Make a New Year's Resolution to Try Chiropractic Care

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Make a New Year's Resolution to Try Chiropractic Care

Choosing a Chiropractic Physician

Depending upon the size of your community, there may be an abundance of choices for every profession. Physicians of various specialties, podiatrists, optometrists, accountants, business consultants, psychologists, and attorneys occupy the office space in professional buildings. How can  make sure you choose the one who's right for you? The best option is often to ask friends and family for a recommendation.  With a personal recommendation, you have real-world information - you have it on good authority from people you trust that the specialist is skilled and competent - you're not flying blind. When meeting a new professional, you should expect to be treated with respect and your time should be valued. The office itself should be pleasant and comfortable. The office staff should be friendly, professional and eager to help you as you adjust to a new environment. And most importantly, your chiropractic physician should be willing to take the time to answer all your questions. When you're with the chiropractor who's right for you, as with any other professional, you'll have the experience that you're in the right place.

It's New Years again already, and perhaps you're determined that this will be the year that you actually follow through with your New Year's resolutions. This is finally going to be the year that you make your self and your health a priority.  You'll eat better, exercise regularly, lose weight, and you're finally going to find our whether chiropractic care can make a positive difference in your life.

If you're like most people, you've probably been thinking about doing more to improve your health for many years. Perhaps you even have family and friends who have been recommending chiropractic health care to you for a very long time. You decide you're ready to take action and you make an appointment to see your local chiropractic physician.

Chiropractic health care is more important now than ever before. Today, many Americans are lacking health insurance or are underinsured.  Deductibles, premiums and copayments seem to keep rising while most household incomes have been stagnant.  Because Chiropractic treatment is both corrective and preventative in nature, it tends to be a very cost effective choice and can play a large part in solving our current health care crisis.

In contrast to most medical care, Chiropractic care is low-cost while providing high value. Chiropractic treatment  focuses on the musculoskeletal system - bones, muscles, and joints - but first and foremost, it addresses and optimizes the functioning of the nerve system.  Simply put, chiropractic care makes your nerve system more efficient. And an efficiently functioning nervous system is crucial for optimal functioning of all other critical body systems - your cardiovascular, respiratory, immune, endocrine and digestive  systems.

Chiropractic care utilizes a hands-on approach, and you'll notice that your visits with your chiropractor provide real, personal interactions between you and your doctor. Your chiropractic physician is highly trained in a variety of disciplines - including nutritional evaluation and restorative exercise - and he or she will make recommendations that are specially designed for your particular needs.

Chiropractic care itself - called spinal adjustments - is gentle and relaxing. Immediate results often include decreased pain and muscular tension, and a noticeable increase in mobility of the neck, back, hips, and shoulders.  For patients with back-related pain, improvement is often noted within 24 or 48 hours.  People also often report sensations of increased alertness and increased focus after chiropractic adjustments, and an increased feeling of relaxation, ease and general well-being.

Additional profound benefits of chiropractic care derive from its direct effect on nerve system functioning.¹ Although chiropractic health care is not specifically a treatment for headaches, menstrual cramps, asthma, allergies or digestive problems, improvement in one's health may occur across the board as an indirect result of chiropractic therapy.

So, chiropractic care provides a tremendous amount of "bang for your buck" - a lot of health benefit for your health care dollar. And at your chiropractor's office, you not only receive the benefit of treatment but also the benefit of your doctor's vast health-care knowledge - you learn about how your body works and how to best take care of it naturally. The original meaning of the word doctor was teacher, and your chiropractor is an educator as well as a health-care provider, interested in all aspects of your health and well-being.<sup>2



1</sup>Bronfort G, et al: Efficacy of spinal manipulation and mobilization for low back pain and neck pain: a systematic review and best evidence synthesis. Spine J 4(3):335-356, 2004
²Johnson C, et al: Chiropractic and public health: current state and future vision.
J Manipulative Physiol Ther 31(6):397-410, 2008

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Using Breathing Exercises To Reduce Asthma

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Using Breathing Exercises To Reduce Asthma

Tips to Help Minimize Asthma Symptoms

Make sure you change your furnace filters regularly, and choose filters that remove dust mites, mold spores, pollen and other allergens. Avoid all chemical fragrances including perfumes, and fragranced personal care products such as shampoo, conditioner, lotion and deodorant.  Ask your family and friends to use fragrance free products. Use fragrance free laundry detergents and dryer sheets to avoid toxic fragrances that can trigger severe asthma attacks. Use an air purifier to help clean the air in your home. Use special mattress and pillow barrier covers that block dust mites. Eat foods with omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, or take a good fish oil or krill oil supplement. Supplement with vitamin C (ideally in a natural form such as Rose Hips, and including bioflavonoids), which can help to reduce allergies and wheezing. Make sure you receive regular chiropractic treatment. Chiropractic adjustments, especially to the thorax spine, are extremely important in the treatment of chronic asthma.

