 Hello, everyone! This is Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic. As always, I hope you’re doing well and staying healthy! In my last post, we talked about how water benefits the joints. Today, we’ll be discussing ways to care for your back and stay healthy at home. Chiropractic adjustments are a great way to keep your spine in good condition and keep your body functioning at its optimal best. Seeing a chiropractor is often the first step towards living a healthier life. However, oftentimes, chiropractic care works best when used in conjunction with other healthy habits and lifestyle changes. Luckily, there are some easy steps you can take to get the most out of your chiropractic adjustments! If you’re interested in learning about how you can achieve optimal results from chiropractic care, you’re in the right place. Let’s get started!
Stick To A Routine One of the most important things you can do is to be consistent with your chiropractic visits. When you visit a chiropractor for the first time, they will create a treatment plan tailored to your specific needs. Ideally, you should stick to the treatment plan, since it has been customized to give you the best outcome. Don’t skip appointments! Keeping up with chiropractic appointments can keep your body functioning at its best and prevent future problems, such as subluxations. Think of a chiropractor in the same way you think of a dentist– You visit the dentist routinely to maintain the health of your teeth, not only when you are in extreme pain. Why should your spine be any different? Seeing a chiropractor routinely will maintain your spinal health and your overall body health. Maintain Proper Posture Did you know that poor posture is often a cause of back pain? Poor posture leads to aches and pains, but having poor posture over long periods of time can cause real damage. Poor posture causes the muscles in your neck and back to overexert themselves. It puts stress on the back, core, and abdominal muscles, reduces their blood supply, and can slowly develop stiffness or weakness. This not only pertains to having a hunched-over posture while standing, but it can apply to sitting for prolonged periods as well. For example, someone who sits at a desk all day for work is maintaining a “static” posture– This means it lacks in action or change. Sitting for prolonged periods can place stress on the arms and legs as well, and can even put pressure on the spinal discs. Poor posture can also apply to incorrect lifting techniques. Over time, incorrect posture can decrease your flexibility, affect how well your joints move, and wear away at your spine. Here are some tips on how to improve your posture.
Maintain A Healthy Diet We have all heard that a proper diet is important to our overall health. But did you know that nutrition and chiropractic care go hand in hand? If you are not eating foods with the proper nutrients that your body needs, then your body will not be able to perform at its full potential. When receiving chiropractic care, you can maximize the benefits of the treatment by maintaining a healthy diet. Various foods have different nutrients and benefits, but here are some of the best foods to eat in order to support a healthy nervous system and maintain bone health:
Exercise Regularly Just as we’ve heard of the importance of a healthy diet, we have also heard about the benefits of exercise. Not only can exercise improve your overall health, but it can also have benefits for your bones. Bone is a living tissue that becomes stronger with exercise. Weight-bearing and resistance exercises are some of the best exercises to build stronger bones. Weight-bearing exercises include walking, jogging, climbing up stairs, hiking, and playing sports like tennis. These exercises force you to work against gravity. Resistance exercises include weight lifting and squats. These are designed to improve strength and endurance. Besides benefiting your bones, certain exercises can strengthen your core muscles, which will help support your back and minimize your risk of back pain. Before starting an exercise routine, be sure to warm up by stretching properly. A good warm-up ensures that your muscles are well supplied with oxygen and raises your muscles’ temperature for optimal flexibility. After exercise, you should cool down as well. A proper cool down allows your body temperature, heart rate, and blood pressure return to normal levels. Get A Good Night’s Sleep The importance of a good night’s sleep goes well beyond just improving your overall mood. In fact, your body needs adequate sleep in order to function properly. Sleep is essential for every process of the body, including our ability to fight disease and develop immunity. During sleep, your immune system releases proteins called cytokines. Certain cytokines must increase when you have an infection or inflammation. Sleep deprivation can decrease production of these cytokines, which means your body needs to sleep to fight off infections, diseases, and other invaders. The recommended amount of sleep for adults is seven to eight hours. These are just a few simple ways that you can keep yourself healthy and maximize the benefits of your chiropractic visits! Remember, combining any form of exercise with chiropractic care can help further relieve and manage pain and help you achieve optimal results. Additionally, creating and maintaining healthy habits and lifestyle changes can improve your body’s overall function, making chiropractic care even more effective. Chiropractic care promotes the body’s natural ability to heal itself. I hope you found this article informative. If you or a loved one are suffering from 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 long-term treatment plan to address your needs. We want to help you live a pain-free life– It’s what you deserve. As always, this is Dr. Bob and I have your back covered!
