Tag: Glendale AZ

What Does A Chiropractor Do?

What Does A Chiropractor Do? Glendale AZ

When people search for alternatives to back pain relief, the majority decide on chiropractic treatments. There are roughly 22 million Americans that go to the chiropractor each year. From these, 35% (7.7 million) are looking for back pain relief due to different reasons, such as sports injuries, accidents, muscle strains, etc. Other reasons could be due to pain in the arms, neck, legs or even headaches.

What’s Chiropractic?

Chiropractors are doctors which use physical spinal manipulation, as well as other treatment alternatives. In theory, the body’s musculoskeletal structure being in proper alignment, especially the spine, can enable to body to better heal without the need of medication or surgery. The manipulation used focuses on restoring joint mobility and restriction caused from tissue injuries from traumatic events, like repetitive stress, such as sitting without the correct use of back support and falling.

A chiropractor is mainly used as an alternative to pain relief for joints, muscles, bones, even connective tissue, like ligaments, cartilage, and tendons. There are times it is used along with conventional medical treatment too.

A chiropractor is identified by the initials ‘DC’, and education commonly includes 4 years of chiropractic college in addition to an undergraduate degree.

What’s involved?

First, the chiropractor will take your medical history and perform a physical exam. Depending on your situation, they may also take lab tests or use image diagnostics to decide if treatment is the appropriate approach to your back pain.

Treatment plans could include a single adjustment, or multiple visits where the chiropractor manipulations your joints. They use a sudden, but controlled force to improve the quality and range of motion. It is common for chiropractors to integrate nutritional counseling as well as exercise and/or rehabilitation. With chiropractic care, the goals are to include function restoration and prevention of further injury.

What’s the Benefits and Risks?

Chiropractic care and spinal manipulation is often considered to be safe, and an effective treatment with acute lower back pain, types of rapid injury which results from getting tackled or moving furniture. It is more common to have acute back pain than chronic back pain, as it often improves on its own and only lasts up to six weeks.

Additionally, research has indicated that chiropractic methods have benefits in treating headaches and neck pain. Also, fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis could respond to moderate pressure that is used by practitioners and chiropractors using deep tissue massage.

Although, studies have not confirmed the effectiveness of sclerotherapy or prolotherapy for relieving pain that is used by some osteopaths, medical doctors, and chiropractors for treating chronic back pain. This kind of pain can occur quickly or slowly, and lasts longer than three months. Therapy for this includes getting injections like anesthetic or sugar water to assist in strengthening ligaments within the back.

Those that have spinal cord compression, inflammatory arthritis, osteoporosis, or those that take medications or blood thinning, should avoid spinal manipulation. Additionally, those with a history of cancer should also get clearance form their medical doctor prior to getting spinal manipulation.

Treatments will be based around your back pain diagnosis. You should inform the chiropractor of your medical history, including your current medications, any ongoing medical conditions, lifestyle factors and traumatic or surgical history. Even though rare, there are cases where treatment worsened a slipped or herniated disc, or spinal cord injury occurred from neck manipulation. To ensure safety, you should always verify with your medical doctor to ensure your health conditions will allow you to benefit from using a chiropractor or another alternative to pain relief.

Glendale Chiropractic Services

At some point everyone gets a sore back or has an injury. If you have been involved in an accident, a sports injury, or just have tweaked your back and want relief our office can help you. We Care Chiropractic in Glendale Arizona cares about you and your health. Let us use our knowledge to diagnose the cause of the pain and come up with a treatment approach that will help you regain your full range of motion and living a pain free life. Give us a call today at 623-825-4444

5 Benefits of Chiropractic Care

  1. Stress Relief – Having the muscular/skeletal systems out of alignment the anything contained within them will also be out of line, including your nervous system. Your body knows when it is out of alignment which causes subconscious stress. Achieving balance will release tension immediately, alleviating a good portion of the stress right away. You brain will relax, which will allow your body to follow.
  2. Better Posture – Regular chiropractic care can restore the natural curvature of your spine, which will improve your every day posture. This can help out with neck discomfort in particular. Constant computer and cell phone use are leading to the onset of neck issues at much earlier ages than in the past. Improving the posture and strength of the muscles along your spine will allow you to stand tall.
  3. Mood Improvement – When the various systems in your body find balance your overall mood will improve. This is due to the fact that your body can achieve its proper and natural chemistry levels. There have been many testimonials of patients who have been dealing with depression feeling an improvement in their condition after receiving regular chiropractic care. People with ADHD have also expressed experiencing improvement.
  4. Immune System Improvement – Aligning your body’s various systems can remove sublaxations that interfere with the regular functioning or your immune system. So much information is transferred by your nervous system that any interruptions can serious effect your immune system adversely. The better condition your immune system is, the healthier you will feel on an everyday basis.
  5. Improvements in Sleep Patterns – Many of us do not get adequate amounts of sleep and that is one of the unhealthiest aspects of our society. Stress is the leading reason why so many of us lack sleep, but pain and aches are right up there among the leading causes. Chiropractic care can address all of these issues and more often than not will lead to improved sleep that lasts for longer durations.

Neck Issues Related to Constant Cell-Phone use

The world is moving at an amazingly fast pace when it comes to advancing technologically. The pace is so quick in fact, that we don’t have time to account for any potential effects that weren’t predicted or previously identified. One example of this is the carpel tunnel syndrome epidemic that followed the mass introduction of the keyboard and mouse to the work world. People using these tools for 8 hours or more every day led to unforeseen wrist issues that there really was no initial solution for. People didn’t realize that they had anything serious wrong with them at first, which only made the problem grow worse over time. We have a similar physical epidemic on that is growing the world over and it is due to those convenient little devices that almost all of us carry around in our pockets or purses; Our cell phones.

You see it almost everywhere you go these days, especially with the younger members of our society: People walking around, or sitting somewhere with their face glued to a 3”-4” screen.  What you may not notice while seeing so many eyes glued to similar screens is the fact that they are angling their heads downward toward the screen instead of bringing the screen up to eye level. This has several effects on your neck that can be painful as well as harmful. While it is common knowledge that the human head weights 12-15 pounds, what isn’t common knowledge is how much heavier your head becomes when you are hanging it downward, thus eliminating much of the natural support that your neck, shoulders and back provide. The human head becomes exponentially heavier when is ‘hanging’ to the tune of being about 64 pounds!! This is leading to problems in the neck and spine that can cause great discomfort over time.

While there is help available for this problem with chiropractic care, doing some prevention will go along way in avoiding any of the issues that can come from “Facebook neck.” Being more selective about when you check your phone or tune into ‘the matrix’ is a great step to take in mitigating problems born from constant cell phone use. It’s understandable if you use your phone for business purposes and need to check it frequently during your work day, but when you are at home, putting your phone in a location away from where you will be will allow you to ‘unplug.’ Separating from your phone and social media for periods of time during your day consistently has been shown to raise happiness levels while lowering anxiety levels. While we all love the access our phones provide, there is an addictive quality to it and many feel the ‘need’ to constantly check their phones.

Getting away from the digital realm is a good thing in many ways and doing so may actually be saving you from chronic neck issues in the future.