 Do you struggle with headaches regularly? Chiropractic care is highly recommended to help with your headaches! You don't have to suffer anymore, let chiropractic care help you!
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic and another exciting blog! I hope you are staying safe and well out there! Today, we are going to be talking about something that affects many people worldwide daily, and that is headaches! Hopefully, through this blog and what we are going to be talking about today, I can help give you some information on how to combat your headaches naturally! There are many different types of headaches out there; classic migraines, common migraines, cluster headaches, tension headaches, and many more. Each of these different types of headaches is caused by different things. Migraine headaches will have onset symptoms that appear before getting the actual pain in the head like sensitivity to light, floaters in your eyes, and auras. Each of these early-onset symptoms acts as a warning to an individual that a massive headache is on its way. Migraine headaches are a little more complex in general because they're usually related to some hormonal or chemical imbalance in the brain. Today, we are going to put migraines to the side and talk about tension headaches. Generally speaking, tension headaches are headaches that will progress as the day goes on. You may wake up feeling great, but as the morning wears on into the afternoon, you start to get a headache. You might feel the pain in your temples, behind the eyes, or maybe even in the back of your head. These headaches may or may not require you to take some medications to help you get through the rest of your day. Let's talk about tension headaches and their causes. Primarily tension headaches are vascular, meaning they are caused by the changes in your blood vessels or capillaries in your brain. Your capillaries carry blood to and from your brain, and the pressure on the walls of those tiny capillaries is really important. If you have too much pressure on the walls of your capillaries, it can cause inflammation. That inflammation, as we all know, can cause some serious pain. Tension headaches can also be caused if the capillaries in your brain expand, causing your blood vessels in your brain to make up more space, resulting in serious pain as well. Do you know the "normal" amount of headaches that your body can suffer every week? Zero! No headache is normal, and there is no such thing as a "normal" headache or a "normal" amount of headaches to have every week. I have so many patients that tell me that they get "normal headaches" about 2-3 times a week. This isn't a normal thing to experience, we are shooting for zero headaches every week! If you're getting more than zero headaches every week, it might be time to find a new way of dealing with them and preventing them! Back to blood vessels! What controls the sizes of these blood vessels in your brain is the nerve supply. Remember that every organ, blood vessel, tissue, gland, skin cell, and everything in your body has a nerve supply that comes out of the spine and spinal cord. If that nerve is somehow inhibited, meaning there is pressure on that nerve or it's pinched in some way, the signal from the brain is not getting through to that nerve as it should. In these situations, isn't it conceivable that maybe that blood vessel could dilate because it's not getting the right supply? Or, conversely, could that blood vessel constrict for the same reason? The answer is yes to both of these questions because interference with nerves can either speed things up, slow things down, enlarge things, shrink things, and stop things from happening as they normally should. To ensure that these blood vessels are the proper size and you have the proper amount of blood flow going through those vessels in the brain, one of the things that helps with tension headaches is chiropractic care! How does it help? What chiropractors are trained to do is to take the pressure off the nerves that may be pinched because a vertebra or a bone in your back is out of place. My job is to analyze where in your spine the bones are out of place, called a subluxation, putting pressure on nerves and affecting a lot of things in your body. Subluxations can get in the way of every system in your body, along with creating the tension headaches we are talking about today. My job is to correct those subluxations with my hands so that those nerves are freed up and they start working properly. This allows the blood vessels to go back to their normal size and help the headaches go away! The other alternative to help with your tension headaches is to take medication. The medication that is out there can solve the problem short-term by removing some of that inflammation off the blood vessel. Just like any medication though, it doesn't correct the cause of the problem. If the cause of the problem is a subluxation of your spin and irritated nerves, the medication can't fix that problem. Chiropractic aims at fixing the problem that's causing these symptoms. Also, every medication has side effects. Looking at the list of medications that are out there for headaches, one of the side effects of long-term use of anti-inflammatories is that they can lead to liver damage! This liver damage is just one of many side effects connected to this medicine! If you are using medication regularly to help with your tension headaches, you might want to consider chiropractic care because the results are incredible and you can avoid those side effects. If you come into our office to help your headaches, we will do a complete exam, go through your medical history, give you a full consultation, and we will take some X-rays to see where those subluxations are. If I can feel where those subluxations are or what is causing your headaches, we will get to work right away working to fix these issues causing you pain. Chiropractic care is an all-natural treatment for headaches and there are no medications involved. If you're struggling with headaches and you want a new approach from the one you're already using, look us up! We would love to help you. I hope all of this information helps! Don't forget, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered! Have a great day, and we'll see you soon!