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 Chiropractic care is an excellent form of care for everyone at every age! Today we're going to be talking about chiropractic care for children!
Welcome back to the blog, readers! I'm Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic! I hope you are all doing well out there, and that you're staying healthy and safe! Today we are going to be expanding on the idea that chiropractic care is beneficial for everyone at every stage in their lives. We've recently talked about the many benefits that chiropractic care offers to the elderly, and today we are going to turn the tables and talk about the benefits of chiropractic care for our children and younger generations. While their bodies are growing and developing, who better to have their brain function and their immune systems strengthened with chiropractic care than our children? When it comes to the goal of any chiropractor, it comes down to going beyond fixing the many ailments that can be connected to poor alignment and a subluxation. We care for your back, which is connected to the nervous system and your brain. The brain controls every operation in our bodies. While we are thrilled that chiropractic care can help so many different things, our goal is to ensure that the body's nervous system has every chance to work as efficiently and effectively as it can! CHILDREN AND CHIROPRACTIC CARE Many might think children don't need chiropractic care. Their bodies are brand new, healthy, and they haven't had to carry the weight and stress that adulthood and time can bring. While this is true, even before they're born, children can experience stress on their nervous system. These nerve irritations or subluxations are a part of everyday life. You've watched a child learning how to roll themselves over, hold up their heads for the first time, learn how to walk, and take their first stumbles and falls. Imagine the stress that puts on their developing nervous system. Subluxations can occur from bad posture, sleeping on their tummies, remaining in one position for a prolonged period, knocks and falls, and much more. Stress can be put on the nervous system before a child is even born. This can happen due to being in an award position in the uterus, restriction of movement, or birth complications like fast or very slow labor or cesarean delivery. We all know the importance of a healthy back and nervous system that chiropractic care can deliver, and we know that children deserve this care just as much as adults! Introducing chiropractic care to children at a young age can put them on a course of having a very healthy lifestyle. While many still might believe that chiropractic care is only for adults, it can be even more important for a chiropractor to care for and check on your children due to spurts of rapid growth, changes in their bodies, and development. Also know that chiropractic care for children, while it might be a new idea for some parents, it is not a new idea overall and has been around for some time. According to the American Chiropractic Association (ACA), many parents have feared how their children would respond to treatments and if they were safe. Over the years, many health professionals have sided with these parents. At the same time, doctors of chiropractic have been spending years trying to teach and assure parents that treatments are safe. Any injury or pain resulting from a chiropractic treatment was connected to underlying pathologies. Thanks to these studies and years of hard work, more parents and health professionals have gotten on board with chiropractic care. It is recommended that chiropractors do a very thorough examination and speak with parents about their medical history and their child's before treatment begins. Also, just like I mentioned in my previous blog about elderly chiropractic care, an infant would never receive the same kind of care that an adult would. Their treatment would be adjusted to their needs and age to promote the utmost safety and care! Also, don't forget that chiropractic care is non-invasive and its foundations are based on effective and gentle adjustment techniques that are safe and have been well tested. Remember my blog late last year where I discussed the many myths chiropractors have to constantly disprove? The biggest one is that chiropractors are not real doctors. We busted that myth! Your child's care and health are very important and will be in very confident hands any time they are in a chiropractor's office. THE BASICS What do you remember about your childhood? Before every smart device took over, we were outside running, jumping, climbing, swinging, and playing every game and sport we could think of. This also meant a lot of stumbles, falls, and accidents. They're still learning, still understanding their balance and coordination, and they haven't fallen enough yet to understand the full consequences of their actions. Their bodies respond to these incidents and can carry and hold tension and subluxations just like an adult's body. Chiropractic care can help realign their spine and joints, which is incredibly important as a child grows. These subluxations, remember, can get in the way of the brain functioning and communicating