 Hello, everyone! This is Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic. As always, I hope you’re doing well and staying healthy! In my last blog, we discussed headaches and chiropractic care. Today, we’ll be talking all about sleep and chiropractic care. Not only can chiropractic care help with sleep issues, but making a few changes in your sleeping habits can also help eliminate sleep issues and discomfort that prevents you from getting the sleep you need. We’ve all heard about the importance of getting adequate sleep, but are you aware of the actual reasons why? Sleep is an essential function and is vital for adequate function of the brain and body. When you do not get enough sleep, your risk for health conditions rise, including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and migraines. Additionally, lack of sleep can compromise your immune system, which increases your risk of disease and infection. People can have trouble sleeping for a variety of reasons, including insomnia, sleep apnea, and discomfort or pain. In fact, pain seems to be one of the leading causes of poor quality sleep. If you are interested in learning more about the link between sleep and chiropractic care, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get started.
How can chiropractic care improve sleep? Chiropractors are licensed medical professionals that are trained to adjust and manipulate the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine. These adjustments have a variety of benefits, including the ability to reduce or eliminate pain, improve posture, regain mobility, improve range of motion, and more. Although most people associate chiropractors with reducing back pain alone, chiropractic care can help with a variety of conditions, such as fibromyalgia and digestive issues. It can also help with sleep conditions such as insomnia or chronic pain that contributes to poor sleep. Insomnia is one of the most common sleep disorders that makes it hard to fall asleep or stay asleep. People may experience acute or chronic insomnia. Some causes include stress and anxiety, lifestyle factors, a poor sleeping environment, and physical health conditions. Many people do not realize that the spine is directly related to the nervous system. The spinal cord allows nerve impulses to travel to and from the brain, helping your body perform necessary functions. When certain vertebrae are out of alignment, they can press on nerves and block signals. These blockages are known as subluxations, or interferences, and they prevent your body from using its natural ability to heal itself. Subluxations can be caused by accidents, falls, bad posture, or even emotional stress. The truth is, subluxations have the power to affect almost all areas of your health, causing digestive issues, headaches, pain, and sleep disorders. They are actually the cause of a multitude of health issues, and cannot be cured with medication; This only masks the problem, rather than addressing the cause. Chiropractic care can help treat insomnia and other sleep disorders by addressing the root cause or source of the problem, which may be a subluxation, or stress that caused a subluxation. When we think of stress, we often think of mental or emotional stress. But this kind of stress can also manifest physically, causing symptoms that can range from aches and pains to nausea and restlessness. When the body experiences stress, muscles often tense up in an attempt to shield the body from pain or injury. If you are feeling particularly stressed, you may notice that your jaw is clenched or you may feel tightness in your neck or back muscles. This is your body’s immediate response to stress; The muscles tense up, and then release once the stress passes. Chronic stress can cause the muscles to stay tensed almost constantly. An adjustment can release tension held in the muscles, which relaxes the body and increases blood circulation. Additionally, moving vertebrae back into their proper alignment can eliminate pain caused by tensed muscles, which may also reduce emotional stress almost immediately. If you are unable to sleep solely because of discomfort or pain that is not related to stress, an adjustment can alleviate that as well. Not only do adjustments release tension and increase blood circulation, but they also remove pressure on spinal nerves to encourage the body to perform its essential functions efficiently. A chiropractor also has the knowledge and means to speak with you and discuss your sleeping posture and habits, as well as lifestyle habits. They can offer advice and recommendations that can help you get the sleep you need. Sometimes, a small lifestyle change can make a big difference. What is sleep posture? Sleep posture refers to the position your body is in during or prior to sleep. You may be surprised to find out that there is a “wrong” way to sleep! Just like there is good posture when it comes to standing, there is good sleep posture, too. Different sleep positions have different benefits and play a huge role in the quality of your sleep. Your sleep posture can also have an impact on back pain. So what is the best position to sleep in? This may vary from person to person, depending on your needs. However, an ideal sleeping position supports the natural curve of your neck and spine, keeping them in proper alignment. You want to avoid sleeping positions that put unnecessary stress on your back, neck, and hips. Here are some examples of good sleep posture.
With that being said, there are also some sleeping positions that you should avoid:
Additionally, your mattress may be the cause of your back pain. A general rule of thumb is to search for a firm mattress. However, I recommend trying to change your sleep posture first. As you can see, chiropractors do so much more than relieve back pain. They can also help you get the good night’s rest that you deserve! I hope you found this article informative. If you or a loved one are suffering from poor quality sleep or any type of joint or back pain, you may benefit from chiropractic care. Consider reaching out to Lowcountry Chiropractic! We specialize in different chiropractic techniques, as well as both therapeutic and Swedish massage. Send us an email or give us a call and we’ll assess the situation and develop a treatment plan to address your needs. We want to help you live a healthy and pain-free life– it’s what you deserve. As always, this is Dr. Bob and I have your back covered!