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 Cholesterol is something we should all take very seriously, but there is still a lot of misinformation out there about it that we need to understand. Today Dr. Bob will be debunking some of the most common myths about cholesterol with the help of Dr. Joseph Mercola. Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope everyone out there is doing well and staying healthy. Today, we are going to be talking about cholesterol. I first want to say that this information that I am sharing with you comes from Dr. Joseph Mercola, and he is awesome. He has some great information about all kinds of health issues. I encourage you to visit his website, www.mercola.com. He is an osteopathic doctor and has a very natural and holistic medical approach to his work. This information comes from an article he wrote in April of 2016, and I want to give total credit and props to him for this information and inspiration of this blog. I have taken some notes and wanted to share them with you. The topic of the article is cholesterol myths that you shouldn't believe. Myth #1 Cholesterol Is Bad! We always hear about how high cholesterol will cause heart disease. That is not exactly the case. Get this fact! The liver makes three-quarters of the cholesterol that exists in your body. Now if your liver is making cholesterol, would your liver make something that is bad for you? I wouldn't think so! That's really the case. The body actually needs cholesterol, and it is very important for several reasons.
Myth #2 High cholesterol is caused by a bad diet. The reality of it is that only about 20% of your cholesterol is related to the food that you eat, making 80% of the cholesterol found in your body genetic. It has to do more with the liver's inability to get rid of excess cholesterol in people who are genetically inclined to produce more cholesterol. So, it's not really what we eat; a lot of it is genetic! We need to look at someone's genetics, study them, and pay attention to their family's medical history before placing blame on anything else. What is a healthy cholesterol level? The bottom line is that a healthy level varies by person. Your medical doctor will usually say that you have to have cholesterol under 200 and your LDL levels (the bad cholesterol) need to be under 100. In all honestly, these levels vary by person. There are some ratios and measurements that are much more accurate than total cholesterol. Total cholesterol is really not a good indicator of heart health. What is a good measure is the ratio of HDL (the good cholesterol) in your body divided by the total cholesterol. That number should be greater than 24% and is a great measure of whether you're in the right range of heart health. The second measurement is to look at your triglyceride levels, or the levels of fat circulating in your bloodstream. The triglycerides divided by the total cholesterol should be under 2 for a healthy heart. Another good way to measure heart health is to look at the fasting insulin levels in your body. If you're eating a lot of refined sugars, your body produces more insulin, which is there to take the sugar out of your bloodstream. Elevated insulin levels are bad because they promote fat accumulation in your body. An indicator of heart disease is the accumulation of fat in your body, especially belly fat. More Things To Consider For Measuring Heart Health
Myth #3 Margarine is better for you than butter. This is a myth because it has been proven that vegetable-based oils are bad for you; they increase the bad levels of LDLs in your body, and can cause heart problems. What you want to be doing instead is to eat more animal-based fats (eggs and butter) rather than plant-based fats. Omega 3 fats are also a great example of fats to eat and are found in fish. Considering Medications The last thing we are going to talk about is statin drugs. These are the drugs that are used to control cholesterol levels in your body. In general, they're not very effective. In fact, studies have shown that they only benefit about 1% of the population that takes them. They also deplete your coenzyme Q10 levels in your body. This material is responsible for energy production throughout your body, helping it work and function properly. If you don't have enough coenzyme Q10, you won't have enough energy production for your body to work as it needs to. Your heart needs an extreme amount of energy to function, so lower levels of coenzyme q10 can lead to heart disease. What are the healthy non-prescription ways to treat your cholesterol and heart disease?
I hope all of this information helps! Again, special thanks to Dr. Mercola for this incredible information. I hope you've learned something new today that you didn't know beforehand, and I hope you can apply it to your everyday health. If you're having trouble with any aspect of your health, please contact us! We would love to give you some advice and possibly get you started with chiropractic care! Until next time, I am Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered. To read the full article I based this whole blog off of, please follow the link below! https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/04/20/cholesterol-myths.aspx  Chiropractic care is safe and effective for everyone at every stage in their lives. Today, we will be discussing chiropractic care for the elderly; benefits, safety, and common myths!