Approximately 20 million Americans have been diagnosed with asthma; and almost half of them are children. Over the years, corticosteroid inhalers have been the most commonly prescribed treatment for Asthma.

A recent study found that special breathing techniques can reduce the necessity of using these reliever inhalers by more than 80% and reduce the dose of preventer inhaler that is needed in mild asthma by half, according to this research.

This study, which was published in the journal Thorax¹, compared the effect of two different breathing techniques on the use of medication, symptoms, lung function, and quality of life among 57 adults with mild asthma.

One technique had the participants focus on shallow, nasal breathing with slow exhalations.  The other technique relied upon relaxation and general upper body exercises.

To qualify for the study, subjects required the use of a preventer inhaler and also needed reliever inhaler at least four times a week.  These participants were then randomly assigned one of these two breathing techniques.

Over a period of 30 weeks, the subjects were required to practice their assigned breathing exercises two times a day for approximately 25 minutes. They were further encouraged to use an abbreviated version of their exercises instead of their reliever inhaler, and to only rely on the reliever inhaler if the exercises failed to halt the asthma attack.

Researcher Professor Christine Jenkins, of the the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, found that the use of reliever medication fell by 86% in both exercise groups.  This drastic improvement began within weeks of starting the exercises, and was maintained over eight months.  She writes: "Breathing techniques may be useful in the management of patients with mild asthma symptoms who use a reliever frequently."

By the end of the study, the participants dropped from using around three puffs of their reliever inhaler each day to approximately one puff every third day.  Preventer dose requirements were also cut in half.

Another promising treatment for bronchial asthma is the natural anti-inflammatory Boswellia, which we often recommend to patients to reduce musculoskeletal inflammation and pain.  In a 1998 study,² asthmatic patients given the gum resin of Boswellia serrata resulted in 70% improvement evidenced by disappearance of symptoms, versus only 27% of the control group who showed improvement. 



¹ Thorax 2006;61:651-656 doi:10.1136/thx.2005.054767
² Eur J Med Res. 1998 Nov 17;3(11):511-4

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Pregnancy and Parenting - Avoiding Lower Back Pain

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Pregnancy and Parenting - Avoiding Lower Back Pain

The Best Way to Pick Up Your Kids

We're not referring to an S.U.V. or a car pool here.  Parents spend plenty of time bending and lifting their little ones. It is important to do this correctly to minimize the risk of injury. First, make sure you are as close to your child as possible.  It is best to have your arms right next to your body, rather than extended out in front of you.  Next, make sure to always bend your knees instead of bending at the waist with your legs straight. Now contract your stomach muscles, which will help to limit the potential strain to the muscles of the low back.  It is crucial to engage your abdominal muscles, which are designed to support the weight. The last step is to straighten your legs, while you hold your child close to your body and continue to keep your abdominal muscles engaged. After just a short amount of practice, this safer lifting technique will have become a habit.

You're pregnant! What a wonderful blessing! Your body is now going through incredible changes. One unfortunate and unwelcome change, however, may be increasingly chronic pain in your lower back. Recent studies suggest that two-thirds of pregnant women experience lower back pain.¹

This is not surprising when you consider the increasing weight of the growing baby, amniotic fluid and placenta, creating an unbalanced load in front of the lower back. This can easily strain and irritate the spinal muscles, tendons and ligaments, which causes pain, decreased mobility and muscle spasm.

Of course it is important to rule out other causes of pregnancy-related back pain, such as pregnancy-associated osteoporosis, septic arthritis, and inflammatory arthritis.²

The vast majority of cases of back pain in pregnancy, however, are mechanical in origin.

Your Millar chiropractic physician will perform a complete examination in order to determine the appropriate course of treatment. Once your low back pain has diminished, you will likely be able to add a safe, gentle routine of stretches and exercises to help prevent your low back pain from reoccurring. The goal is to minimize the detrimental mechanical effects of pregnancy by strengthening your lower back.

