 We are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and are going to talk about chiropractic care in a very different way:
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon with Lowcountry Chiropractic! This week's blog is going to be about chiropractic philosophy. This is going to be something a little different from what I usually write about. The guiding principle of chiropractic is that the body is a self-healing and self-regulating organism that needs very little outside assistance to get, and stay, healthy. This concept also comes from a popular chiropractic phrase, "Above down, inside out". That's how healing works and is the guiding principle of chiropractic. Let's break down this analogy. The "above" part is referring to universal intelligence. This is the idea that our bodies are made by a creator and this universal intelligence is what helps us be self healing and the human body to work efficiently. The "inside" part of this phrase relates to innate intelligence. This is the intelligence within our bodies that helps regulate and control it, so it can function properly.
A lot of times I talk to my patients and say, "You know, the doctor is inside you!". When I say that, I am referring to innate intelligence. Where does innate intelligence come from in terms of physiology? It's the nerve system, which is the brain, the spinal cord, and the 62 nerves that come off of the spinal cord that supply all the body parts. The biggest component involved, I would say, or the biggest system in innate intelligence is the nerve system. If the nerve system is free to do its thing, the brain and the body will constantly communicate back and forth, all the processes that go on inside the body will happen seamlessly, and the other systems (immune, digestive, endocrine etc.) will work as designed. All the chemicals and hormones that the body produces will be produced in the right quantities and at the right time. You will then be at optimal health. When you are at optimal health, you are more likely to not have aches and pains, more likely to sleep better, have more energy, and be more focused. In a perfect world, that's how it works. Sadly, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where there are car accidents, falls, sports injuries, heavy lifting, and improper sleep. When we introduce these types of stresses into our life it can cause us some serious issues. This stress will cause the vertebra that is protecting all of those 62 nerves to shift out of place. When those vertebrae shift out of place, the nerves can become irritated or pinched. This is called a subluxation. A subluxation is what interferes with our innate intelligence and our inborn ability to heal and self regulate. The body will then be unable to do what it needs to do because there will be an interference in the line of communication between the body and brain. There are two other types of stress besides the physical ones. There is emotional and chemical stress that can be put on the body. Chemical stress refers to toxins in the foods we eat, the water we drink, and prescription medications that are introduced unnaturally into our bodies. These chemicals can cause subluxations. Emotional stress refers to work, family and financial pressures that will tighten spinal musculature and cause subluxations. Chiropractic care is based around finding subluxations and correcting them. This allows our innate intelligence to work as our universal intelligence wants it to. That's the story in a nutshell of how chiropractic works, how innate intelligence works, and how universal intelligence works. This is also why everybody needs to be seeing a chiropractor regularly because every day we experience all kinds of stresses in our lives that can cause subluxations and mess with that innate intelligence. If you are not operating at optimal efficiency and productivity, or have aches and pains, or if you've been in a car accident or other trauma, you need to get checked! I would like to be the one who checks you. Give us a call, text us, or email us and let us know what your issues are. We will get you set up and start getting you well! I hope this has helped and I hope you enjoyed this little bit of philosophy today. I'm Dr.Bob, and we will see you next time. Take care!
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 Headaches and migraines plague 4 million people every day. But could there be something more effective than just popping ibuprofen after ibuprofen that could help reduce and even eliminate this daily pain? Chiropractic care just might be the best step for you!
