray matter actually begins to fall in mid-adolescence, which researchers say is a normal process of brain maturation.
Giedd says, “… the pruning-down phase is perhaps even more interesting, because our leading hypothesis for that is the “use it or lose it” principle. Those cells and connections that are used will survive and flourish. Those cells and connections that are not used will wither and die. So if a teen is doing music or sports or academics, those are the cells and connections that will be hard-wired. If they’re lying on the couch or playing video games or MTV, those are the cells and connections that are going [to] survive.”
Studies have shown that experiences early in life have a profound effect on the development of the teenage brain. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that children who received a lot of cognitive stimulation and parental nurturing had a brain with a thicker outer cortex, which is important in thinking and memory. Another long-term study from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in London discovered that there were major structural changes in the areas of the teenage brain that relate to empathy.
Adults should perhaps give teenagers more of a break. As Giedd says, “It’s sort of unfair to expect teens to have adult levels of organizational skills or decision-making before their brains are finished being built.”
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | May 2, 2013 | Health Articles
Fibromyalgia can create many challenges for a person suffering with this disorder. The challenges often go well beyond the typical characteristic of chronic pain. Suffering from chronic pain alone can be debilitating. For a fibromyalgia sufferer just trying to explain all of their locations of pain is often confusing to their doctor and to complicate...
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by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Apr 23, 2013 | Health Articles
Almost everyone I know loves it when they can really see the results from their hard work. Whether it’s a student that studied hard to get an A, getting that long awaited promotion at work, hitting your weight loss goal on a diet, or reaching that next level with exercise we just love patting ourselves on the back and saying, “I did it!”. It would even appear that for most people today the only way to make hitting to goal better is to get there faster. Of course, this is not surprising in our “fast food” culture today. We want it now or even yesterday if that is possible. This combined obsession of “hitting the goal” and “doing it faster” often times leads to less than desirable avenues for trying to achieve our goals, which ultimately can be very counter productive.
Starting a new exercise program is a classic example. You will often hear stories of how someone that has not exercised in years finally makes the commitment to “Get back into shape” and even buys a year long membership at the local gym. Then after just one or two trips to the gym they give up on their goal and eat the year long membership. How does that happen? Most often this happens as a result of their mindset when they started their first workout. Thinking that exercising harder is going to provide a bigger and faster payoff and besides, “I used to do even more exercise that this”. You can almost hear them thinking, “I can get the body of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in just one day!” Unfortunately, exercising harder without giving your body adequate preparation can often times lead to a serious injury and almost always leads to several days of muscular soreness. Serious muscular soreness is frequently enough to discourage them from going back to the gym and if an injury does occur they can end up laid up for days or even weeks and could even require rehabilitation just to recover from their self inflicted injury. In either case they are right back at the beginning in terms of their fitness, strength, and endurance. The best way to avoid injury and to ensure that you continue with your new exercise program so that you can experience all the health benefits from exercise is to first learn how to exercise smarter.
How Do You Exercise Smarter?
Exercising smarter can be easily summed up in one sentence. Start with what your body is capable of doing, and then gradually doing a bit more. The hardest part of this equation is knowing what you are capable of if you haven’t exercised in years. However, the answer to that is quite simple: very little! When it comes to benefits of exercise they are not experienced from one day of intense activity but rather from a regular schedule of gradually progressive exercise over a period of months and years. The same rules apply even for a person that has already been exercising regularly for years if they have not been using a gradually progressive program of exercise. For example, a runner that has run three miles a day, three times a week for several years it would not be advisable to do an eight-mile run the next time they go out. Even through they may be in “good shape” this sudden increase in their exercise would most likely leave them with strained muscles, shin splints, or worse. As another example, a person that has done weight training for several years bench pressing 100 pounds for 3 sets of 10 repetitions 3 times a week, decides to try using 150 pounds today. This could very easily lead to muscular or ligamentous strains in the back, neck, shoulder, elbow or wrist. In either scenario, the results from training “harder” is a two week vacation from exercising and possibly much longer. Of course, almost everyone that has done exercise at any level has made mistakes and injuries can occur even when you are training smart, but especially for the person that is just getting back into exercise doing too much too fast is not, “smart.”
