The Perfect Pairing for Health: Yoga and a Chiropractor

You probably already know that visiting a chiropractor and practicing yoga are both great ways to improve your health, but what you might not know is how well they work together. Here are just a few reasons why you should be making an appointment with a chiropractor in El Cajon in between your yoga classes.

Alleviated Back Pain

The biggest reason why people have regular sessions with a chiropractor is to alleviate their back pain after an injury. While this is still effective even if you aren’t very physically active, practicing yoga will strengthen your back muscles and keep your spine in the proper alignment. Not only will this keep your injury from recurring, but it will improve your overall spinal health in the long run.

Improved Flexibility

Since chronic back pain will ruin your range of motion, it stands to reason that visits to a chiropractor will help restore any flexibility that you’ve lost. It’s less effective at improving the flexibility of your muscles, but that’s where yoga can help you. Incorporating yoga into your daily routine will limber up your muscles and increase your flexibility than chiropractic treatments alone. You can even continue your yoga regimen long after you’ve recovered from your back injury.

Get Your Body Tuned Up for Travel

As temperatures get warmer, many of us become more active and go on trips. Whether you plan on swimming, golfing, biking, playing a round of tennis, or you are traveling because you plan to participate in a marathon, bike race, or some kind of adventure travel, you need to prepare your body for more activity.  Here are 7 activities that you can do to prepare your body for travel and to prevent injuries.

1. Start at your core. Core training can help your body overall. This isn’t necessarily about achieving a six-pack, but also about your back and your pelvic floor. Activities such as yoga, Pilates, and other ab exercises will help strengthen your core as well as help with other issues you may be having including knee pain, hip pain, and incontinence issues.
2. Cross train. By exercising different parts of your body in a variety of ways for flexibility and strength, you will be better conditioned and less prone to injuries.
3. Work on your balance. Working out on different surfaces and engaging in activities that improve both your static and dynamic balance will help you prevent injuries due to being imbalanced. Activities like standing one leg while working on your upper body, yoga, training on the BOSU ball, and balancing on a foam square can all help you to improve your balance.
4. Get your heart pumping. Cardio activities such as Zumba, step aerobics, cycling, and running can help you build endurance and get your heart stronger.

5 Tips for Improving Posture

We’ve all heard these admonishments before. Stand up straight! Don’t slouch! There are a lot of good reasons why we were told to sit up straight. Marinating good posture can help you stay looking youthful and promote bone health. You can help to prevent stooping over as you age, which is usually caused by osteoporosis and as your vertebrae located in the upper and middle of your spine are destroyed. A poor posture can also hurt other joints in your body—your shoulders, hips, knees, as well as cause joint and back pain.

Here are 5 ways to keep your body limber and flexible while keeping good posture.

How to Relieve Lower Back Pain

A bout of lower back pain will happen to most of at some point in our lives. The good news is, as many as 90% of all episodes of back pain resolve within six weeks, no matter if the episodes are caused by injury or a structural or nerve problem. Here are several ways to effectively relieve lower back pain – and prevent it from recurring.

Address the Pain

It’s difficult to come up with a plan of action for your lower back pain while in the middle of an episode, so your first course of action may be to take a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (also known as an NSAID) to help ease your pain. Ibuprofen and naproxen are two readily available over-the-counter NSAIDs. Research shows that NSAIDs are slightly better at giving relief to lower back pain sufferers than their counterpart, acetaminophen. Taking an NSAID should be a short-term answer to an acute pain problem, not a longer-term solution. NSAIDs can cause gastrointestinal problems if taken over long periods, so consult your physician if you feel the need to take them for longer than ten days.

Take the Heat (and Cold)

For the first 48 hours after lower back pain sets in, an ice pack is a must. Use it on the affected area for twenty minutes several times per day. Cooling your lower back down using ice will shut down capillaries and reduce blood flow to the area. Reduced blood flow will result in reduced swelling. Cold also puts a damper on your nerves’ ability to conduct pain signals.

Feeling Sick? Why Seeing a Chiropractor Can Help

Most people have the understanding that a chiropractor can only help people suffering from joint discomfort, usually centered around the spine, and which is felt most often in areas throughout the back. In reality though, your El Cajon chiropractor can assist with a great many bodily illnesses, aches, and pains that might accumulate to interfere with your sense of well-being. Documented studies and case histories have shown that chiropractic treatment can resolve or lessen the effects of many more afflictions than back pain and soreness, several of which are described below.

Colds and flu

Your body drains out bacteria, viruses, and other materials harmful to the body through a network of lymph nodes and ducts, some of which are located around the neck and spine. These lymph nodes and ducts can easily become blocked or congested when the neck and/or spine are even slightly out of alignment because of some injury your body has sustained, or due to simple muscle tension. With a relatively minor, non-invasive adjustment, your neck and spine can be brought back into alignment, so that the lymph nodes and ducts are clear again, and the lymph fluids can again drain harmful agents out of the body.

Arthritis

Many people who suffer from the moderate to severe pain inflicted by arthritis have found a significant measure of relief through chiropractic treatment. Information from the University of Virginia Center for The Study of Complementary Alternative Therapies shows that arthritis patients under the regular care of a chiropractor enjoy better overall health than arthritis sufferers who do not receive chiropractic treatment.