Hello everyone, it's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic! Welcome back to the blog. I hope you are continuing to stay healthy and well out there, and I hope you've started to take the advice I discussed in my last blog to heart. Making those healthy additions in your life can make all the difference, keep you healthy, make you feel good, and so much more! Always know that I'm here to answer your questions or to schedule you for a consultation; just give us a call or shoot us an email! Today, I wanted to turn the tables and talk about chiropractic care for a certain age group. I've mentioned before that the myths and misinformation about chiropractic care can get in the way of individuals receiving life-changing treatment that can improve their overall quality of life. I hear these excuses and reasonings why individuals shouldn't get care all the time; I'm too young it's not safe, I'm too old it's not safe, I'm pregnant so it's not safe, I'm not in pain so I don't need chiropractic care. All of these reasons are incorrect. Today, I want to discuss and talk about chiropractic care for the elderly.
I hope all of this helps! Please know we are here for you at any stage of your life and can help you at any stage of your life. If you have any questions or concerns or would like to come in for a consultation give us a call! Stay healthy and safe, readers! Until next time, I'm Dr. Bob and I've got your back covered!  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!  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/  Staying on top of your health and wellness is so important! Working out, eating well, and brushing your teeth are things we hopefully do regularly. Did you know that your chiropractic care is just as necessary for your body's maintenance?
Hi everybody! Dr. Bob here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. Today's blog is going to be dedicated to the maintenance for your chiropractic care. Anyone that has a car knows that they have to go in and get it serviced regularly. Rotating your tires, getting an oil change, and things of that nature need to happen regularly. This helps your car run better and last longer. Everyone I know brushes their teeth, works out, and tries to get enough sleep regularly. Why do we do these things? Inherently we know, like keeping up with basic maintenance on our cars, these things are going to help prolong our health, lifespan, and quality of life. They will also help prevent serious issues down the road if we take care of ourselves. Taking care of your body and putting good things into it will promote good things coming out of it. You can prevent cavities, help create a better sleep schedule, and keep your body fit and working at its optimal health all by maintaining these normal services to your body. With chiropractic care, it is very similar. Most people who come into my office, depending on what the condition is, are going to need some level of intensive care in the beginning. This is very normal, especially if they've never been to a chiropractor before. It is also very normal if the problems and issues in their spines and bodies have been around for a long time. There are four different goals of chiropractic care:
Wellness and maintenance care is a very important step in this process. It is something that is done or should be done anywhere between once a week to once a month. Most people need some care on an on-going basis to ensure that the work we've done on their spine is being maintained. This way things don't fall out of place and the problems don't reoccur. If you want to stay healthy, you have to continue going to your chiropractor. Once we've done all the work to get you lined up you're going to be exposed to physical, emotional, and chemical stresses in your life. These stresses will eat away at the weak areas in your spine that we work on fixing. These stresses can lead to you getting out of alignment again if you don't keep up with maintenance. A good analogy would be to look at what braces do on teeth. When you put them on, it doesn't take long for those teeth to change their position and become aligned. What does take time, up until the braces come off, is the remodeling of the gums and soft tissue around the new position of the teeth. This allows the teeth to stay in their new correct positions when the braces come off. Maintenance care in chiropractic is very similar to that. We know that we are subject to a lot of stresses in our lives that tend to harm our spine. Wellness care is there to make sure that we are doing everything we can for you to deal with these stresses. This will prevent you from returning to the state of health you were in when you first came into my office. Now, some people do come into the office and they don't have a lot of issues or pain. They might not need intensive care at the beginning of their treatment. But, they are certainly going to wellness care going forward just like anyone would. I hope this helps to clarify a little bit about why wellness care is so important in chiropractic. If any of you out there thinks you need a chiropractor, you probably do. If any of you out there is hurting, come in and we'll take a look. We will sit you down and go through a very thorough workup and take some x-rays if we need to. Then, we will get started on getting you back to health and maintaining your health with regular care. I hope this helps. I hope everybody out there is staying safe and well, and I look forward to next time. Take care!  The pain and the hassle of acid reflux can interrupt your daily life and comfort. Here are some of the causes of acid reflux and things you can do to manage and reverse this terrible condition.
