Stop Low Back Pain Today

Stop Most Low Back Pain Today

Remember to Stretch

Exercise is a three-step process: stretching, exercising, and abdominal strengthening. Stretching prepares you for the work of exercise, and is done first — before anything else — gently and gradually. You may be tighter than usual on a particular day. This is not important — you should never try to stretch to where “you think you should be”. Just stretch, making sure to pay attention to what you’re doing. It’s easy to injure a muscle if you’re thinking about something else, or if you’re rushing, trying to squeeze in some stretching before dashing off.

You never know until you hurt it how much you use your lower back all day long. When your lower back is injured, every movement becomes painful. Simple actions, such as getting out of a chair or bending over the sink, become excruciating, and your daily routine becomes difficult and frustrating.

Back pain affects 60 to 80 percent of U.S. adults at some time during their lives, and up to 50 percent have back pain within a given year. Some of these problems are easily treated and low back pain never return, but in twenty percent of patients low back pain becomes chronic and the person continues to have recurrences and exacerbation (episodes).

Effective treatment of uncomplicated low back pain involves treatment in a chiropractor’s office and beginning and continuing an exercise program. A recent study conducted by the Medical Research Council, a research organization based in the United Kingdom, has found that patients given a combination of spinal manipulation and exercise experienced greater improvement in back function and greater reduction in pain compared to those treated with spinal manipulation or exercise only.

Much mechanical lower back pain is associated with tight leg muscles (hamstrings and quadriceps) and weak abdominal muscles. Leg muscles need to be stretched and abdominal muscles need to be strengthened to avoid recurrences of low back pain. This is a daily event. We recommend that a person spend about the same amount of time each day on their back doing exercises as they do brushing their teeth. (4 min a day)

People are generally not aware of these relationships. You may know you “should be exercising”, but you may be unaware of the importance of stretching. Also, abdominal strengthening is usually the last thing a person thinks of when he or she thinks of doing exercise.
Abdominal strengthening helps support the lower back. Spinal muscles are not designed to carry your body weight. If your abdominal muscles are weak, then your back muscles will be used to carry your body weight, and eventually you’ll have low back pain. Abdominal strengthening not only helps keep your lower back healthy, but also helps maintain good posture. Postural benefits include an easy, relaxed gait; muscles that are long and supple, rather than short and tight; and an open chest that allows for easy, smooth breathing. Your body is continuous. Everything’s connected. A lower back problem often affects many other areas. By making sure to stretch daily and by including abdominal exercises in your home exercise daily routine, you can help ensure having a low back that works.

As a Huntsville AL Chiropractor, Madison AL Chiropractor, Decatur AL Chiropractor, Millar Chiropractic. we have tried this program successfully on many patients.

Copyright 2011 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.

A New You - Your New Reality

A New You - Your New Reality

120-Day Makeover

Your body's cells and tissues are constantly undergoing replacement, remodeling, and makeovers. For example, your red blood cells - the cells that carry oxygen from your lungs to every other part of your body - replace themselves every 120 days. Other cells with such a high rate of turnover include the cells lining your gastrointestinal tract - stomach, small intestine, and large intestine - and hair cells. Ultimately all of your body's cells die and are replaced. What this means is that the "new you" doesn't have to be the same as the "old you". As you get healthier - eat more nutritious foods, exercise regularly, and get sufficient restful sleep - your new replacement cells also become stronger, fitter, and healthier. For most people, chiropractic care is an essential ingredient in becoming healthier. Chiropractic care helps improve the functioning of your nerve system, which in turn helps every system of your body function more effectively and efficiently. With respect to health and well-being, chiropractic care helps your desire for a "new reality" become a reality.

