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Raking Leaves and a Pain-Free Fall

Raking Leaves and a Pain-Free Fall

With summer becoming a distant memory, the leaves will soon be turning colors and falling from the trees, blowing about your yard, driveway and sidewalk. So it’s only natural that your thoughts are turning to the day you’ll need to get the rake out and start to work. However—as with all maintenance and household tasks that require some physical exertion—it‘s very important for you to take a few common-sense precautions against accident and injury.

Fall yard work, leaf raking and other outdoor activities carry numerous risks, including upper and lower back strain, neck strain, and shoulder pain. Just like sports, this type of physical activity can increase your chances of getting hurt if your body isn’t properly prepared for it. You can avoid these types of injuries by warming up, stretching and maintaining good posture as you go about your work.

Athletes are able to reduce the risk of injury by warming up and stretching. You can use this approach too. The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) recommends 10-15 minutes of stretching exercises such as trunk rotations, side-bends and knee-to-chest pulls. When these are combined with a short walk or some jumping jacks (which help to stimulate circulation) and followed by additional stretches, the body is ready for the sort of manual labor associated with raking and yard work.

While raking your yard, good posture can also prevent back problems—make sure you keep your back straight and your head up! Use common sense while working: lift with your legs and bend with your knees, taking care that you don’t strain your back while picking up bundles of leaves and grass. If you’re likely to carry heavy items, hold them close to your body to help prevent back strain. In order to take the pressure off your back, rake using the “scissors” stance: put your right foot forward and the left one back, then reverse after a few minutes. When using a lawn mower, try to use your core body weight to move it as opposed to your arms and back.

Also, remember that it’s important to pace yourself and take frequent breaks. This is particularly important when the weather is hot. If this is the case, also be sure to drink lots of water and wear sun-protection such as a hat, sunblock and sunglasses. Switching tasks regularly can help prevent repetitive motion injuries in vulnerable muscle groups—change body positions, or simply move onto another job for a short period of time before returning to the previous one.

Investing in extra protective gear (maybe some gloves to prevent blisters, a mask if you’re prone to allergies and protective eyewear) can make life easier while taking on outdoor chores. Ergonomic tools with extra padding, larger or curved handles are less tiring to use over a long time period.

One of the most useful things you can do to help prevent accidents and injuries is to have a plan for what you want to accomplish and to make sure that you have realistic expectations about how much you can get done in the time available. If you’re unaccustomed to physical labor, chances are pretty good that you’ll feel a bit stiff or possibly sore the next day. If this happens, you can use ice to soothe the discomfort. Of course, chiropractic care is always available if you need it.

As chiropractic physicians, we’re experts in diagnosing and treating a wide variety of conditions that affect the musculoskeletal and nervous system. We know from experience how easy it is for fall clean-up to unexpectedly go wrong. Please be smart and take reasonable precautions!

Teens, Back Pain and Chiropractic Care

Teens, Back Pain and Chiropractic Care

Looking at the big picture, low back pain is a big problem. The condition affects more than 600 million people worldwide, including over one-third of all Americans—more than the number of people affected by diabetes, heart disease, and cancer combined. The financial burden (medical care plus lost productivity) caused by chronic lower back pain in America exceeds $550 billion annually.

That said, one of the saddest aspects of chronic lower back pain is that it doesn’t discriminate between adults and children. And in an era when teens’ musculoskeletal systems are particularly at risk because of reduced physical activity and poor posture (thanks to heavy school backpacks, improper sitting ergonomics and lots of time spent on mobile devices), this problem is only growing larger. In addition, a number of studies have already indicated that lower back pain in adolescents is strongly associated with the development of chronic lower back pain later in life. That’s the bad news for teens. However, the good news is that those adolescents who have been successfully treated to eliminate lower back pain in their youth have a lower risk of developing chronic lower back pain as they grow older.

So it’s natural that the medical community is keenly interested in learning which treatments are most successful in terms of eliminating the lower back pain itself and in preventing it from recurring later in life. This interest led to a recent study. The aim of the study was to determine which of the commonly-available treatment methodologies were most effective. To determine this, researchers performed a meta-analysis of existing studies published in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese to measure which of the treatments used in these studies produced the most consistently positive outcomes in terms of pain, disability, flexibility, endurance, and mental health. The researchers found studies that produced data for 11 treatment groups and 5 control groups involving a total of 334 children and adolescents, and then compared the data.