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 A brand new year is here! I want to share some of the best tips you can do for your body to keep healthy and happy in 2021!
Hello everyone! It's Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Welcome back to the blog and a very Happy New Year to you! I hope you're staying safe and well out there, and I hope you're taking care of yourselves! Welcome to 2021! I think we are all very happy to see it here, and we are all happy to get out of last year and all of its craziness. With a new year comes resolutions to work out, eat better, and be healthier overall, right? Sadly, these resolutions usually only last for a short time. In honor of that and in honor of 2021, I want to help you achieve your goals. So, I wanted to share a list of things with you that you'll be able to stick with and make part of your everyday life, to make sure this year and beyond are the healthiest they can be. If you do everything on this list that you're about to read, you will get healthier without question. It's a simple list, but I won't lie to you; it won't be easy. Each of the listed items takes effort on your part to incorporate them into your lifestyle. I personally have nothing to do with this list, outside of providing it for you, except for the last point we will talk about today. Let's kick off this new year and jump into this list to start on a healthier and happier you! #1 Go Green! I'm not talking about saving the earth, I'm not talking about saving trees from getting cut down, and I'm not talking about global warming. I am talking about eating healthy and eating green things. Some of the best ways to eat green are by eating things like salads, fruits, and vegetables. It's not only about eating green things but also about eating multicolored things. They call this kind of diet "eating the rainbow" because those are the things that have a lot of phytonutrients and antioxidants in them like berries, nuts, peppers, romaine lettuce, and much more. I eat a lot of my green food raw. I eat salads a lot, but at night I'll have a piece of fish with green beans and the green beans will be raw, because when you cook food it tends to remove the nutrients from it. When I say "go green" I really mean that you need to get away from eating food that's white or brown, and you need to eat colorful things that come out of the ground or grow on trees. Eating this way will help you become much healthier! Another reason to eat green is that they are alkaline in nature and not acidic. You'll find acidic elements in starches, bread, pasta, candy, and sweets. Fruits and veggies will make your body more alkaline. This is so important because diseases like cancer thrive in an acidic environment, and you don't want that! #2 Refine Your Life! What do I mean by this? I'm talking about refined sugars. You want to try to eliminate eating foods that have unnaturally occurring sugars in them and replace them with foods that only have natural sugars. Unfortunately, almost all the products you see on the shelves of a grocery store have a ton of refined sugars in them. Why do we want to avoid refined sugars? There are a lot of reasons, but the two most important are as follows:
#3 Get a Supplemental Plan! I'm not talking about a medicare supplement for insurance. I'm talking about health supplements to the foods that you eat. We are not going to get 100% of everything we need from the food that we eat every day. To help with this, you want to try and supplement your intake with various items. I take Juice Plus+, which is whole foods in capsules. If I'm not getting 100% of all my fruits, vegetables, and berries every day this supplement helps to bridge the gap between what I am eating and what I should be eating for a healthy body. In terms of supplementation, I take fish oil and coconut oil which are huge anti-inflammatories. You might want to consider adding one or more into your diet. Another supplement you should look into adding that I always talk about is vitamin D3. It is an extremely great and inexpensive supplement to boost your immune system. Boosting your immune system is so important when we are already dealing with COVID, the flu season, and more. You want your immune system to be working at 100% so it can defend itself against some of these dangerous things that are out there. I recommend most people take between 3000 to 5000 IUs of D3. I'm taking 10,000 right now during the pandemic. I will say that I haven't felt anything in terms of a sniffle or a sore throat since this pandemic has started, so I know it's doing something good for me! #4 Don't Be a Couch Potato! We've had a lot of couch potatoes in 2020 and so far into 2021 because a lot more people are working from home and they're not as active as they should be! You need to incorporate exercise into your routine. You need to add not only cardiovascular exercises like running, walking, swimming, or biking, but you also need to add in cross-training with weights, high-intensity interval training, and more to trick your body (in a good way!) to keep improving. If you do the same workout every time, your body gets lazy. You have to mix it up, which is why I do Crossfit. Every class is different, incorporating different body parts every session. Don't be a couch potato! You have to get up and start a habit. It takes three weeks to make or break a habit, so let's do this! #5 Rest and Relax! This means getting enough sleep every night, and that means at least 7-8 hours, which is recommended by the experts. The primary reason to get enough sleep is that during your REM stage of sleeping, your body is taking the time to repair itself from all the work you've done throughout the day. The neurons, synapses, the coverings and linings of your organs, your blood vessels, and your whole body heals and repairs