to the body as it should. In a body that is growing and changing every day, they need these connections and communications to make sure the best decisions are made for their health and development. Also, remember that chiropractic care is an excellent way to avoid the use of over-the-counter or prescription medications. According to the ACA, one of the most common reasons why parents take their children to a chiropractor is to help with the care and management of chronic ear infections, instead of them taking a plethora of antibiotics. GROWING BODIES Children and adults have the same joints, but they aren't fully formed in a child's body right away. Due to this, as I mentioned above, treatment will be specifically tailored to their little bodies. The adjustments will be done faster and with much less force, due to their increased flexibility in the developing joints and that they are much smaller. Instead of manipulating joints as chiropractic care can do for adult bodies, chiropractic care helps mobilize the joints in a child's body. When it comes to infants and in utero, it's even more tailored. For babies, many common issues include sleep problems, issues with nursing, colic, torticollis, and plagiocephaly. Chiropractic care has shown drastic improvement with each of these issues, along with helping or preventing any long-term effects. In utero, treatments can help prevent any sort of constraint. If the baby moves in a certain way, they can remain in that one position for several months. Wouldn't that be uncomfortable for you too? According to the ACA, "the goal of treatments is to restore motion to the joints and balance the tissues to keep everything as biomechanically even as possible. Taking the tension off from day one can help allow for optimal growth and development." TOP REASONS AND BENEFITS OF TAKING YOUR CHILD TO A CHIROPRACTOR
Your child's health is in your hands while they are growing and learning! I hope this blog helped explain why chiropractic care is so beneficial for children and to assure you that it is safe. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out. If you would like to talk about your child's chiropractic care, please reach out as well! Until next time I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  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!  Many people only search out their chiropractors when they're in pain. Today we are going to be talking about why you should give continued care a second thought.
Hi everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope that wherever you are that you are continuing to stay safe and healthy. Flu and cold season has arrived, and it's time to stay on top of your health as best you can. In many of my recent blogs, I have talked about that more often than not, your health is in your hands. Make sure that you're getting plenty of rest, drinking plenty of water, eating well, staying active, and adding vitamin D3 to your diet. Each of these steps can help you feel better, fight off sickness faster, and prevent you from getting sick. What would also be even more beneficial to staying healthy during this time of year and promote a strong immune system, is to come and see me or to visit your chiropractor consistently. While many people think the only time to go to the chiropractor is when they're in pain, I am here to implore you to think otherwise. I often hear from my patients that they have put off coming to see me because they just weren't in pain and they didn't see a reason to come until they were. Why wait to be in pain or when your body isn't working as it should to come see me? Instead of waiting for the pain, how about coming to see me to avoid any pain or discomfort at all? With this idea in mind, I wanted to talk about some of the top reasons why you should consistently be going to your chiropractor even when you're not in pain!
Many of my patients have spent the last 8 months hunched over their desks employing very bad posture. This also hasn't been great for their hips or lower backs either. This pandemic posture and lack of movement can lead to increased pressure in your neck, shoulders, upper back, hips, and more. It can also cause some pretty serious pain or even lead to a slipped or herniated disc. Coming to see me consistently or visiting your chiropractor on a regular basis can help strengthen your back and fight against your pandemic posture and pandemic lifestyle. I can keep you aligned and make sure that while you have to sit still much longer throughout the day, the messages in your brain are still firing without interruption and without causing you any pain.
If you're still unsure about the benefits of consistent chiropractic care, come and see me. Give us a call or shoot us an email, and we will be more than happy to get you in for an appointment. We will chat about your medical history, give you a thorough examination, and I will get right to work on helping you feel and function at your best at all times. Stay safe out there, everyone! Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  With the change of seasons at hand and the ongoing COVID pandemic, one of the most important things we need to be aware of is how to make our immune systems as strong as possible!
