Have you experienced back pain before? Yes? It’s natural to fear its recurrence, but don’t let it stop your life! This time of year, just think of Santa. Think he’s had
back pain before throwing all those packages
and parcels? OrthoIllinois Chiropractic expects he has!
Santa can’t quit, and neither can you. McHenry
chiropractic care can help manage new back pain and chronic
back pain and direct our McHenry back pain
sufferers to be a bit less fearful and a bit more confident getting around this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your McHenry chiropractor realizes
this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers looked
into this common clinical finding and found that this fear of bending forward also influences postural sway or balance by interfering
with hip balance control, bringing about weight shifting from
side to side to maintain balance. (1) What’s an unwanted
effect of being unbalanced? A fall. OrthoIllinois Chiropractic
finds it very critical to help our back pain patients –
especially our older back pain patients – to keep
their balance!
HELP TO KEEP BALANCE AND DECREASE FEAR
“There’s an app for that!” Just what our
older McHenry chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can frustrate 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 assess
age-related differences in balance not typically picked
up during clinical exam measurements like postural stability,
step time, step length and cycle. (2) These insights can assist
healthcare providers like your chiropractor design a more effective
and individualized treatment plan to decrease fear of movement and
increase balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are doing more research study
to quantify the benefits of multimodal chiropractic care in its
ability to affect gait, balance and/or fall risk and
prevention. (3) One positive study with older lumbar spinal
stenosis patients (average age 83.5 years) found that their postural sway and
entropy as well as function and symptomatology were improved
with a course of chiropractic care including Cox® Technic Flexion Distraction Decompression
spinal manipulation. (4) OrthoIllinois Chiropractic offers this treatment along
with nutrition and exercise to help our patients keep moving fearlessly and balanced!
BIOMARKERS FOR BACK PAIN
A new nutrition finding this month
may also aid this effort. It comes from researchers evaluating
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 relationship between vitamin D levels and changes
in both pain and disability for low back pain patients treated with
spinal manipulation. (5) One day, we may do blood tests to manage risks for back pain!
CONTACT OrthoIllinois Chiropractic
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 McHenry chiropractic
appointment now. Calling all our McHenry 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!