Blog | Innate Chiropractic Center

Chiropractic Care During Pregnancy: The Benefits

Back pain is a common problem faced by women during their pregnancy. This occurs when pregnant women put on extra weight causing extra pressure on the spine. Receiving spinal treatments can reduce such pains through chiropractic, and pregnancy issues like delivery can be made more comfortable and faster.

Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic care is a conservative form of treatment that addresses the spinal cord, discs and related nerves without the use of surgery or drugs. It involves the adjustment of spine to align it back to its normal position. This reduces the spinal nerve stress which can cause various other health complications in the woman and later on in the child. Hence, chiropractic treatment addresses the whole body to promote health and well being.

Safe during Pregnancy

Many complications can occur during pregnancy that can be triggered by spinal problems. These complications can get transferred to the newborn, as they affect the nervous system of a mother. Babies can develop colic, breathing problems, allergic reactions, bedwetting, and neural disorders. The Webster Technique is commonly employed for pregnant women to reduce the spinal nerve stress and balance pelvis, ligaments and muscles.

Throughout the stages of pregnancy, specialized chiropractic care plans are devised to suit the patient. Research shows there are no known potential contradictions to chiropractic treatment during pregnancy. Chiropractic professionals are known to adjust treatments to better suit the body of a pregnant woman. They follow tables and employ techniques which avoid unnecessary pressure on the stomach.

Benefits of Chiropractic Care

Many medical experts recommend chiropractic care during pregnancy as it helps maintain pelvic balance. A balanced pelvis gives a baby more room to move into the correct birth position. This avoids some of the potential fallbacks of delivery. Other benefits include:

Reducing back, neck and joint pain
Reducing nerve stress to promote healthy development of the mother and baby
Relieving pressure from the spine and maintaining better posture
Restoring joints to ensure optimum range of motion
Reducing symptoms of nausea
Reducing time of labor and delivery
Stimulates optimal functioning of reproductive organs
Preventing potential cases of cesarean
Maintaining a healthy pregnancy

A visit to the chiropractic clinic begins with physical evaluations, and then a treatment plan is made, involving therapies, nutrition and exercise. Chiropractic care aims to provide comfort for mothers during and after pregnancy, and also ensuring their babies enjoy proper bone and neural development.

Image Used Under Creative Commons Licensing: Profile of a pregnant woman by Jason Pier in DC

Diet for your Disc Injury – Know what Works

An Apple a Day Keeps the Spinal Surgeon Away

One of the cardinal rules that all chiropractors go by is to rely on the human body’s own abilities to heal its own self. In fact, this is exactly why most chiropractors say that patients who suffer from potentially debilitating conditions such as herniated discs can prevent the condition by eating the right kind of foods. Almost 80% of the population suffers from back pain and would rather resort to minimally invasive back treatments to make their pain a passing memory.

Sadly, most people do not see the connection between what they eat and the affect it might have on their backs. Remember, your body needs to ingest the appropriate amount of nutrition in order for the muscles in your back to move as they should. Here is what you can include in your diet to ensure just that –

Power Foods

Your muscles need power foods in order to, well, become powerful enough to support your movements. These are natural food items that provide a great boost of energy in small doses over the course of a few hours. In other words, they can supply an ample amount of energy to keep you going without craving for a sugary donut that will deplete you of any reserves you might have in minutes.

Foods that contain a high amount of antioxidants such as blueberries and salmon that contains omega 3 fatty acids are good examples of power foods. Chiropractors say that foods such as these can keep your body supplied with the fuel it needs to maintain or support your spine thereby preventing you from acquiring a disc injury.

Foods that contain vitamins and minerals can also prevent your back from failing you when you need it the most. Power foods such as these actually aid the body in releasing energy from the food it ingests to keep itself healthy. Calcium and Vitamins such as vitamin D keep your bones strong and durable as well.

Eating right can seem like a difficult prospect in the fast paced societies of today. However, your body shouldn’t suffer for it. Spinal injuries such as a disc injury are nothing to scoff at. Therefore it’s best that you include food items such as whole grains, whole wheat bread and vegetables in your diet. Not only will this help keep your back in shape for the long run it will also help you run on a full tank of gas till lunch time.