Is it possible to create "a new you" personal reality? So-called unscripted reality television shows say you can - "The Biggest Loser" being one of the more popular of these tell-all and show-all programs. But most of us realize that these shows don't closely represent reality as we experience it. What causes us to tune in anyway? The answer is that even though reality shows may be scripted or controlled, they do contain an element of reality regarding the actual problems of the participants/contestants. We empathize with their struggles, and hope to discern some new knowledge that may help us overcome our own hurdles. But can a real person, in real life, make long-lasting changes in lifestyle, health, and wellness?  "A New Reality"

The provisional answer is yes.^1,2,3 A real person can lose significant weight and keep it off. A real person can become physically fit, even though she hasn't exercised for 20 years, or ever. A real person can create a nutritional food plan that covers all the basics and also tastes great. A real person can sleep seven or eight hours a night, most nights, and have the ongoing experience of feeling well-rested. A real person can enjoy meaningful and fulfilling relationships with family and friends. In short, a real person can design and have a real life, even though from today's perspective such a rewarding life might seem an impossibly unattainable goal.

Your new reality is possible, but it doesn't come for free. If no effort were involved, every person in the developed world would be living happy, creative, self-fulfilled lives right now. You can see that is not the case when you look around at your workplace, the local market, or the shopping mall. How many people appear to be happy and engaged? How many appear anxious or stressed? Many times, anxiety and stress far outweigh happiness and enjoyment. For many, our default way of being seems to include worry, disorganization, disorder, and breakdown. These conditions lead to anxiety, which leads to stress, which leads to more worry and anxiety. When they form, these negative habits of thinking and action are habitually ineffective; they continue to be negative influences on our lives until we abolish them. In terms of health and well-being, our negative habits lead to the opposite conditions - we aren't healthy and we don't feel good about ourselves.

The world around us works the same way. Every moment, the universe is tending to greater entropy - the breakup of organized energy patterns and greater disorder. On the other hand, life has the power to reverse the natural tendency toward entropy. Life creates structure. Life creates organization. Think of honeycombs. Think of dams. Think of skyscrapers. Think of human endeavor.

Why then do human lives often seem to fall apart so easily? The missing secret ingredients include intention, planning, effort and mental state. And not only the effort required to keep the whole thing operational. Extra effort is called for to really make a difference. Extra effort that we take on our own behalf. In order for us to create a new personal reality, extra effort will be required. Weeks, months, and years of extra effort. This sounds like a lot. It is. The good news is that the payoff can be huge. The real payoff is the person you become as part of this process of renewal. You become your authentic self and reach "Your New Reality".

 

For years as a Huntsville AL Chiropractor, Madison AL Chiropractor, and Decatur AL Chiropractor, of Millar Chiropractic Clinic. we are often asked questions about how does one reach that reach that new reality. We often tell our patients to start today by following their DREAM. Where "D" stands for Diet (any thing you eat is your diet); "R" stands for rest (that includes sleep and rest at peace; "E" stands for Exercise; "A" stands for adjustments to keep the system optimally working; and "M" stands for mental state (perhaps the most important of all).

¹Totsikas C, et al: Cardiorespiratory fitness determines the reduction in blood pressure and insulin resistance during lifestyle intervention. J Hypertens 29(6):1220-1227, 2011

²Lohmann H, et al: Fitness consultations in routine care of patients with type 2 diabetes in general practice: an 18-month non-randomised intervention study. BMC Fam Pract 11:83, 2010

³Ryan AS: Exercise in aging: its important role in mortality, obesity and insulin resistance. Aging Health 6(5):551-563, 2010

Copyright 2011 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.

The Truth About Vitamins

The Truth About Vitamins


During a graduate nutrition course at the University of Minnesota, a professor posed a challenge to the class: Construct a 2000 calorie-per-day diet that at least met the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for vitamins and minerals without the use of supplements. Most of the graduate students thought that this was going to be a simple assignment. After all, we had been told over and over again that people can get all of the nutrients their body needs simply by eating a well-balanced diet. Well, the professor was putting that statement to the test.

To everyone’s surprise, no one was able to come up with a sustainable daily diet that met the minimum RDA requirements. The graduate students discovered that it is impossible to get everything that you need from the food we eat. But how could this be? Certainly people have lived on this planet for a long time and must have been able to get everything they needed from their diet. The answer has to do with modern farming techniques, fertilizers and environmental stresses.

