Have you experienced back pain before? Yes? It
is common to fear its return, but don’t let it slow you down! This time of year, just think of Santa. Think he’s felt
back pain before throwing all those packages
and parcels? Manahawkin Chiropractic Center expects he has!
Santa cannot stop, and neither can you. Manahawkin
chiropractic care can help you deal with new back pain and chronic
back pain and lead our Manahawkin back pain
sufferers to be a bit less fearful and a bit more confident getting around this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your Manahawkin chiropractor realizes
this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers analyzed this common clinical finding and found that this fear of bending forward also affects postural sway or balance by interfering
with hip balance control, causing weight shifting from
side to side to keep balance. (1) What’s an undesirable
effect of being off-balance? A fall. Manahawkin Chiropractic Center
finds it very important to help our back pain patients –
especially our older back pain patients – stay balanced and upright!
HELP TO KEEP BALANCE AND REDUCE FEAR
“There is an app for that!” Just what our
older Manahawkin chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can annoy a few of its users,
particularly some older users, it can help! The novel
smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is accessible.
Researchers have verified that it is able to measure
age-related differences in balance not necessarily picked
up via clinical exam measurements like postural stability,
step time, step length and cycle. (2) These insights can assist
healthcare providers like your chiropractor create a more effective
and individualized treatment plan to decrease fear of movement and
improve balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are exerting more research effort
to quantify the benefits of multimodal chiropractic care in its
ability to influence gait, balance and/or fall risk and
prevention. (3) One encouraging study with older lumbar spinal
stenosis patients (average age 83.5 years) found that their postural sway and
entropy in addition to function and symptomatology were better
with a course of chiropractic care including Cox® Technic Flexion Distraction Decompression
spinal manipulation. (4) Manahawkin Chiropractic Center offers this treatment along
with nutrition and exercise to keep
our chiropractic patients moving, fearless, and balanced!
BIOMARKERS FOR BACK PAIN
A new nutrition finding this month
may also aid this effort. It comes from researchers analyzing
levels of biomarkers – C-reactive protein, vitamin D, neuropeptide Y and others
- in low back pain patients tested using blood tests with pain
and disability. Vitamin D which keeps appearing in many health
news reports today also seems to be a potential biomarker for
back pain relief and disability. A respected randomized control study
found a link between vitamin D levels and changes
in both pain and disability for low back pain patients treated with
spinal manipulation. (5) Some day, we may do blood tests to check
for back pain risks!
CONTACT Manahawkin Chiropractic Center
Listen to this PODCAST
with Dr. Joel Dixon on The Back Doctors
Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes his helping
a Vietnam veteran deal with his back pain for 20 years,
incorporating the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Schedule your Manahawkin chiropractic
appointment soon. Calling all our Manahawkin back pain patients!
Bring us your back pain and your fear of back pain, bending and falling. We can
help you manage them as well as Santa fearlessly and efficiently delivers
all his packages in a single night!