Hello everyone! Dr. Bob here from Lowcountry Chiropractic! I hope you are all doing well. Through this week's blog, we are going to be talking about headaches. Headaches plague the majority of us in the US. I don't know many people who have never had a headache before or who don't have them on a somewhat regular basis. We are going to talk about headaches and how to manage them or eliminate them if possible. Now, there are two basic types of headaches. There are migraine headaches and tension headaches. There are others too, like cluster headaches, etc. But for all intents and purposes of this blog, we are going to be focusing on the tension headache because they are the most common. Migraine headaches tend to be a little more difficult to manage because a lot of the time they are hormonal or chemical in nature. Let's talk about tension headaches. Those are the headaches where usually you wake up fine in the morning, but as the day goes on you start feeling pain in your temples or the front or back of your head. Sometimes they go away on their own, and sometimes you take ibuprofen and they go away. These headaches are very common and most people suffer from them. What causes a tension headache? They are usually caused by a vascular problem, meaning the blood vessels. These blood vessels are found in your head and brain. If the blood vessels in your brain are dilated, they will take up more space in your brain and put more pressure on your head. That can cause headache pain. If the blood vessels are too constricted, the blood flowing through the walls of those blood vessels puts a lot of pressure on them and can cause headache pain as well. How do you manage a tension headache? We in chiropractic believe that chiropractic care is one of the best natural ways to control tension headaches. Why is that? Well, if you remember, the nerves that come out of your spine, and there are many of them - 62 to be exact - those nerves control and regulate your body. These nerves come off the spinal cord and run through the openings between the spinal vertebra called foramen. If one vertebra is a little out of place (called a subluxation, as we've discussed in previous blogs) it can pinch or irritate a nerve and affect the transmission of the messages from your brain to the rest of the body. In the case of tension headaches, we are talking about message interference with blood vessels. If you have subluxation, it could constrict blood vessels or dilate these vessels, resulting in headaches. So subluxations are a very common cause of headaches. If you have a subluxation in your neck, these muscles will get tense and tight and start pulling on the back of your head, and that can create a lot of tension and headache pain as well. A chiropractor is trained to realign (or adjust) these spinal bones, get pressure off the nerves and allow the body to function as it should. In this case, blood vessels go back to their normal size and the headaches go away. We've had tremendous success in this office helping people with headaches. We've had people come in who have had headaches their whole lives and after they get adjusted several times, their headaches disappear. It's pretty cool! The medical model for treating headaches is to prescribe medication that can reduce headaches, but it doesn't correct the cause of those headaches. You will continue to get headaches and continue to take medications to minimize those headaches and that is just a vicious circle. Chiropractic care gets at the cause of the problem. In this case, the cause of the problem is the subluxation or that irritated nerve. So when you adjust the bone and get the pressure off the nerve, good things begin to happen. I hope that this helps you. If any of you are suffering from headaches and you want to get rid of them naturally without taking medications, just call us! We will do a very in-depth examination and if I feel that I can help you, we will get started right away and get those headaches gone. I hope the rest of your day is good, and we will see you for our next blog!  More than 8 million people are affected by carpal tunnel syndrome every year, and it can slam the breaks on your life. But with the steady hands of a chiropractor, the pain and suffering this syndrome can cause might be eased away under their skilled hands.
Hello everyone, Dr. Bob here! Today we are going to be discussing something that many of you have suffered from or might suffer from in the future. That is carpal tunnel. Let me start by asking you a question. How many of you suffer from pain, numbness, or tingling in your hands or fingers? Surprisingly, a lot of people fall into this category. If you have these symptoms, you might have carpal tunnel syndrome. We are going to talk about carpal tunnel syndrome, what it is, how to diagnose it, and how to treat it. Hopefully, the option is to treat it without surgery, but sometimes surgery is required. The carpal tunnel is located in your wrist. The carpal or wrist bones form a tunnel through which the median nerve runs and supplies the thumb, index, and middle finger. If you have pain, numbness, or tingling in those three fingers or in that particular part of your wrist where the median nerve goes through that tunnel, you might have carpal tunnel syndrome. If you have pain throughout your hand or in your other fingers then you probably don't have it. But there are likely other issues involved. What happens in carpal tunnel syndrome, due to repetitive movement of the hands, the bones tend to drop and shift so that the tunnel of the carpal bones gets smaller. When that tunnel gets smaller, it can start putting pressure on that median nerve. This pressure can cause numbness, tingling, pain, etc in those three main fingers. Carpal tunnel syndrome is diagnosed usually with a nerve conduction study. They hook you up to electrodes and run current through the nerves that run down your arms. It's not a pleasant experience; it can be a little painful. The nerve conduction studies have gotten a lot better over the years, so they can exactly