Following the Second World War, chemical manufacturers were sitting on huge stockpiles of phosphates and nitrates that were initially intended for use in explosives. They discovered that when they spread these same phosphates and nitrates on the soil where plants were growing, the plants grew bigger and looked healthier. Thus began the boom of the fertilizer industry.

The problem with modern fertilizers is that they don’t replace soil trace minerals, such as chromium, zinc and copper, as do cow manure and other natural fertilizers. Over time, these trace minerals become more and more depleted from the soil and, consequently, our food supply becomes more depleted as well. The bottom line is that in order to get enough trace minerals in our diet to at least meet the minimum RDAs, it is necessary to take a good quality supplement.



How to Select a Good Multivitamin

All vitamin supplements are not created equal. Supplements are just like anything else— there are some good ones out there and a whole lot of supplements that are not as good. Here a few keys to determining whether a particular vitamin is good:

•In general, supplements sold through a health care professionals are top quality. These are called "Physician Grade". They tend to be a little more expensive than the supplements you find at your discount retailer, local drug store or health food store because the ingredients that go into them tend to be of a higher quality.

•High quality vitamins have chelated minerals. This makes a huge difference in how well the minerals are absorbed by your body. If you have any questions about specific supplements that you are taking, be sure to ask on of the Millar chiropractors.

•Most high quality vitamin formulations require that you take more than one capsule or tablet per day. This is simply because high quality ingredients, such as chelated minerals, take up more space than their cheaper counterparts.

•Most over the counter multivitamins are pressed or compressed into a pill or caplet form. The body has trouble digesting these vitamins and often they pass through and out the body without being absorbed.

•Several recent studies have demonstrated that most of the vitamins we take do not contain the actual quantity of vitamin or mineral on the label. "Physician Grade" vitamins are standardized in that they are certified by an independent lab to contain ALL the ingredients in the proper amounts as listed on the label.

The Bottom Line

Taking supplements as part of your overall daily health regimen is a simple and inexpensive way to ensure that your body has everything it needs to be healthy. When combined with regular chiropractic care, taking a high quality multivitamin will help to slow the aging process and decrease your risk of a number of degenerative diseases. Be sure to talk to your Millar Chiropractor to determine which multivitamin formula best fits your individual needs. Contact us directly at http://www.millarchiro.com/.



Copyright 2010 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.

Putting Out The Pain Fire

I see many patients that come to me every day with pain and lots of it. Often they have pain in several similar global areas. These seem to occur in groups like neck, upper back and shoulder pain some with arm pain some without; or low back, sacrum and hip pain as a group some with leg and some without leg involvement just to name a few. I have talked in the past to Drs. Spurlock, Matz and Hadley of the UAB Dept of Neurosurgery, as well as our doctors about this phenomena. They too have seen this in their practices. Over the years I have concluded that Pain is often not of a single source genesis or origin. Meaning that pain often comes from more than one cause. Further pain seems to begot pain. In that once the body is in pain the second or third pain seems to combine with the other pains to make the global area painful.

We the patients, want our pain to be from a single origin or cause as we feel that in someway it might be easier to stop or turn off the pain. However, I now believe in the multi genesis pain origin theory. This theory says that pain is often cumulative in the body. I often compare this to lighting a book of matches. If one were to light one match, one would have a small fire. Light the whole book and you get a much bigger fire composed of many smaller fires.

I find the same is true for the body. Let us take the low back pain for example. The origin of low back pain can often be traced to several pain generators. Say for example, a patient presents with low back pain radiating into the hip. How many times have we found that the patient did indeed have a disc problem, a same side facet problem, sacroiliacs, and bursitis of the hip or similar findings. This perhaps, is part of the reason for so many failed low back surgeries. Yes the surgeon dutifully decompresses the disc but does nothing to treat the co-concomitant conditions(other problems).