Image used under Creative Commons Licensing: Discovery apples.jpg

Dr. Jeff Spencer Gives Chiropractic Care to Dr. Dennis Weinstein of Lansing

What does it take to win the Tour? Answer…everything you got, and more. It encompasses every aspect one faces in life in one short period of time. The ups and downs, the trials and tribulations are all there. If one is mentally prepared and did all there homework, then it becomes that much easier to reach the pinnacle of all athletic endeavors. Dr. Jeff Spencer is on “Tour” to spread the message to all chiropractors here in Michigan and in all parts of the country. His experiences and his success strategy are inspiring and uplifting. If you want information about Dr. Jeff, please search for him on Google or at www.jeffspencer.com

Why Spinal Surgery is a Bad Idea

Because it takes the smallest mistake to permanently paralyze a healthy individual, a fact that any chiropractor will attest to. There is always a risk of injury involved in spinal surgery.

Almost 80% of the people in the country will complain about lower back pain at some point in their lives. More work days are missed because of spinal pain than any other sort of ailment. This also places it as one of the most common causes of disabilities right after cardiovascular disease.

However, most people would rather seek the services of certified chiropractors than their doctors. Doctors usually prescribe numbing medication or painful surgical procedures like spinal surgery for patients who complain of repetitive chronic pain. But that is hardly a permanent solution and also involves a great deal of risks.

What can go Wrong:

Transitional Syndrome

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the spine has to do with its behavior. Your spine behaves like a chain of repeated segments. Each of the individual segments works as a whole to share the workload that is involved in moving the body by sharing the load along the spinal column. In other words the stress that is imposed on the spine during the movement is shared amongst the segments.

However such a process can only happen seamlessly when the spine is healthy. When one or more of the segments doesn’t work as they should their neighboring segments have to pick up the slack and work harder. The segment that is closest to the dysfunctional one gets most of the stress. This means that the area near where the spinal surgery was performed takes on more stress. This is what is known as transitional syndrome since it occurs due to the transition of a healthy area of the spine to the fused area.

General practitioners and even orthopedic surgeons can never claim to know what causes pain in the back. To them, complex procedures like spinal surgery appear as handy default treatments. This is not to mention the disastrous residual pain that is caused by inappropriate surgery. Such a complication is more of a possibility after common spinal surgeries, such as laminectomies, in which a disc is removed to give the nerve near the central spinal cord more space to move, or fusion, in which a vertebra is surgically joined to another to restrict excess movement.

Image used under Creative Commons Licensing: Illu vertebral column.jpg

5 Common Symptoms of Poor Posture and How to Treat Them with Exercise

Good posture is very important when it comes to a healthy way of living. Chiropractors help you maintaining one. A lot of people don’t comprehend the importance of a good posture. Some experience varying degrees of pain all over the body that gradually turns into major complications. What people fail to realize is that the root of many of the simplest and even the complex of all health issues are usually linked to the body posture, in one way or another.

If someone is experiencing anything from the following symptoms, it would be a wise idea to get their posture evaluated to see if that is causing any of the complications. Fortunately, a few relatively simple exercises can help in restoring the body posture and eliminate any problems associated with it.

1. HEAD

Following symptoms may be felt in the head due to incorrect postures:

The person may have frequent headaches, including the ‘throbbing’ feeling
It feels that the head may split open
It feels as if something is pounding inside the head
The individual may suffer from dizziness and a loss of sense of balance
The sounds around them may seem way too loud to them along with a ringing sound in the ears

2. EYES

The eyes may be subjected to the following:

The eye-sockets are painful and cause the eyes to feel sore
Rolling the eyes causes pain
Eyes lose their natural wetness
The vision starts to get blurry

3. NECK

The neck is a quite sensitive area due to the passing spinal cord and is almost always affected by a bad posture.

Shooting neck pain
Muscle spasms occur regularly
The neck feels stiff

4. JAW

The jaw bone is also affected by bad posture in the following way:

The individual may start experiencing TMJ pain
It gets painful to chew, and a popping sound is heard
The cheek muscles start to hurt
Shoulders are also significantly affected:
The person may feel pain in the socket
It may become difficult to raise arm or when trying to scratch the back

5. SHOULDER

Exercise

Fortunately, before any complicated problems start happening, a chiropractor can prescribe exercises that are aimed at strengthening muscles and bones and help in restoring a proper body posture. Many of the exercises are easy to do at home and are designed to relax stiff muscles, keep the spinal column in a correct shape and thereby improve the overall lifestyle.

Exercise is also a great way to avoid heart diseases, high blood pressures, diabetes and scores of other diseases that result from