Category: Hip Pain

Pregnancy and Chiropractic Care

2/28/2020

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!

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Chiropractic Isn't Just for the Spine

1/16/2020

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Even if you aren't new to the chiropractic world, you might not know how much chiropractic can do for your body beyond the spine. Did you know that chiropractic care can help you from head to toe?

Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here at Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you're doing well! Today we are going to be talking about the expanded role of chiropractic in treating the non-spinal joints in the body. Most people understand (if they know chiropractic) that chiropractors adjust or work on the spinal bones. In reality, chiropractors work on all the joints of the body. Why is that? Every joint in your body, if it is not moving properly, can cause problems or pain. The chiropractor's role is to realign the bones that are out of alignment, and then restore the range of motion and get rid of any malfunction and pain. So let's start with the very top of the body and work our way down to discover how a chiropractor can help you.

Let's start with the bones of the skull. There are sutures found in the skull that are slightly moveable and can be adjusted. The benefit of adjusting the skull is reduction of headaches and increase in mental focus.
A chiropractor can adjust the sinuses, just above and below your eyes. This helps tremendously with allergies and sinus infections.
Chiropractors can help with TMJ, which is a jaw issue that can be very painful when you're chewing, talking, and even sleeping.
Shoulder problems can also be addressed. If you have a torn rotator cuff in your shoulder, chiropractic care isn't necessarily going to help with that, but if you have other joints like the acromio-clavicular out of alignment, it can be very painful. Sometimes just one adjustment can fix this pain. I had a patient come in who is a construction worker, and he had a chronic shoulder issue. I adjusted his shoulder once, and he couldn't believe how much better it felt.
As we continue to move down the body, we hit the elbows. Elbows can give you all kinds of problems, the most common of which is pain.
The bones in your wrists and hands can be adjusted. There are over 20 bones in just one hand! That goes for your feet as well!
The hip bones and hip joints often get out of alignment. When this happens, you're not walking symmetrically, which can put a lot of pressure on the feet and knees and can lead to joint degeneration.
Knees can be adjusted. I get a lot of people who come in with sports injuries or who have slipped and fallen, and it has caused them to misalign the kneecap or the tibia, fibula, and femur), and I can help adjust these issues. If you have a soft tissue injury like a torn ACL, chiropractic care isn't going to fix this issue. But it can certainly restore the proper motion in that joint that was lost with these soft tissue injuries.
We can adjust the feet, ankles, and toes. Again, in your foot, if one side is not working properly you will not be walking properly. The body will immediately be asymmetrical and when that happens, it can affect other areas of the body. The stresses will cause referred re pain back up into the knees, the hips, the lower back, and so on.

I just wanted to spend some time on this topic because so many of my patients come in with an extremity issue, and don't realize that I can help them with it. Any articulation in your body can be effectively looked worked on by a chiropractor. If you are having any of these issues that are mentioned above and if you are trying to go the least invasive route (the least surgical and drug intensive route) look us up and give us a call. If it's a misalignment issue, we can help you!

So again, it's Dr. Bob, and I hope you have a great day!

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Pregnancy and Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic Isn't Just for the Spine

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