Posts Tagged ‘Chiropractors New Fairfield CT’
Welcome to Chiropractic Life and Wellness Center's Chiropractors New Fairfield CT 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 Chiropractors New Fairfield CT for the health of it.
We look forward to serving you! Call - 203-746-6543.
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Jun 2, 2015 | Health Articles
Are you suffering with pain for so long that your constant search has led you no closer to the real problem? The first thing you do know is that the pain is real and you also find that... It can be intermittent or constant It can be sharp, dull, in one spot or over a...
Read More >>
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Apr 23, 2015 | Health Articles
Have you ever been walking along and caught your full body’s side profile in a reflective surface? At first glance we are worried about our hair, our clothes, or worse – “look how fat and out of shape I am”.
Now look again closer. Is your chin out in front of your shoulders and chest? Worse yet, are your ears out over your chest? Are your shoulders rounding from the strain of your head being so far forward? Sometimes this is very obvious, yet other times it is hard to detect with the naked eye.
Do also you have constant headaches, neck pain, and/or the muscles in your shoulders that are always so tight that they burn?
Ahh, now that you have pain, do I now have your real attention?
Reach back and touch at the base of your neck – do you have a bump? If so, you may have found a source to your headaches and neck pain. This bump is an unattractive mass of fat and muscle that your body will build over time, and it will continue to grow, to help keep your head from pulling further and further forward. Unfortunately this bump will only get worse with time, unless you change the arc in your neck, called your cervical curve, and line your head back over the center of your body to reduce the strain on your head, neck shoulders and back. As the ugly bump grows so will the pain and irritation in that area.
Your Body’s Architecture
If you think about the mechanics of your neck, you’ll realize it’s not surprising how easily it can be misaligned and injured. It has amazing flexibility, is constantly on the move, has very little muscular support, but has to support the 14 – 16 pounds of your head. It is like balancing a bowling ball on a stick using only elastic bands in what should be a perfect 60 degree curve. Due to our tech savvy lifestyles a forward head posture is the now one of the most notable posture changes. This change is a huge factor in our overall health because it relates to our central nervous system, which is our body’s power supply. When you have forward head posture your spinal cord is pulled and stretched. This tension changes the shape of your spinal cord and narrows the area in which your spinal fluid travels around the quintessential spinal cord.
When healthy and relaxed, your spinal cord sends signals between your brain and body at approximately 275 mph. When you have lost your curve, the speed of these signals traveling between your brain and body all day long is compromised. Over time as the signal becomes weaker the body will begin to manifest symptoms and conditions to alert you that your body is in a state of dis-ease. Your body will continue to change and adapt with protective measures. If your forward posture is left over time it will result in the condition most often referred to as a Dowager’s Hump that begins with the first visual sign – that ugly bump.
Clear Prospective On Forward Head Posture
Causes and contributing factors to a forward head posture can range from past trauma, repetitive motions and strains, to emotional stress. Most often a forward head posture is a combination of factors that resulted from an occurrence and is left unrecognized and treated over time. For instance an injury may be combined with poor posture most often produced from today’s tech savvy lifestyles, spinal misalignments, and stress. The significance of the long-term impacts and effects on your health associated with Forward Head Syndrome has been increasingly mapped out in studies related to head position and other bodily functions.
Most Frequent Causes:
Injuries: Easily the most common injury to the neck is whiplash, the sudden, violent whipping motion of the head in an accident. It is most often associated with a car accidents, but it can happen when playing sports, or any other time the head suffers this particular whipping trauma. When this happens, the supporting muscles, ligaments and other connective tissues in the neck and upper back are damaged, but the full effects of this may not be felt for weeks or even months. This is why anyone who suspects they may have suffered whiplash should be extremely careful not to aggravate it, even if they feel no immediate ill-effects. An assessment should be sought from a chiropractor, in case treatment is needed to minimize the effects and guard against possible irreversible damage.
Poor Posture: Poor posture is one of the most common causes of neck pain which can cause headaches. Unlike sudden injuries, which we usually know have happened, bad posture occurs over time and is something we soon begin to feel as normal. Everyday activities such as texting or working on a computer for extended periods is certainly susceptible to developing a forward head posture and spinal misalignments.
Misalignments: These are extremely common in the neck and upper back area, thanks to the weight of our head resting on such an unstable part of our spine. The majority of spinal misalignments are centered around four areas:
- The top of the cervical spine where it meets the skull
- The middle of the cervical spine which supports the greatest weight of the head
- The transition between the cervical and thoracic areas of the spine
- The middle of the thoracic spine which supports the greatest weight of the upper body
Stress: Mental and emotional stress causes the muscles to tense, especially those in the back and neck. This “muscle guarding” is a primitive survival response to avoid injury in the face of danger, but it ends up causing injury when it happens for any length of time.
Understanding Effects of Forward Head Posture:
- Incorrect head positioning leads to improper spinal function.
- The head in forward posture can add up to 30 pounds of abnormal leverage on the cervical spine.
- Forward head posture results in loss of vital lung capacity. In fact, lung capacity is depleted by as much as 30 percent. Loss of lung capacity leads to heart and blood vascular problems.
- The entire gastrointestinal system is affected, particularly the large intestine. Loss of good bowel peristaltic function and evacuation is a common condition that comes with forward head posture and loss of spinal lordotic curves.
- Forward head posture causes an increase in discomfort and pain. Freedom of motion in the first four cervical vertebrae is a major source of stimuli that causes production of endorphins in production many otherwise non-painful sensations are experienced as pain.
- Forward head posture causes loss of healthy spine-body motion. The entire body becomes rigid as the range of motion lessens. Soon, one becomes hunched.
Ready to Help!