Hip Health – it’s a JOINT effort

Why is keeping your hips healthy and pain free important to your quality of life?  Because your hips are involved in just about every move you make, including walking, sitting, bending, even sleeping! Your hips are the main weight bearing joint that transfers weight from your spine into your pelvis and down to your legs.  This is why, when you have hip pain, your quality of life is severely impacted.

 

Chiropractic treatment has been proven to assist in alleviating hip pain, including, but not limited to, hip pain due to: 

 

-Osteoarthritis

-Sports injuries

-Work Place Injuries

-Inflamation

-Car Accidents 

-Trauma

-Misuse

-Overuse

-Sciatica

 

Sciatica Pain:

Chiropractic treatment can also assist in stopping sciatica pain caused by disc herniations and/or, piriformis syndrome. The radiating pain in the buttocks, hips, low back and legs associated with sciatica can be crippling for those suffering from this.  Chiropractic manipulation can help ease the strain of the nerve interference and help restore motion in the legs and hip joints.  Massage, Trigger-point therapy, and myofascial release are all techniques a chiropractor can utilize to maintain or restore normal hip functions. 

 

Osteoarthritis:

As we age, hip degeneration can progress.  Failing to address this degeneration can lead to the requirement for hip replacement surgery.  Chiropractic care can assist in slowing this degeneration and delay or eliminate the need for a hip replacement.  Osteoarthritis is one of the most frequently occurring hip pain in older individuals.  Due to the wear and tear on the cartilage that protects the bones in the joints around the hip that slowly erodes until the underlying bone is exposed. This  results in hip pain that can be excruciating when the joint moves and bears weight.

 

Sports Injuries: 

However, hip pain does not just hit the elderly. Every age is vulnerable to hip pain.  From professional athletes to high school football players, hip pain does not discriminate between old and young, rich or poor.  Athletes of all ages are finding that hip injuries are increasing in numbers as sports get more and more competitive at younger ages.  Some common types of sports medicine related hip injuries among athletes if ALL ages are as follows:

Top 5 Reasons to See a Chiropractor this Holiday Season

During the holiday season, most people are thinking about what they can do for other people. While this is a great trait to have, you also need to take care of yourself so you can help care for others. One of the best ways to do that is by going to see a chiropractor in El Cajon. If you are not convinced that it is a smart decision for you this holiday season, maybe these reasons can help.

1) Stress Relief

The holidays are a stressful time. You are likely running around time trying to find the perfect presents, planning your holiday meals, and taking care of your normal tasks. When you are stressed out, your body tends to tense up. When you go to the chiropractor, these things can be fixed for you, at least in terms of your body, so you can focus on relaxation instead.

2) Stay Healthy

The holidays are not just about spending time with friends and family and gifts are not the only things passed around. The colder months also bring the flu and colds. When you get adjusted on a regular basis, you can keep your nervous system in balance and boost your immune system. It can help you prevent some of the illnesses so you don’t have to stop for anything. Stay healthier all season long so you can actually enjoy it by going to your chiropractor regularly.

In a Car Accident? Why You Should See a Chiropractor

Have you been in a car accident recently? Have you thought about why you should see a chiropractor? The chances of being hurt or killed in an auto accident are increasing dramatically, likely due to distracted driving. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), not only did fatalities increase by 7.2% in 2015, “The estimated number of people injured on the nation’s roads increased in 2015, rising from 2.34 to 2.44 million injured people.”

Do you know what help to seek in the event that you do have an accident? It is important to have a plan in case this has happened to you or does happen in the future. Of course if the accident is serious, victims should always seek care at a hospital or with a medical professional. Even if the accident doesn’t appear to be bad and you don’t have any pain or obvious injury right after the accident, one of the first things you should do is see a chiropractor.

Why You Need a Chiropractor if You Are an Athlete

It is estimated by healthcare experts that as many as 90% of all elite athletes regularly consult with chiropractors to prevent injuries and recover from them when they do occur, as well as to boost their performance during competition. With the eyes of the world on the globe’s best athletes at the Olympics, you can be sure that a great many of these super-charged athletes will attribute their tremendous performances in part to treatment received from a chiropractor.

Here’s why world-class athletes benefit from the care of a knowledgeable and experienced chiropractor, and why you would also receive such benefits from your chiropractor in El Cajon, Ca.

5 Types of Pain Best Treated by a Chiropractor

In truth, chiropractors are usually skilled at treating practically all kinds of pain, whether they fall into the acute category or the chronic category. Acute pains tend to have immediate causes, in which short-term damage is done to localized tissue, for instance when a child scrapes their knees falling on a sidewalk. Chronic pain is of much longer duration, and is often associated with the presence of some disease such as arthritis, but can also occur as a result of repetitive motions, strains, and overuse injuries.

Because chiropractors are very knowledgeable about nerve stimulation and response, they are particularly well-qualified for the treatment of many kinds of pain. Chiropractic doctors study the system of neural pathways between the brain and every other part of the body, so they understand what causes pain and how to help alleviate it. Here are 5 types of pain that your El Cajon chiropractor is particularly adept at treating.

1. Repetitive stress injuries

Typically these kinds of pain result from manual labor or tasks generally associated with using modern devices and working in an office setting. For instance, carpal tunnel has become a fairly widespread problem for people who work with a desktop computer and mouse. Repetitive strain due to manual labor often occurs in a factory setting, where the same task is performed all day long, several days a week, thus straining muscles in the arms, shoulders, or hands.

2. Arthritis pain