Their findings were both strong and definitive. Of all the treatment methodologies used in the individual studies, the ones most effective in producing short-term and long-term positive outcomes in the five areas studied were those that involved therapeutic physical conditioning and manual therapy. That is, treatments provided by “hands on” practitioners such as chiropractors, osteopaths, and physical therapists.

These therapies, commonly involving joint and spinal manipulation and ultrasound treatment to reduce pain, were subjectively found to be more effective by the patients than other treatments. The patients’ subjective analysis was confirmed in most of the studies by clinician assessments. Naturally, these “manual therapy” treatment options were preferable in many other ways as well, because they avoided reliance on potentially addictive painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, epidural steroid injections, and surgery.

These findings confirm what Doctors of Chiropractic have observed in their own clinics. Over the years, we have seen many patients (of all ages) benefit from the manual therapies we use to provide relief for their lower back pain. So if you (or your children) experience lower back pain—whether occasional or chronic—contact your chiropractor and ask him or her to explain to you the treatment options available, and what they can do to relieve your symptoms and allow you to enjoy life free from pain once again.

Why Does Back Pain Tend to Recur?

Why Does Back Pain Tend to Recur?

In a recent Consumer Reports survey, 88% of more than 14,000 subscribers who had lower back pain indicated that it had recurred during the prior 12 months. While other academic studies suggest that recurrence may be somewhat less widespread—perhaps affecting between a third and half of all back pain sufferers—it’s very clear that many people experience back pain as a recurring problem.

Professor Doune Macdonald and fellow researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane were interested in learning why some people experienced a recurrence of their back pain while others did not. Their investigation found an association between recurrence of low back pain and altered muscle activity in the deep muscle fibers of the lumbar spine. These muscles are also referred to as your “core” muscles, the ones that are most targeted in Pilates training. Your core muscles give strength, balance and stability to the back, and consist of muscles in the lower back, abdomen and pelvis.

The most important of the core muscles for the stability of your back are the multifidus. These run along the length of the spine and help to take some of the pressure off the vertebral discs so that weight is more evenly distributed along the length of the back. When working properly, the multifidus muscles are activated even before any movement takes place, so as to protect the spine against injury from a sudden load of weight (such as when lifting a heavy box or bending over to tie your shoes).

According to a study published in the journal Painin 2009, Macdonald and colleagues found that the multifidus muscles showed later activation in those with recurrent low back pain than in the backs of healthy subjects. Any delay in muscle activation can be a potential problem, as a sudden loading of weight on the spine when it is unprepared can lead to abnormal bending and twisting of the spine, increasing the risk of injury.

Possessing strong multifidus muscles is one of the obvious solutions to preventing the occurrence of low back pain. However, part of the problem is that once this set of muscles has been injured, the multifidus tends to atrophy due to disuse while the patient is healing. Prolonged bed rest is one of the worst ways to recover from low back pain because it encourages the multifidus to atrophy even further.

Chiropractic care that includes rehabilitation exercises and spinal adjustments has been shown to improve the function of the multifidus muscles. Your chiropractor can suggest exercises you can do at home that will strengthen your core muscles in between adjustments. The adjustments themselves will align your spine so that it functions properly and will not put excess strain on the supporting multifidus, thus reducing the likelihood of a recurrence of low back pain.

How Do Chiropractors Measure Pain?

How Do Chiropractors Measure Pain?

Measuring the amount of pain being experienced by a patient is an essential part of chiropractic assessment prior to treatment. However, unlike objective measures such as the degree of spinal curvature or the range of joint movement, the amount of pain cannot be determined directly, but is instead inferred from the patient themselves or from signs usually associated with it.  These two methods—patient self-reporting and inference by examination—are the basic tools chiropractors will use to assess a patient’s pain level.

While the degree of discomfort reported by a patient is an important guide, the subjective experience of pain means that each person will have a different level at which they call pain mild, moderate or extreme.  Likewise, patients will all have varying degrees of verbal and physical reactions to different levels of soreness.  Taken together, however, self-reporting and examination provide a combination of evidence which can be used to determine pain levels with a reasonable degree of accuracy.