It is easier to prevent or minimize low back pain in the first place by being as fit as possible. (It is ideal to "train for pregnancy" by beginning your fitness program in advance, if you are trying to become pregnant.) This includes following a healthy diet, regular exercise, and gaining an appropriate amount of weight during your pregnancy. Your obstetrician will likely recommend vitamin and mineral supplements and will monitor your weight. The average healthy woman gains between 25 and 35 pounds during the course of her pregnancy.³

Let us now look a couple years into the future - to when your newborn baby is now a toddler. You often have to bend and lift, not just your child, but also other items such as a bulky car seat and stroller. There is a lot of bending, lifting, and twisting involved in caring for a toddler.

So how do you keep yourself from injuring your back?  The answer lies in regular exercise. You will probably be saying to yourself, "But how can I possibly have the time to exercise, when I already don't have enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I need to do?"

That is certainly a difficult question, but if you truly understand the vast benefits of regular exercise, you will know that it is worth the time and effort.  Even a thirty minute workout several times a week will make a big difference. And, when you have fully established the habit of regular exercise, you will be amazed to find how much easier it is to bend over and pick your child up, and how much easier it is to carry them. The reason it is easier is because you're now stronger, healthier and more fit than you were before. It also makes being with your children a lot more fun when you have increased energy, strength and stamina.




¹Pennick VE, Young G: Interventions for preventing and treating pelvic and back pain in pregnancy. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 18(2):CD001139, 2007.
²Sax TW, Rosenbaum RB: Neuromuscular disorders in pregnancy. Muscle Nerve 34(5):559-571, 2006.
³Jain NJ, et al: Maternal obesity: can pregnancy weight gain modify risk of selected adverse pregnancy outcomes? Am J Perinatol 24(5):291-298, 2007. 

 

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Do You Tend to be Proactive or Reactive?

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Do You Tend to be Proactive or Reactive?

Be Proactive by Taking Action

Being proactive means taking action before you start to experience negative effects (before you are forced to be in reaction mode.) When you're reactive, you're always playing catch up.  Instead of making positive choices, you're stuck responding to something negative that has already happened. When you're proactive, you can lead the way with your positive choices. You get to decide how things are going to go.  In health related matters it is best to be proactive, rather than reactive, as much as possible. Instead of allowing our kids to sit around all day watching television or playing video games for hours at a time, we can be proactive and encourage them to participate in sports and other fun physical activities for at least an hour each day. Most people feel like they don't have enough time each day to do everything they'd like to do. But we can be proactive and decide what really is the best use of our time. Planning is essential to living a healthy life style and making healthy food choices.  We can plan ahead for our weekly trip to the grocery store, to make sure that we purchase a variety of health promoting whole foods.  We are being proactive by taking the time to prepare nutritious meals for our families, helping to ensure our health and the health of our family members.

In many circumstances in our daily lives, we have the opportunity to either take action and be proactive or to be reactive instead.  If there is someone in your life who treats you with disrespect, you can react by getting angry or taking your frustrations out on someone else.  Another way you can react is by taking some deep breaths while you count to ten and release your anger and tension.  The way you react to stressful people and situations is always a choice.  You can also choose to be proactive which in this case may be to calmly speak to this person and explain how you feel, or take steps to limit interactions with this person if all else fails.  Being reactive or proactive is a personal choice, and can produce different outcomes.  This is also true with regard to the way we approach managing aspects of our health.

Increasing numbers of Americans are affected by chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.  One third of all Americans have a chronic disease, and the majority have more than one. It's also common knowledge that two out of three American adults are either overweight or obese. The majority of these disorders are the result of people being reactive when it comes to their health.

For example, the majority of cancers are preventable.¹ Eating the typical American diet of junk food, fast food, and empty calories is a choice many people make. These choices stress the body organs and glands causing increased body fat and chronic diseases over time.  It may even lead to a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.  This is typically a wake up call for people, who react to this news by becoming determined to reduce or eliminate junk food, lose weight, and finally get serious about exercise. They are now in reaction mode.

There are consequences to being reactive rather than proactive when it comes to your health. Type 2 diabetes is associated with increased risk of developing cancer ² as well as cardiovascular disease.  Once you have a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes it's certainly important to be reactive, but a proactive lifestyle approach could easily have prevented these long-term consequences.  It is the same with cardiovascular disease. You may have never felt you needed to watch your weight, but over the years you've gradually gained weight and now you're becoming concerned.  Perhaps you've been informed that your cholesterol levels and blood pressure are both much too high and advised to make several lifestyle changes. Now you're in reactive mode as you hope to reverse the negative effects of your long-standing bad habits.