identify where a nerve is being pinched or blocked, and diagnose how to fix it properly. If it turns out that it is true carpal tunnel, it will then be graded in terms of mild, moderate, or severe. Usually, in severe or moderate cases, they will opt to do surgery. The surgery helps release tendons in that area of the carpal tunnel and will help expand the tunnel and take away the pain. In my personal experience, over the last twenty years as a chiropractor, it seems to me that the technology for these kinds of surgeries has gotten better and the treatment has gotten better, so the surgery is often very effective. There are several different kinds of surgeries depending on how severe a particular case might be. Some are more invasive than others; those being more invasive will take longer to heal and might keep you out of work a little longer than expected. However, if you don't have true carpal tunnel syndrome but you have pain in similar areas, or even if you have mild or moderate Carpal Tunnel pain, in some cases chiropractic care will help. How does this work? Well, as you know, chiropractors adjust the spinal bones. But we also adjust any joints and bones in the body, and there happen to be many joints and bones in your hands. Sometimes, the median nerve is being irritated just because one of the carpal bones is out of alignment. So, a chiropractor can go in, realign and adjust those carpal bones, and thus open up the tunnel and help with those symptoms. If you've had your nerve conduction study and the pain, pinching, or blocking isn't coming from true carpal tunnel, then it is usually coming from the elbow, lower neck, or upper back. It is more commonly coming from the upper back because the branches of the nerves found there go down your arm and into your hand and branch off to feed the median nerve. So, you always want to check before you have surgery whether or not the blockage is actually in your neck or the carpal tunnel. If it turns out the blockage is in your neck and you have carpal tunnel surgery, it's not going to be successful. Chiropractic care can help a lot with adjusting the upper back and lower neck with any kind of pain, numbness or tingling in your upper arm, forearm, and fingers. We have seen a lot of this kind of pain recently, and patients are responding very well to chiropractic care in these cases. So, that is the real summary of carpal tunnel syndrome. You always want to try and look at the least invasive way of getting it taken care of. Chiropractic care does fit the bill in many cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. I hope that helps! Till next time, take care!  One of the most common back pain issues affects over 200,000 people a year - but with regular treatments from your Chiropractor, your pain can be eliminated or managed. Most importantly, if already suffering, you can avoid going under your surgeon's knife.
Even though age is just a number and should never be something that holds you back - sometimes it's your back that betrays you as that number grows. One of the most common and painful diagnoses found in the neck and lower back is called Spinal Stenosis. Affecting over 200,000 people a year - back pain sufferers are no stranger to this malady. Many of you might already be aware of this disease, especially if osteoarthritis has become a part of your daily life. But if you're new to the world of back pain or have put a lot of wear and tear on your body over the years, or arthritis has started to settle in, now is the time to start paying attention. It is also time to start paying attention to how chiropractic care can alleviate this pain without surgery - so you can safely and comfortably continue living your life! Spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the space within your spine (the spinal canal) that can cause pressure on the nerves that travel through your spine. It causes a pinching of the spinal cord and possibly the nerve root which leads to pain, cramping, weakness, or numbing. The condition commonly appears in the neck and lower back and is most often caused by wear and tear over time causing arthritis. Anyone over the age of 50 is at risk of suffering from it, although it can happen in younger patients if they have been exposed to or have experienced trauma, scoliosis, and genetic diseases that affect bone muscle development. Other Causes can also be related to:
Symptoms to look out for in your neck:
According to the US Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, Chiropractic care is beneficial in the treatment of patients with spinal stenosis. Think of it as a preliminary treatment - something that can be done to prevent this diagnosis happening to you, help it from becoming worse if you already have been diagnosed, or slow the progression. Think about it - Chiropractic care focuses on keeping you properly aligned so your nervous system continues to work without being interrupted. This way it can function the way it's supposed to. Continued alignment care can also help the weight distribution on the spine to help it return to its normal functioning speed. So, if you start becoming a regular visitor of your Chiropractor - you may not ever have to know what spinal stenosis is! If you're diagnosed your doctor may start adding gentle adjustments to your care to help regain your range of motion and give you enough space in your back so the nervous system can continue its normal function. What else can greatly help is (doctor approved) exercises, stretches, and activities that boost joint function. Exercise keeps your muscles strong, improves your flexibility, boots strength, keeps your blood flowing, and helps reduce pain. If you have been diagnosed or put a lot of wear and tear on your body - don't jump to a surgeon or pain pills just yet. There might be a simpler and safer way of taking care of that back pain. You're not alone - and you're not without help. Dr. Bob will be here when you need him, and will give your back the care it needs and deserves! |
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