Most chiropractors treating a patient will use an assessment form that asks about the kind of problem that the patient is currently experiencing and the amount of pain it is causing.  A basic diagram of the body may also be used to mark locations and levels of pain.  Further questions, either in the form of a questionnaire or through a patient interview, may be asked to ascertain the frequency of pain and the nature of movements and activities that may trigger pain or worsen it.

The level of perceived discomfort is often assessed using a pain scale in which the patient is asked to assign a figure to their experience such as from 0 (no pain) to 10 (extreme pain). Although such a scale will be subjective, most patients demonstrate a good deal of internal consistency when it comes to reporting relative pain levels.  This means that patient-reporting using this type of pain scale can be useful in determining whether a condition is responding to treatment over time or getting worse, as well as in determining how pain levels fluctuate over the course of a day or in response to certain kinds of activity.  In addition to the simple pain scale, there are several specially designed questionnaires that are also used to assess the degree of pain and disability associated with spinal injuries, such as the Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale.

Chiropractic assessment of a patient actually begins the moment the patient walks in the door.  A skilled chiropractor can tell much about a condition and how much pain someone is in by their overall posture, how they walk, facial expressions of discomfort and involuntary verbalization.  While being examined, palpation and movement of problem areas will often give rise to further articulation and tensing against painful movement, which provide further clues both to the location and degree of soreness.  A chiropractor may use pain scales during the examination so that patients can communicate in a more focused way how much a certain movement or palpation hurts.  Marking these pain levels on a chart provides a baseline measurement that a chiropractor can use to judge the effectiveness of treatment over time.

Although pain measurement is only one method of assessing both the degree of injury and success of treatment, it is an important one.  Pain is both a clear sign that something is wrong and an impediment to normal daily activity.  In contrast, a reduction in pain following chiropractic therapy increases feelings of wellbeing and provides subjective evidence of improvement.  For the chiropractor too, this is an essential indication that they are doing something right.  Together with other signs such as increased strength, range of movement and endurance, reduced pain is a welcome indicator that a patient is making progress.

How Do the Microbes in Your Digestive Tract Affect Your Health?

How Do the Microbes in Your Digestive Tract Affect Your Health?

Our bodies are filled with microbes, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. The complete collection of microbes in our body is called our “microbiome”. It is unique to us and is believed to affect our health in many different ways.

In our intestines, the most abundant microbe is bacteria. There is currently great scientific interest in whether these bacteria might somehow play a role in either causing disease or preventing it. Michael Snyder, PhD, Director of Stanford University’s Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine says, “There’s a good chance your microbiome is associated with every disease you can think of. And the area where bacteria have a huge impact is your gut.”

The Role of Gut Bacteria

Gut bacteria are absolutely essential to our lives and our health. Gut bacteria help us digest our food, make vitamins and signal immune responses. Scientists have discovered that everyone’s collection of gut bacteria is unique, and those with diseases often have a different amount or combination of gut bacteria than people without those diseases. The goal of current research is to discover what mix of bacteria healthy people have versus the mix that people with disease have, and to find ways to improve the mix for better health. In this way, doctors might also be able to detect certain diseases earlier, leading to more effective treatment.

Which Diseases May Be Linked to Gut Bacteria?

Scientists are still exploring this question, but studies have shown an association between gut bacteria and obesity, Chron’s disease, colon cancer, ulcerative colitis, and diabetes. One recent study showed that people with more of a certain inflammatory bacteria in their gut and fewer of another kind of beneficial bacteria are more likely to have rheumatoid arthritis.

Interestingly, gut bacteria may even be connected with cognitive and psychological disorders such as depression, ADD, anxiety, autism, OCD and Alzheimer’s disease. This connection may be due to the gut microbes’ ability to create molecules that impact brain function.

How Can We Improve Our Mix of Gut Bacteria to Achieve Better Health?