Hey, everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you're all doing well out there! Today we are going to be discussing the immune system. This is the important system in your body that keeps you healthy against colds, flus, COVID, allergies, and all sorts of other ailments. I want to talk about how, practically speaking, you can keep your immune system healthier so you can defend yourself against some of these outside agents that are floating around in the air and that can make you sick. With COVID, everyone has been talking about washing your hands, wearing masks, and practicing social distancing. This is all great to do; however what I think is missing in this equation is a message from the surgeon general that we need to be proactive about increasing our individual immune function. This will help you defend against COVID and anything else out there. How do you keep your immune system strong and powerful? That is what we are going to be talking about today! #1 - LET'S EAT! Let's start with the basics that you need to be doing to keep yourself healthy and your immune system strong. The first step you need to be thinking about and putting effort into is your diet and what you're putting into your body every day. You need to be eating properly. If you're not eating right every day, your body isn't getting the correct amount of nutrients that it needs nor is it getting the correct energy source it needs to keep your body functioning at its highest capacity. If you aren't getting the proper nutrients, your body won't be able to defend itself well. A poor diet will impact your immune system very negatively. #2 - TUCK IN! You have to get enough sleep at night. It’s a must. When you sleep, your body is repairing itself. All the systems in your body need time to heal from all the work they do throughout the day, and those 7-8 hours of sleep every night are crucial for that healing. If you don't give yourself enough sleep, all of your systems will be affected, and you will be more susceptible to getting sick. #3 - PROPER SUPPLEMENTATION! We've talked about this many times and people still think I'm crazy! If you're not currently taking any supplements, you need to start thinking about adding vitamin D3 to your diet. Vitamin D3 is an essential vitamin, which means you can't get this supplement naturally from the foods you eat. The only way to get vitamin D3 naturally is to be out in the sun, and most people can't be out in the sun all day because they're inside working, at school, etc. Vitamin D3 is incredibly important because it boosts your immune system. It gets your body working better and defends it against outside agents. I am a strong proponent that everyone should be taking this vitamin. It's going to help you fight against colds and the flu, allergies, and even COVID! If you get your body working better and you get your defenses on the attack, when any virus or outside agent tries to come into your body, your white blood cells are geared up to go attack it and kill it! If your immune system is not working right, that's when these viruses and opportunistic diseases can take up a home in your body, and wreak havoc on you. I take 5000 International Units (IU) of D3 every day, but during the pandemic, I have doubled my daily dose to 10,000 IU! As a general rule of thumb, you want to take 1000 IU for every 35 pounds of body weight. If you're not taking this vitamin, you will need to get some natural sunlight every day to replace it, at least 15 to 20 minutes of full-body exposure to be exact. A lot of people don't want to do this because of the associated skin cancer risk. The easiest and safest thing to do is just to take the vitamin. #4 - CHIROPRACTIC! The next important step to keep your immune system strong is chiropractic! How does chiropractic help with your immune system? Well, your brain, spinal cord, and all of your nerves that come off your spinal cord regulate every single function and system in your body. The brain is the master controller; it regulates every other system in the body. The immune system, of course, is one of those important systems. If your nervous system is not working at 100%, your immune system will not be working at 100% either. When your body isn't working at its full capacity, you are leaving your health to chance. How does chiropractic help with building up your immunity? Let's talk about it! Your spine is very complex; it is a series of bones called vertebrae. Each vertebra is separated by a disc which is flexible but very strong. In between each bone is an opening (foramen) and a spinal nerve comes out of that opening. The spinal nerve comes off the spinal cord, which is an extension of your brain. Every one of your spinal nerves relays information from the brain to your body and vice-versa. In a perfect world, your vertebrae are lined up, the openings for every nerve are open, and there is no irritation on any of the nerves. This allows your brain to communicate perfectly with the body, and the body can communicate perfectly back to the brain. When this happens, all functions of the body are working optimally, including your immune system. But, life hits us; we get into a car accident, we fall, we pick something up that's too heavy, we sleep wrong at night, we eat the wrong kinds of foods that negatively affect our muscles, or we carry emotional stress. All of these factors affect our body, our spine, and our nerves. This stress can cause the vertebrae to shift out of place. When the vertebrae get shifted out of place, the nerves can get irritated and pinched (subluxated), often causing some pain. More importantly, once this subluxation has occurred, the communication between your brain and the rest of your body is not working as it should. All the systems at the end of that pinched nerve are going to be affected negatively. It could be a muscle, an organ, blood vessels, a gland, or a critical system that is affected by this strain or pinch. The nerves in the upper neck specifically play a huge part in your immune system. When you free up your nerves from subluxations, your body gets to go back to work and do what it's there to do to keep you healthy. That is how chiropractic care can help enhance your immune function. If you can incorporate all of these changes into your life, you are going to be much healthier as we go into cold and flu season with COVID, and you're going to be much healthier in general. You're not going to get sick as much, you're not going to feel run down as much, and you're going to be able to be the best version of yourself. My goal is to educate as many people as possible and to show everyone that your health is in your hands. It's not in a doctor's hands, it's not in a pill or prescription, and it is not in a potion that comes off the shelf. The doctor is inside of you, and you have the responsibility to take care of that! These are some of the best ways to take care of your body effectively and to stay healthy. I hope all of this information helps. If you or anyone out there is suffering, if you're getting sick all the time, you're having sinus issues, allergies, or you're just feeling run down, come and see us! All of these issues can be corrected with chiropractic care and all the other steps I have mentioned in this blog today! Remember, all of these steps are also all-natural ways of taking care of your body. I look forward to the next blog and seeing you soon. Take care!  Something is lurking in the joints of millions of Americans every year: the very real pain of arthritis.
