Winterizing YOU

Winterizing YOU

With winter fast approaching, or as we’ve seen lately already here, I thought I would bring you some information to help you prepare for this. A main focus right now for people in the community is to winterize your home, car, etc. With all the preparation, I would like for you to know how to winterize your body. One of the toughest parts of the winter is the cold, and what the cold does to your body.

One main thing to take care of is your skin. It’s your bodie’s largest organ and your first level of protection against disease. It may become a little more important due the winter, drier months to apply more lotion or moisturizer than normal to your hands, legs and feet. Keep an eye around common areas such as your knuckles.

You may also want to include some daily activity in with your winter preparation. It makes it much tougher to walk when there is snow, ice, and cold outside. A great place to walk is in a mall, large department store, or inside your house/gym if you have the available equipment. This will allow you to keep away from the cabin fever  and winter pounds that become possible during this time of year.

Many of us have heard of the winter “blahs”. To keep away from the winter blah’s or more medically termed SAD (seasonal affective disorder) here are a few tips.

1.       Soak up as much natural light as you can: During the times from 6-8 am are sometimes the best natural light your body can grab.

2.       Regular Aerobic Exercise—This could even be combined with number 1 to help with this both ways.

3.       Open the curtains and blinds in your house when you are home to let natural light in, especially when you are home on a weekend to keep away from the dark, gloomy days.

Lastly, the most important thing  to take care of is your spine. Cold weather  can really wreak havoc on a patient’s body, and can be especially worse if you have any underlying issues such as Arthritis. Our muscle, joints, tendons, and ligaments all like to tighten up at a much faster rate when it’s colder outside. The cold weather also causes these to be slower to warm up and recover. If you find yourself with muscles that are tightening or joints that are stiffening, make sure to call our office to set up a chiropractic evaluation.

Proper Preparation begins and ends with prevention, and is the best bet to get through the winter pain and problem free. So don’t forget while you are preparing the rest of you, take care of the best of you, YOU!

What are Trigger Points?

What are Trigger Points, and why do I hear so much about them?

As you flip through the endless channels on your television, it’s very easy to find commercials for numerous products that treat “Trigger Points” or symptoms of muscle spasm.

I wanted to take a minute and explain to you further about what the big deal is on these issues.

A person’s body is made up of a large percentage of nerves, muscles, and bone.  This fact is coupled with over 88% of people at some time in their life having back/neck pain it’s no wonder that stiffness, spasm, irritation, pain, or trigger points are so common.

How’s your morning? Many times in our office we hear patients tell us that they feel 30 years older than they are when they first wake up in the morning. Does this describe you? Do your muscles feel tight, your joints creak, and do your aches keep you from sleeping in those extra few minutes?

What are Trigger Points? These are tender, sensitive areas that when pressed, stuck, or pushed are  painful. These can be found when you don’t even know they are there. A very common way is when someone presses a part of you that brings about pain you didn’t even know you had. The trigger points are common in fibromyalgia, chronic muscle spasm, strain/sprain, and other muscle/joint problems.  These pesky trigger points can also give you referred pain to other parts of your body as well.

How do I get them?   Trigger points are most commonly the result of overdoing of an activity or trauma to an area.

·         Acute--- From lifting, bending, twisting, or too much load on your muscle with heavy weights.

·         Chronic—repetitive activities: typing, texting, work-related, rounded shoulders, bad posture, or weak core muscles in your spine.

·         A common amount of spine issues such as facet joint dysfunction, disc issues can be a cause due to increased tension on a muscle due to protective spasm.

·         A trigger point can also be from health issues tightening the muscle areas.

What do I do to get rid of them?

One of the primary things to do is to A) correct the problem that is contributing to or causing the trigger points through Chiropractic Adjustments.  B) Once that problem has been addressed, begin stretching program to break down the trigger points.  Other non-chiropractic techniques for these trigger points are injections in the trigger point that can help reduce can relax the muscle and help to eliminate the trigger point, as relaxing the muscle improves blood flow and healing.

Treatments of these issues are something we address each and every day in our office. If you have any symptoms like these, or know someone who does, please feel free to contact our office at (270)-746-9400.

Backpack Safety

It’s the time of year again for kids to return back to school. Each and every year seems to bring the challenge of buying new clothes, supplies, and a back pack. This year we want to include some important statistics, as well as important information regarding backpacks.


A little know fact that a child carrying more than 10 percent of his or her body weight risks back and neck pain, while a child carrying more than 15 percent or more of his or her body weight can suffer from severe back, neck and shoulder pain, headaches and other spinal discomfort. When thinking of such small percentages, it’s astounding to realize that an elementary school child weighing 90lbs shouldn’t have more than a 9-13 pound backpack at the most. To put that in perspective a sample 4th grade reading book weighs around 4lbs would be equal to between a half and a third of the amount of weight that should be placed in a backpack. As parents it’s hard to realize how heavy the books are until they are all placed together in a lightweight back to support on your child’s spine.

How do we fix the problem? Periodically weighing a child’s backpack would be a great start. It may be easy for a parent to find ways to eliminate unneeded items in a backpack that would help lighten the load. It is also beneficial for the child to be shown the proper way to fill a backpack. The heavier or bulkier items should be up against the back part of the backpack that allows them to rest on the child’s back. It’s also important for the child to know that backpacks have 2 straps, and to ensure that they are worn with both straps. When wearing them with only one strap, it can add to increased weight on only one side of the child’s body.

With this continued issue of backpack safety it’s also important to ensure that your child has the right type of back pack. You want to ensure that the backpack isn’t too short to put pressure on the child’s mid-back, but not too long so it hangs down below their supportive area of the lower back. Some of the newer advances in backpack safety have been very beneficial. One of the more prominent new backpacks contain and air bladder that can be adjusted to correspond with backpack weight. These air bladders help support your child’s back as well as take weight off of the child’s back using the air bladder system.

So if you have a child that has pain from a backpack that is too heavy, or you as an adult feel like you are packing around a backpack due to pain, feel free to give our office a call for a new patient appointment.

Neuropathy

We see day in and day out several cases of Neuropathy in our office. Not only that but we get alot of calls from patients asking us if we treat neuropathy. Well in short the answer is yes. You see neuropathy is used as a "catch all" phrase for the symptoms of tingling, pins needles etc. feeling that forms in your feet and or in the arms and hands. Now what most patients dont understand is that treating neuropathy is one thing (the symptom) and treating the cause of the neurpathy is quite another.
Most patients that come in with neuropathy have been diagnosed by their family doctor and are prescribed neurotin or some other drug to control the discomfort. That is fine, and we support that desicion but lets not just stop there with taking something that "masks" the symptoms. Lets find out what is causing the neuropathy and treat that. This way we are treating the cause of the symtpoms insted of treating only the symtoms.

With that being said, we must determine what is causing the symptoms. Usually the culprit is nerve irritation. But what is causing the irritation. Well that can be from degenerative discs in the spine, Diabetes, muscles tightening around the main nerve and or a host of other physical problems. Once the cause is identified then you can begin to come up with a treatment plan.

The treatment plans as you probably guessed vary just as much as the different causes of neuropathy. They can range from simple solutions such as stretching and muscle work to needing to obtain an MRI and undergo decompression treatments. But the easiest way to determine the cause is to get an evaluation by one of our Doctors and find out what is causing the irritation instead of just taking endless medications to cover up the symptoms.

The MAGNA team.