Rigorous research into the human microbiome is still in its infancy. However, it is safe to say that not all types and combinations of intestinal bacteria are created equal when it comes to their effect on our broader health. There is also some evidence that we may be able to influence the mix of microbes in our gut through our food choices.  Just to be clear—this is NOT to say that changing any one particular aspect of your diet—substituting one sort of food for another, for instance—will result in a cure for any particular disease. However, do we know enough about a healthy overall diet and its impact on our body’s function and well-being to be able to recommend lowering sugar intake (sugar, bread, pasta, potatoes) and increasing fruits, vegetables, lean meats and healthy fats (olive oil, avocados, etc.). These changes contribute to a healthier nutritional profile, which clearly leads to better overall health and weight maintenance.

Some nutritional experts also recommend eating fermented foods containing live active cultures (such as yogurt, kimchee, kefir, miso, kombucha and sauerkraut) or taking probiotic supplements to support the colonies of “good” bacteria that live inside your gut. If you do choose to take probiotic supplements, there are a few things you should keep in mind:

  • The probiotic supplement you choose must contain the right strains of bacteria to promote good health.
  • The probiotic supplement must be of a good quality so that the bacteria strains they contain are active when you take them.
  • Your digestive system is a very hostile environment. For probiotic supplements to do any good, enough of the good bacteria in them must be able to reach your intestines alive.

Nutrition can be a very complex subject, and our understanding of it is constantly evolving based on scientific research and clinical experience. If you’re interested in learning more about nutrition and health, please call us at Oblander Chiropractic at 406-652-3553 or visit our office!

 

 

The Key to More Independence in Your Senior Years? Start Walking Now!

The Key to More Independence in Your Senior Years? Start Walking Now!

Will you be able to maintain your independence as you reach your golden years? Recent research indicates that the answer to that question may actually depend on how you answer another question: “Can you comfortably walk a quarter of a mile?”

If your answer is “No” you’re not alone. 24 million older Americans have trouble walking that far, and 13 million more can’t walk a quarter-mile at all. According to a new article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), this puts these people at a huge risk of becoming disabled and losing their independence.

In recent years, inactivity (leading a sedentary lifestyle) has been found to be a major risk factor for serious conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. In fact, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report suggesting that inactivity is now killing more people every year than smoking. Inactivity is an even larger problem for older people because without exercise they begin to lose muscle mass and their sense of balance deteriorates more quickly. This puts them at increased risk of injury from falls—the leading injury-related cause of death among seniors.

In the JAMA study, researchers in eight states worked with people in their 70s and 80s who reported that they had developed a sedentary, inactive lifestyle. At the beginning of the study, these people were (on average) active less than 20 minutes a week. As a result, they were considered at high risk of becoming disabled due to lack of strength in their legs.

The study participants met twice a week to perform simple exercises to strengthen their legs and walk in a group, and were also asked to walk more at home. The goal for all participants was to engage in 150 minutes of activity each week and to become fit enough to walk a quarter of a mile without any outside assistance (other than using a cane). Interestingly, the quarter-mile distance wasn’t chosen by researchers at random. Rather, this distance is significant because city planners use it as a “livability” reference point. A city is considered “livable” if all the goods and services you need for day-to-day life are attainable within a quarter-mile of the closest public transportation stop. This means that if you can’t easily walk a quarter-mile, you may have effectively lost your ability to lead an independent life.

At the end of the 2.6-year JAMA study, all participants were able to comfortably walk that distance, and all felt that their general health and mobility had improved. Even more important, a significantly smaller percentage of them had become temporarily or permanently disabled, compared to people of the same age who had maintained a sedentary lifestyle.

The clear message from this study is that you can (quite literally) take steps TODAY to improve your own odds of staying healthy, happy, and independent in the future. Developing a new walking habit is a great way to ensure that you’re getting enough exercise while maintaining your mobility. Plus, it doesn’t cost anything and it doesn’t require any equipment more elaborate than a comfortable pair of shoes. And—maybe best of all—walking is an activity that you can do either socially as part of a group or on your own. Many local communities around the country even have seniors clubs that organize walks on a regular basis.

The key to aging well is to stay healthy, stay active and stay engaged. Building good habits now can make all the difference years from now. If you’d like to learn more about how you can keep your musculoskeletal system in good working order, just call or visit our office at Oblander Chiropractic today! Our phone number is 406-652-3553.