I often tell my doctors that if you can't find the problems you can't fix the problems. This can only be done through examination, treatment, re-examination and continued treatment. I often find it necessary to bring in other doctors or specialist in their respective areas to confirm diagnosis or treat. I find by accurately diagnosing the multi genesis pain and its several pain generators we can often separate and treat the overall pain putting out several of the pain fires and then determining the extent of the core problem. Kind of like turn off the background noise and see what is left.

Patients like this kind of treatment as they feel the progress. This progress gives them hope that their pain may be treatable. Surprisingly it is. Often the average doctor does not take the time or have the inclination to tease out the many pain generators. It is far easier to just say you have a bulging or herniated disc and treat only that problem. We encourage our doctors to look globally at our patients, diagnosing multi genesis pain generators and then treat them all.
Dr Greg


Copyright 2009 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.

Cervical Herniated Disc

I had a 36 year old male present with a Cervical herniated disc today. He presented with neck pain rated an 8 on the 0-10 scale and radiating pain into his left arm and hand of one month duration. He felt that his wrist was beginning to get weak. He had been to his primary doctor who sent him for an MRI of the cervical spine. His medical doctor had given him a medrol dose pack and pain meds. His MRI demonstrated two herniated disc, one at C5-6 and one at C6-7. His primary then referred him to a local orthopedist who wanted to do surgery immediately. The surgeon wanted to do a two level fusion. The patient wanted another opinion.

I did a complete history and physical. After examination I concluded that he had NO neurological deficits. He had numerous positive orthopedic and neurological test but non indicated a true neurological deficit. I needed further NCV testing to differentially diagnose between radiculopathy (radiating pain from the neck) vs Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (an entrapment of the Median nerve at the wrist) both of which could produce a pain in the hand. I ordered an NCV the next day. Dr Gary Cohen our Physical Medicine doctor at Millar MultiMedical preformed the test. The test concluded that yes there was a mild radiculopathy (radiating pain) coming from the neck but also there was carpal tunnel syndrome.

I started the patient on daily CMT, Chiropractic Manipulative Therapy with the Activator and DTS - Decompression Traction of the cervical spine at 22lbs at 15 degrees for 20 min a day. I also included in his care e-stim and ultrasound treatment. I told him he would get worse before he got better and indeed he did. But after only a few pulls his pain started going down. We also started treating the carpal tunnel syndrome with e-stim, ultra sound and manipulation. He is now nearly pain free.

I think this case demonstrates always get a second and even a third opinion if surgery is the option and it's not an emergency.
Dr Greg


Copyright 2009 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.

Headache that turns into a Migraine

Problem: Today I had a 39 year old female present with what she described as a sinus headache that turned into a migraine about 1-2 times a month. This problem began several years ago when they moved to Alabama from St. Louis. She is having the sinus headache almost daily. She finds that every spring and fall she has terrible sinus problems. She further stated that the headaches became a full blown sick migraines several times a month. She took allergy shots years ago and knows she is allergic to grass trees and flowers. But she was frustrated as the shots did not help much and besides you cant help the trees and grass there everywhere. She had talked to her primary care physician and he even prescribed Imitrex which made her sicker with nausea, muscle weakness in the neck and back as well as tongue and mouth pain and then he prescribed Topamax which made her legs and feet tingle and feel numb. The Topamax also made her fatigued and she felt like she could not function due to the confusion and fatigue. She had been off all headache medication for 6 months. The day she was seen she rated her headache as a 8 on the 0-10 scale with the night before being a 10/10. Exam: The normal orthopedic, neurological, palpation, spinal exam, range of motion, muscle test, and posture exam was preformed. X-rays of the sinus and cervical and thoracic spine were preformed in our office and the films were sent to Dr Mike Jokich MD radiologist for review. Copyright 2009 Millar Chiropractic Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. The contents of this website including all links to other pages or websites herein including but not limited to text, graphics, images, comments, statements, or information from doctors, host or guest, and other material contained therein (Content) are for informational purposes only. The Content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should not use this Content for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of Content you have seen, read or heard.