With the increasing use of texting and smart phones this epidemic is only getting worse. Kids also now routinely present with all sorts of health problems (like headaches, stomach problems, and chronic colds) related to incorrect forward head posture. This used to be an adult problem but now our children are developing symptoms and conditions earlier which are affecting the health of our future generations.
Our expert team is ready to help you and your families not only address the neck and headache pain but to restore and strengthen function for healthier and higher quality of lives.
Let’s build good health into our high tech lives rather than our poor quality of health lives around our next “pain”.
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Apr 14, 2015 | Health Articles
Warning! Tremendous Pain Ahead! Lights and Bells are sounds we are conditioned to respond to quickly when there is a crisis. Our body's warning system, pain, is unfortunately the most often ignored alarm. Pain of any kind is a warning signal from your body that something is wrong. People often prefer to silence their warning system...
Read More >>
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Mar 26, 2015 | Health Articles
March Madness is Here! If you are a sports fan you know that the excitement of any play off season has our bodies filled with adrenaline and reliving the good ole days. If we have remained active and are in a conditioned state the activities will be less severe but even then our susceptibility to...
Read More >>
by Dr. Brandon Chorney | Mar 10, 2015 | Health Articles
In our faced pace life, the majority of us have been ignoring and pushing off our internal maintenance to fill it temporarily with a short term outside solution of caffeine and denial. Add stress and the temporary fixes no longer cover the symptoms or warning signals that your body is screaming for you to address as the stress on the system is far greater than the body can cope with. Because our bodies are so adaptable, we often manage to ignore them in spite of a growing problem that keeps nagging us. We may not even be aware or may have missed the subtle symptoms, but our capacity to adapt is diminished. Then, all it takes is a sneeze, tying our shoes or the stress of a deadline to put us over the edge and symptoms appear.
Understanding Stress
Stress can hit you from many angles, for many different reasons, mental and physical. Job security, working too hard, not working at all, commuting, relationships, illness, worry about a loved one, lack of sleep, retirement, bereavement, moving house – all can serve to create stress. A recent survey by the American Psychology Association revealed that 54% of Americans are concerned about their stress levels, and two-thirds would likely seek help for their stress.
Many people are stressed without really knowing it; it’s just the way of modern life and we get used to it. However, it still creates genuine strains on your body that are manifested as an increase in: blood pressure, heart rate, respiration, metabolism, and blood flow to your muscles. This is your primitive fight-or-flight reaction kicking in, preparing you for action in the face of a stressful situation.
Your Stress Response
Your stress (fight-or-flight) response, while useful in threatening and dangerous situations to preserve life and limb, is not healthy when it pretty much never goes away. Nowadays, it is rarely triggered in response to an aggressor who must be fought off or a predator that must be fled from; instead, as an ongoing reaction to life’s stresses, it is highly likely to be harmful to your health.
Of course, different people will react to the same situation in different ways. It is not the situation, then, as much as the individual’s reaction to it. What might stress one person may not bother another.
Your Body’s Coping System
When stressed, your pituitary gland releases a hormone called adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), which acts like an alarm system inside your brain. It instructs the adrenal glands on top of your kidneys to dump stress hormones into your bloodstream, including cortisol and adrenaline. These cause numerous physiological changes in your body, including a rise in your heart rate and blood pressure, shutting down your digestive system, and affecting your immune system. Following the panic, the cortisol and adrenaline in your bloodstream should decline to normal levels, as should your heart rate and blood pressure and other affected bodily functions.
The problem is when these levels are not allowed to reduce to normal levels, but instead remain raised due to the ongoing perceived stress of various situations. The body then never has a chance to fully recover its natural and healthful state. Long-term, this stress response can badly disrupt practically all your body’s processes. You will probably have experienced some of these effects yourself: headaches and upset stomachs are common results of stress, thanks to the effects of your stress hormones.
Stress and You
Stress is known to affect the nervous system as well, causing anxiety, panic attacks, depression and even dementia, because the chronic release of cortisol can cause damage to certain parts of the brain. It equally affects sleep patterns and sex drive. The rise in heart rate and blood pressure for the cardiovascular system is a very dangerous mix, with the potential for heart attacks or strokes.
Your immune system also suffers with chronic stress, becoming weaker and less able to fend off colds and other infections. Working well, your immune system responds to infection by releasing several substances that cause inflammation. However, when chronic systemic inflammation takes place due to stress, degenerative diseases can become the order of the day.
Chiropractic Can Help!
You may be so used to being stressed that you may miss or dismiss the signs, so it’s good to take stock and consider whether you are experiencing any of the following: anxiety, insomnia, back pain, constipation, shortness of breath, stiff neck, fatigue, upset stomach, weight gain or loss, depression, problems in relationships. Any of these may indicate you are stressed and are in need of a stress relief solution.
Chiropractic adjustments have proven to be just that solution. They have been shown in many research studies to be very effective at treating tension headaches, especially those that stem from the neck. A 2001 report by researchers at the Duke University Evidence-Based Practice Center in Durham, NC, found that chiropractic adjustments provided almost immediate improvement, with far fewer side effects and more long-lasting relief than prescription medications. The majority of cases were greatly improved by an adjustment of the upper two cervical vertebrae and the vertebrae at the junction of the cervical and thoracic spine.
Our Team is Ready!
We all have a different threshold of “body awareness.” Become more aware of your body. Take note of even small changes in your energy level, sleep habits and elimination.
If you do note any of the warning signs, take action while your body is still whispering, rather than waiting until it’s shouting for help!
Have you ever been walking along and caught your full body’s side profile in a reflective surface? At first glance we are worried about our hair, our clothes, or worse – “look how fat and out of shape I am”.