Hi everyone! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope everyone is doing well. Today we are going to be discussing a topic that is very prevalent in our country, and that is arthritis. A lot of people have it and suffer from its pain every day. In this blog, I want to put arthritis into perspective. I want to explain what arthritis is and some of the many ways you can treat it. There are many different types of arthritis; there is rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune problem, psoriatic arthritis, enteropathic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, gout and many more. In this blog though, we are going to be discussing the most common type of arthritis, and that is osteoarthritis. It is also called DJD or DDD, which stands for degenerative joint disease or degenerative disc disease. Why is it important to get a grip on your arthritis? The main reason is that it is a degenerative condition. If you don't take care of it, it will more than likely get worse as you get older. Why is that important? Osteoarthritis will and can destroy or at a minimum cause a lot of pain in your joints. It can appear in your hands, your spine, your knees, hips, shoulders, and almost everywhere else in your body. This type of arthritis causes pain because of the inflammation surrounding the joint it is affecting. Let's talk about osteoarthritis. Our bodies get out of symmetry as we go through our daily lives. Typically, this type of arthritis is caused by asymmetry, and your joints start to work improperly because they are not working symmetrically. This can happen in your spine as well. You'll find that if you have a vertebra or two that is locked or misaligned, it's going to put a lot of stress on that joint. What the body does in reaction to this misalignment is it takes calcium out of the bloodstream, and sends it to that affected area to strengthen it. In theory, that sounds like it would make total sense, but what happens is that calcium deposits can form which leads to spurring. In addition, asymmetry causes the discs in your spine or cartilage in your peripheral joints to wear thin. You don't want spurs in a joint that aren't supposed to be there; they're going to get in the way of your ligaments, tendons, and the space the joint uses to properly move. These spurs are going to cause you a lot of pain because of the inflammation they cause. As we know, inflammation leads to serious pain. This is what is happening to your body when you have osteoarthritis. The next question then becomes, how do you manage this condition? As I mentioned before, if you don't do something about your osteoarthritis, it is going to get worse. The medical approach is usually some kind of steroidal anti-inflammatory product or injection to the affected joint. These products are created to take out some of the inflammation so you feel better. These remedies don't do much for correcting the cause of your arthritis, and steroids carry their own set of pretty nasty symptoms that might not appear until much later. How can chiropractic help? Chiropractic looks at a particular joint (in your spine, shoulder, hands, etc.) and figures out whether or not the bones in that joint are moving properly. What chiropractors do is adjust or treat that bone or bones to restore the proper motion to that joint. Once this happens, your body can work symmetrically and the degenerative process can be stopped. If the degenerative process is slowed down or stopped the inflammation will decrease, and the pain will get better. If you have arthritis, chiropractic care is something that you need to seriously think about incorporating into your health protocol. I also recommend a few supplements to my patients that help with inflammation connected to osteoarthritis that help with the pain in a natural way. 1. Fish oil! If you're going to use this, please use high-quality fish oil. 2. Coconut Oil! Most people don't know much about the benefits of this oil, but just like fish oil, it can do wonders for inflammation. If you want to add this oil to your diet, take a couple tablespoons preferably after a meal. Always make sure you use high-quality coconut oil. I recommend virgin, organic cold-pressed brands. 3. Turmeric is a great spice that you can put in your food or take in pill form that also helps with inflammation and the effects of osteoarthritis. Exercise can also help, but if the joint is damaged you want to be careful about doing too much repetitive exercise to the affected joint. Also, be very careful when doing too much weight-bearing or load-bearing exercises with that joint. Getting in a pool and swimming and some lightweight workouts are good to keep your affected joints moving. I hope this helps! If you're suffering from osteoarthritis or think you might be, please make an appointment to come to the office. We will do a very thorough exam (including x-rays), show you exactly what's going on and what is causing your problems. We will then get to work on fixing those problems so you can get healthy, out of pain and prevent that degenerative process from getting worse. I am Dr. Bob Salamon, and I have your back covered! Stay well!  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/  When your body is going through a huge change as miraculous and wonderful as pregnancy, it's a good idea to make sure your body is optimally healthy. One of the best things you can do for yourself is to get regular chiropractic care. Chiropractic care helps make pregnancy safer, more comfortable, and easier on you and your baby!