itself when you're sleeping. #6 Don't Worry - Be Happy! What does this mean? Experts say about 95% of what we worry about is either really not important or is never going to happen, so we really shouldn't be worrying about them. We spend too much time worrying about things that aren't going to occur or even impact us. What I would challenge you to do this year is to take a more positive approach to life if you're not already. Try to look at the glass as being half full instead of half empty, and look at the blessings you have in your life instead of the negative things. Put a list together if you have to, but we all have many things we can be grateful for in life. This can give you a little joy and optimism as you go through this year. #7 Get Connected This is the one thing on the list that you need me for! I'm not talking about getting connected on social media (shoutout to Creative Consulting for doing an amazing job!). No, this is getting your brain and body to talk to one another. This is the only way your body is going to stay optimally healthy. There is a little thing called the spinal cord that connects the brain to all of your body parts, along with the nerves that go out from your spinal cord. If you don't take care of your spinal cord and the spinal nerves, your brain (which makes all of your body's decisions and sends out all the messages out to your body) will be sending those messages out, but they will reach their destinations improperly. So, the body is not going to be effectively doing the work that the brain wants it to. Also, if those nerves aren't working properly, the body can't communicate back to the brain. The brain will then not know what decisions it should really be making. How do you keep this connection working properly between your brain and your body? Go to a chiropractor! I am trained to remove subluxations of the spine, which are conditions where the vertebrae are irritating a spinal nerve and interfering up the conduction of mental, electrical and chemical impulses from the brain to the body. I and my fellow chiropractors are trained to remove those subluxations from your body and allow your brain and body to communicate as they should! It's amazing what benefits you'll see when your body is free from subluxations. By removing subluxations, your body can experience:
I don't want you to stress out and think that you have to do this list perfectly. You just need to follow it fairly well, because if you're not doing any of them and you implement even some of them into your life, you'll see a huge improvement in your health this year. You'll lose the weight that you want to lose, you'll build muscle mass, you'll sleep better, you'll have more energy, you'll have better focus, and you won't get sick as often. The real important thing on this list, outside of the essential chiropractic care, is nutrition. Nutrition is the most important thing you can do for yourself in 2021, but of course, I want you to do this whole list! I hope this helps and gives you a little encouragement for the new year. This is going to be a better year for you but you have to want to make it better! ! If you need any help with the items on this list, we do offer consultation on each of these topics. Come see me, call me, or email me to get started. Remember, I am Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. See you next time, readers. Stay safe out there and Happy New Year!  Your brain controls your entire body. Did you know that taking care of your body can help give back to your brain and improve its function and health every day?
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! Today, we are going to be talking about brain function, which is so important! We're going to be talking about some natural things, foods you can eat, and things you can do, all of which can improve your brain function and health. Why is this important? Your brain is the master controller of your body. Your brain controls and regulates every function and system in your body. This includes your immune system, which is so important right now! If your brain is not being nourished and it's not as healthy as it should be, it's not going to work properly. The rest of your body won't function as it should either, including that important immune system! What CAN we do? Let's talk about some very simple things that we can do to help keep our brain and brain function healthy! Resting! We need to get enough sleep at night. The time spent during our REM (rapid eye movement) cycle is when all of our protein bridges and synapses in the brain repair and heal themselves. If we are not getting enough rest, your brain and other parts of your body do not have that time to repair and heal. This will cause them to break down a lot quicker. Everyone is different; some people can get by with less than the recommended 7 to 8 hours of sleep, while others need more. But, I would recommend that you try and get as much sleep as possible, not just what you can get by on. Go to bed sooner, put down your phone, turn off Netflix, and force yourself to get that extra rest. Your brain and body will thank you for it! Nutrition! The second piece of the puzzle that you can do for yourself is having good nutrition. There are at least 10 food items that will increase brain function and brain health. The common theme with these products is that they are antioxidants; they take oxidative stress off your brain and allow it to stay healthier and to heal quicker. These foods are also anti-inflammatory agents. We know that inflammation on your joints is bad, and creates pain. Inflammation on your brain is much worse. Over time, this pressure dulls the senses and can lead to the development of dementia or Alzheimer's down the road. These ten items can help you prevent these issues down the line and keep your brain healthy now!