Once again there are consequences to being reactive. Elevated cholesterol and high blood pressure are important risk factors for heart attack and stroke. ³Engaging in healthful actions in the first place helps to reduce these risks.

Regular chiropractic care is an important component of a healthy lifestyle. Chiropractic care can be reactive, helping you to recover from an injury to your back or neck. Chiropractic care can be of even greater benefit from a proactive perspective. Chiropractic treatment can help to ensure that all of your body systems are working in harmony as efficiently as possible. Receiving regular chiropractic care will help you to maximize the benefits that come from being proactive about your health - making healthy food choices, exercising regularly, and making sure you get sufficient rest.





¹ American Cancer Society: Cancer Prevention and Early Detection. Facts and Figures. Atlanta, GA, ACS, 2008

² Currie CJ, et al: The influence of glucose-lowering therapies on cancer risk in type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia 52(9):1766-1777, 2009

³Robinson JG, et al: Atherosclerosis profile and incidence of cardiovascular events. A population-based survey. BMC Cardiovasc Disord 9(1):46, 2009

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Avoiding the Flu

This is a repost from the Millar Chiropractic Clinic website.

Avoiding the Flu

Fortify Your Immune System

If you make an effort to take good care of yourself, you will probably find that your immune system performs incredibly well.  Being healthy and practicing good health-promoting habits helps you to remain healthy. Of course even with a good diet of whole and healthy foods, it is beneficial to allow yourself occasional treats and even small binges.  As long as you don't make it a regular thing.   If you try to be too strict with yourself, chances are you will abandon your healthy diet all together. It is the same with exercise.  Try to be consistent as possible, but if something interferes with your workout for a few days, that is okay too.  As long as you make sure to get back to following your workout plan as soon as you can. Here are some additional tips to help you bolster your immune system: Get at least seven or eight hours of sleep each night. Make sure you stay well-hydrated Eat a few servings of vegetables and fresh fruit each day Make sure your vitamin D levels are optimal Try to get some exercise each day. Practice simple meditation techniques to help release stress and quiet your mind.

You have probably noticed the annual media blitz promoting a  "yearly flu shot", as if it is something we have perpetually scheduled on our calendars.  For many of us, this annual "war on the flu" is unquestioned wisdom, and we succumb to the idea that we are just  defenseless humans at the mercy of the all-powerful flu virus.

Is that really the case?

What most of the so-called "experts" fail to mention in their relentless marketing campaigns is the adaptability and versatility of our amazing immune system. We're the lucky owners of a state-of-the-art built-in biowarfare system, that works 24/7 to battle microscopic foreign invaders of our health and well-being. Once our remarkable immune system has detected a foreign protein it immediately begins attacking and destroying the alien molecules. And, the memory of that particular invader is permanent, enabling a future immune response to be swift and effective.¹

The main issue with influenza is that we are faced with new strains each year which we have never encountered.  Fortunately our immune system is extremely flexible - its inherent design allows it to respond quickly to new foreign invaders - and most of the time it is incredibly successful.

Two simple things you can do to lower your chances of getting the flu is to avoid touching your eyes and nose, and wash your hands often.  It's not necessary to use antibacterial soap however, which can create antibiotic resistant superbugs and cause problems in the water supply.  Any natural and nontoxic soap will work just fine.

It is also crucial to make sure your vitamin D levels are optimal.  You can check with your doctor and have it tested if you suspect you may be deficient.

Sometimes our immune systems can be weakened due to various circumstances, bad habits, and stress. Stress is  well-known for compromising a body's immune defenses.² And, unfortunately, many of us have plenty of stress these days.  If you're not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not exercising regularly, and then add a good dose of worry and anxiety to that... getting sick becomes much more likely.  So the key is to develop and maintain healthy living habits and successful strategies for managing stress.³

If you do the simple things that keep you healthy and well, in the winter months you will hopefully just let the flu pass you by, knowing you've done everything you can to keep your immune system in top shape.  If your immune system is functioning properly, you're far less likely to "catch" something.

And, even if you do succumb, you've got a much better chance of getting well again quickly.

¹Sompayrac L: How the Immune System Works, 2nd ed. Blackwell, 2002.
²Wein H:Stress and disease - new perspectives. NIH Word on Health, October 2000.
³The Truth About Your Immune System - What You Need To Know. Harvard Health Publications, 2007.

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