I have been talking a lot about healthy lifestyles and the best things for you to reach your highest level of health, with chiropractic care being one of the top priorities on that list. Healthy eating, exercise, rest and relaxation, and positive thinking are the other four important practices that contribute to a healthier you. One of the most common questions I hear is whether it is safe to receive chiropractic care during pregnancy. If you read my blog on my FAQs, then you will absolutely know it is! I wanted to spend a little more time discussing this topic and to share why chiropractic is one of the best things you can do for yourself as an expectant mother and how much it will help your baby! I would recommend that any pregnant woman strongly consider chiropractic care. It is an excellent way to deal with pain, changes in your body, and to help ensure safer pregnancy and childbirth. As a pregnant woman grows and the baby gets bigger, a woman's center of gravity changes, which can affect posture. This can create a lot of pain in your lower back and hips. Chiropractic care can help keep the spine aligned, help keep pressure off the nerves and keep pain at a minimum, if not get rid of it completely. Spinal misalignments (subluxations) can result from these changes in your body, creating pain for you on top of the many other physical changes you're going through. When subluxations get removed from your spine, pain in the back, neck, hips and other joints is diminished. Chiropractic can also help strengthen your body so that these changes don't affect you as harshly. It can also help control nausea and its symptoms, along with helping you sleep through the night during your pregnancy. I, along with most chiropractors am trained to care for pregnant patients. We believe that it should be a part of your routine care during your pregnancy, just like any of your other doctor's appointments. Table adjustments will be made for a mother's growing belly and the techniques used will not put pressure on the abdomen. I am specifically trained to help with any breech presentation, helping to keep the baby in proper alignment for a healthy and safe birth. Not only does chiropractic care help the mother, but it can also offer wonderful benefits for a baby too. It can help widen and keep the pelvis open, along with keeping it aligned. This provides the baby with room to move through the birth canal, leading to an easier, quicker and less painful delivery. If the pelvis is out of alignment, it can be very difficult for the baby to move to the optimal position to be born. If the baby is not in the right position, it might affect having a natural and noninvasive birthing process, leading to a c-section. As I have mentioned before, chiropractic care helps keep the spine aligned, allowing all messages from the brain to travel through the nerves without any interference. This then allows the body to function as it should and at its highest level. Another great reason to go to a chiropractor during your pregnancy is that your baby is getting all of their nutrients from you. If your body isn't optimally healthy, you're not passing 100% of health through your nutrition along to the baby. If you want your baby to be healthy, you want to stay healthy. Pain during pregnancy is not uncommon, but that doesn't mean you should accept it as part of the experience. Don't just assume that having joint and body pain is something normal that you will have to suffer through just because you're pregnant. Chiropractic care can help ease if not eliminate pain connected to pregnancy related subluxations. Chiropractic care is great for pregnant women because it offers a drug-free option of easing pain, tension, nausea, and insomnia. The use of over the counter or prescription drugs is not recommended for pregnant women because drugs can cause harm to both mother and baby. Chiropractic care can help manage pregnancy related pain without using medications. As I mentioned above, it is very important to follow and practice the 5 elements of health during your pregnancy. As those food cravings start coming during pregnancy, try to avoid those processed sugars and saturated fats as much as possible. Keep eating as healthy as possible. Rest and relax, drink plenty of water, and stay active (as much as your doctor says is safe!). If you have any questions about chiropractic care during your pregnancy please don't hesitate to reach out and call us. I would be more than happy to talk about your concerns and to get you started on your chiropractic journey! Until then, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. Take care!  Nutrition is one of the five elements of health, and one of the most important ones that can guarantee a healthy and happy life. One of the best places to start is paying attention to what's inside your food before you eat it! Where can you start to find this information? The nutrition labels!