Chiropractic Care I'm a chiropractor, so of course, I want to talk about chiropractic care and how it affects brain function. Many studies have been done on the effects of chiropractic adjustments on brain function. There have been brain scans that have been performed pre and post chiropractic adjustments on the same day. The pre-adjustment brain is muted, the colors don't pop and it is just sort of existing. That post adjustment brain is lit up and thriving. We know definitively that chiropractic adjustments improve and increase brain function and communication. I do want to reference the Journal of Neural Plasticity from January 2016 here as well. This study and journal is a medical one, not a chiropractic one. This study shows that chiropractic spinal adjustments significantly increase activity in the brain's prefrontal cortex. This is the area where higher learning and cognition happens. The journal goes on to say that the prefrontal cortex is also responsible for behavior, goal-directed tasks, decision making, memory and attention, intelligence, processing of pain and the emotional response to it, autonomic function, motor control, eye movement, and spatial movements. All of these are pretty important! In my opinion, if you're not under chiropractic care because you don't think you need it (because you're not in pain) please remember this journal and this blog! Chiropractic care will improve your brain function now and later down the road. I hope this information is helpful. I hope you will use it and apply it to your life. If any of you out there needs some stimulus to the brain, which we all do, look us up! Give us a call, send us an email, we'd love to examine you and take a look. We'd love to take some X-rays to see what we can do to help you get healthier. Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I have your back covered. Take care! To read more about the study I mentioned in today's blog, please follow the link below: https://waldronchiropractic.com/study-chiropractic-adjustments-change-brain-function/  You might have been suffering from back and body pain for years, but maybe it's not your back or your body that's causing the issues. Maybe it's an old mattress and old pillows that need to be replaced that are causing your pain and suffering.
Hey everybody, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Today we are going to talk about pillows and mattresses. I often see patients in my office who are not paying attention to their mattresses as they get old, and it creates a lot of back issues for them. Why is a mattress so important to your health? A quarter to a third of our life is spent laying on a mattress and sleeping. Think about it. If you're sleeping on a mattress 6 to 8 hours a day, that adds up to a quarter to a third of your life, so you want to make sure that you have a great mattress that takes care of your spine and allows you to get a good night's rest. Sleep is the only time our body repairs itself from all the work it's done during the day, so if you're not getting a good night's sleep, your body begins to break down and wear out quicker than it normally would. There are so many reasons why you should put emphasis on a good mattress. I hear it all the time from my patients who go to bed and they feel fine, but when they wake up their back is killing them. That is a very telling sign that your mattress needs to go. Where do you start when picking out the best mattress? Over the last twenty years, there have been a lot of changes in the industry. There are so many more products and competitors than there used to be. This is a great thing because when you get more competition, the cost of the product comes down. So you can get a high-quality product at a lower price. You can buy a nice mattress today for not a ton of money. There are three basic types of mattresses that you need to know about to understand what you should be considering when buying your next mattress.
Let's take a moment to recap memory foam mattresses and all of these options in general. Remember, you want a mattress that is fairly firm and one that comes with a good warranty. Most mattresses come with a 20-year warranty now, and that's just fantastic! You don't have to turn or flip a memory foam mattress to get the full use out of it, which is another great advantage. Bedbugs, mites, and other bugs don't like memory foam mattresses, whereas they love those traditional coil mattresses. You can buy the perfect mattress for you online from companies like Casper or Purple. You can find them at Costco and Sams Club too. You don't have to spend thousands of dollars to get a good quality mattress. Go to your local Mattress Firm and see what they have. One of my patients just bought a mattress online that came highly recommended and she loves it. It was a full-size mattress for only a couple hundred dollars. You don't have to break the bank for a great mattress. In terms of pillows, I sleep on a contoured pillow. One end is smaller than the other, and you need to sleep on the smaller end of the pillow with it placed right under your neck. You can use the larger end to do stretches before you go to bed. For our patients who have very straight necks, we give them exercises to do using the thick end of a contoured pillow. I like the memory foam contoured pillows because they give a little bit and are more forgiving. Many different companies make these wonderful pillows; you just need to find the company that's perfect for you! Now that you know about the best mattresses and pillows out there, what is the best posture for sleeping? The worst way to sleep is to sleep on your stomach because you have to turn your head to breathe, and when you do that all the vertebrae in your neck shift, causing irritated nerves and tightened neck muscles. Stomach sleeping also puts a lot of pressure on your abdominal contents like intestines and other vital organs, which is just not good. The best ways to sleep are either on your side or your back, depending on what you're most comfortable doing.
I hope all of this helps! If you're having problems sleeping or are waking up in pain it may be your mattress. It might also be that your spine needs to get checked. Generally, if I'm working with someone and they are still waking up in pain, it's usually not their spine that is causing the pain. It is usually their mattress, and it's time to get a new one. Come see us! We will be happy to talk you through all of this, give you proper advice, and keep your spine in good health! I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered! |
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