The Smartest Exercise is Exercising for Life
The goal with exercise is gradual progression over a period of time. For example, if you’re 60 years old and haven’t exercised for many years, a walking program is a good way to begin. On your first day, walk at a comfortable, steady pace for 5-10 minutes. It should truly feel like you didn’t do much, but remember you will be gradually increasing your time and then increasing your pace over a period of weeks and months. Each day you add a couple of minutes but maintain your original pace. Building up the number of minutes until you are at 30 minutes. If you find that at a certain number of minutes you feel like you really had to push yourself to complete it, then maintain that number of minute for a few days until completing it feels better before adding more minutes. Once you are walking 30 minutes a day, five times a week comfortably you are ready for the next progression. For your next walk you will reduce your time to 10-15 but increase your pace a bit then each day maintaining this new pace you will once again progress the number of minutes up to 30. Each time that you get up to 30 minutes comfortably you will then reduce your minutes, increase your pace, and build back up to 30 minutes. Rinse and repeat!
Of course you don’t want to increase your pace if your feeling uncomfortable or over stress by the currently level of walking. If your current level of minutes and pace is really pushing you then you either maintain it until it feels better or even back off a bit and let your body catch up before increasing again. The key here is that you want your program of exercise to be progressive while at the same time listening to what your body is telling you. After four to six cycles of gradually increasing minutes and your pace, you should be able to walk 30 minutes a day, five days a week, at a nice brisk pace. You may also notice some weight loss. an increase if energy levels, you feel more flexible, you’re posture is more upright, your skin looks and feels healthier, and you’re sleeping more soundly and feeling better rested in the morning.
The same gradual approach can be used with almost any type of exercise whether it is weight training, yoga, pilates or tai chi. Always start with less than you know you could use. Whether it is lighter weights, less repetitions or less intensity, you can build up your strength and endurance over time. Remember that with weight training too heavy = risk of injuy and injury = a loss of training. Exercising smarter leads to improved metabolism, improved strength, gaining lean muscle mass, reducing body fat, the ability to do the things that you enjoy, and overall better health.
Another Smart Decision!
Chiropractic care is a great compliment to smart exercise. While you are making gradual progress in strength and fitness small injuries can happen and often times go unnoticed or are thought that to be a normal result from exercise. Chiropractic care can help prevent unexpected injury by ensuring that your joint mobility is maintained and helps you to recover faster if an injury does occur. Every level of athlete from the high school athlete to professionals of every sport and even Olympic athletes report that regular chiropractic care helps to improve their performance and to speed their recovery from injuries and the same thing applies to the person that hasn’t exercised in years that is just getting back into shape. Chiropractic care can help to make your process of “getting back into shape” more comfortable and more rewarding.
The majority of injuries that occur from a smart and progressive exercise program are the result of tight muscles and a loss of flexibility. Regular chiropractic care helps to restore and maintain the flexibility of the joints in your spine, which can reduce the tightness in the associated muscles of your spine. Resulting is a spine with better mobility that can handle the physical requirements of exercise and is less prone to injury. Regular chiropractic care enables us to get the most out of our exercise program and achieve our goals of life long health and well-being.
Of course it is natural to want to exercise harder and faster but exercising smarter is the way to go for the greatest benefits while reducing the risk of injury.
Exercise Smarter – Just Do It!
Whether you are just getting started with a new exercise program and would like some advice on how to design it or if you are already a fitness buff and want to ensure that you are getting the most from your exercise; chiropractic care can be an invaluable tool in your health program. You don’t have to wait until you already have an injury to start taking good care of your spine. Give us a call to find out how we can assist you in achieving your fitness goals.