Hi everybody, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. You know, we talk about the five factors of health quite often. Those five factors are nutrition, exercise, rest and relaxation, positive mental attitude, and chiropractic care. This blog is going to be dedicated to factor number one, nutrition! I am going to be working my way through a nutrition label found on the side of a cereal box to guide us through this blog and to talk about what you should be looking for in your foods and what you should be avoiding. The FDA requires companies to put these labels on their food products to let the consumer know what's inside the food they're buying. It's the best way to determine if what you're eating is healthy or not. The cereal box I am looking at is a knock off brand of cereal called "Multigrain Tasteeos". This cereal isn't too bad when it comes to nutrition, but it's not as healthy as it could be. Let's dig in!
This is how I look at and read labels. You want to get into the habit of reading your labels and paying attention to what is inside the food you're eating. The front of your food products can say anything that makes you think it's a healthy product. But until you read those nutrition labels, you don't know for sure. So why does this all matter? Nutrition is one of the five factors of health, and so is chiropractic care. How does chiropractic care help with your nutrition? Your digestive organs are getting nerve supply from your spine. If this supply is being impeded in some way due to a subluxation or a bone out of alignment, then the nerve supply into that organ (your stomach, intestines, colon) won't be working as efficiently as possible. Your organs won't be extracting the maximum amount of nutrients from your food as it could be and it is just letting it pass through your system. Chiropractic care can help you get the most out of your nutrition, especially if you're eating healthy products. Chiropractic care will help your digestive system work as it's supposed to. I hope that helps and I hope these little nuggets of information help you on your nutritional journey. If you feel like your nutrition is not where you'd like it, I would love to talk to you about it. Reach out to us and we will get you in to discuss the next best steps for you and your nutrition. Until then, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. Take care!  One of the most common forms of pain, arthritis, haunts millions of Americans every year. Could chiropractic care be one of the best routes to avoid this pain and help alleviate the pain for those already suffering?
Hey everybody! Dr. Bob Salamon here at Lowcountry Chiropractic. For this blog, we are going to be discussing arthritis. Arthritis affects about 54 million Americans every year. We are going to be focusing on osteoarthritis, which is the most common type. There are many other types of arthritis like rheumatoid, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic, and infectious arthritis, but not as many people suffer from these types of arthritis compared to the number of people who suffer from osteoarthritis. Another common term for osteoarthritis is ‘degenerative joint disease’. This condition will get worse if you don't take care of it. It will slowly break down your joints. Which joints does this exactly affect? Almost any of them. It can affect your spinal bones, your knees, your ankles, your wrists, and your shoulder joints. Any of your body's articulation points can suffer from arthritis. What is arthritis? Medical experts don't have a cause for it, but we will get to that shortly. At its base, arthritis is an inflammatory condition of the joints that can cause swelling, lack of range of motion, pain, and discomfort. Medications are one way to treat arthritis, but anti-inflammatory drugs just cover up the pain you're experiencing. Medications aren't addressing the issue or cause of your pain. Therefore you might not feel the pain as much when you use anti-inflammatories, but they can make the problem worse. There are three steps you can take that can naturally help you treat and deal with the pain of arthritis without medications. They are simple, and ones that are worth taking the time to do. Let's talk about each of them.
That's it for today. I look forward to seeing you soon! |
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