Hey everybody! It's Dr. Bob Salamon here with Lowcountry Chiropractic. I hope you all are staying healthy and safe out there. In this blog, we are going to be talking about a condition called acid reflux. It is also called GERD, which stands for Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease. Most people just refer to it as acid reflux. What is acid reflux? What are some of its symptoms? Most of the time acid reflux causes burning into your esophagus and throat. Acid lives in your stomach to digest and break down food. When you have acid reflux, the acid moves up into your esophagus and burns its walls. This is not a good thing. It is very painful, and it can cause problems for you if it happens at night. You can breathe that junk into your lungs which is really bad. Long term damage to the lining for the esophagus can create a syndrome known as Barret's Esophagus, which can turn into cancer of the esophagus. It is very serious, and you will want to deal with it right away. Let's talk about the mechanics and the physiology of it all. When you chew your food and swallow it, it goes into your esophagus. Your esophagus is connected to your stomach. There is a muscular valve that opens and closes in between the two that allows the food into your stomach. This valve should close perfectly and tightly so that the acid in your stomach can start breaking down the food. What's interesting is that the walls of the stomach are very strong and can withstand the acid. The walls of your esophagus are not and they cannot handle acid. In a perfect world, that muscular valve would close after you swallow, the acid would do its thing, and then the digested food would move into your intestines. With acid reflux, however, the muscular valve doesn't close all the way so there is an opening between your esophagus and your stomach. When that acid is produced it is then regurgitated (or refluxed) back up into the esophagus because that valve isn't closing all the way. That is when that burning sensation happens and problems begin to arise if left untreated. What controls this muscular valve between your stomach and your esophagus? Why in some cases does it not do what it's supposed to do? It all goes back to your spine. There is a nerve that comes out of the middle of your back and it controls this particular muscle. Remember, all of the 62 nerves that come out of your spine control something. They control a muscle, an organ, a gland, a blood vessel and so on. In this case, this middle back nerve happens to control this particular muscular valve. In the case of acid reflux, that nerve is not sending the right information to that valve. This is causing it to not close completely or not close at all. So, to correct this condition, you need to fix the subluxation or misaligned vertebra in the middle of your back. The subluxation is not allowing the proper message from the brain to be delivered to the muscular valve to work properly. Chiropractic is a wonderful solution to this problem. The adjustment realigns that spinal bone and takes the pressure off that nerve. This allows the brain to communicate with the muscular valve, causing it to close properly and preventing acid from refluxing. If there is a hiatal hernia present, which can put pressure on the stomach and force that muscular valve to open up, that is a more tricky situation when it comes to fixing acid reflux. Chiropractic isn't necessarily as effective in those situations. Thankfully, hernias are the less common cause of acid reflux. The medical treatment is Prilosec, Nexium and other medications that limit the production of acid in your stomach. Therefore, theoretically, these meds reduce the acid that is in your esophagus. That's not really fixing the problem. Your stomach needs to create a certain amount of acid to digest your food. So, if this medication is lowering that amount of acid, two things could happen. One, the stomach is just going to produce more acid. This will put you in the situation that you have already been in. Or two, the lack of acid in your stomach is going to affect how well your food is digested. It will also affect how well the nutrients are being taken from this food and put into your body. Either way, it's not a good situation. We recommend that you try to get help naturally, via chiropractic care, rather than going the medication route. Also, if you're eating a lot of spicy foods later in the evening, that could be a leading cause of your acid reflux. You need to look at what you're eating, and that maybe what is causing your acid reflux naturally. It is a common condition, and not really a disease. It's more of a malfunction of your body in most cases. If you are suffering from acid reflux and you want to get rid of it or get it checked out, come see us. We would be happy to examine you and take some X-rays to see if a subluxation is causing your acid reflux. If it is your problem, we will certainly be able to help you out! Stay well and take care!  Having trouble sleeping? It might be something more than just having too many things on your mind or too many cups of coffee. It might be something much deeper, and something that can be fixed by the hands of a chiropractor!
Hello everybody! Dr. Bob Salamon here! Today we are going to talk about sleep issues and how chiropractic care can help you sleep better at night. To do that we need to talk about the two most important hormones affecting our sleep patterns. One is cortisol and the other is melatonin. Cortisol is a hormone that is produced in the adrenal glands, which sit on the kidneys. The adrenals produce more cortisol in the morning, when your body senses daylight. The cortisol increases your blood sugar levels, blood pressure levels, and prepares your body for the activities of the day. The adrenal glands produce cortisol to help wake you up and feel refreshed in the morning. As the day goes on your cortisol levels begin to drop, and an increase of the second important hormone begins. That hormone is melatonin. Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in the brain. As the day comes to an end and your cortisol levels drop, your hypothalamus in the brain sends a message to the pineal gland to produce more melatonin. This will make you drowsy and will eventually put you to sleep. So as the day progresses, cortisol levels decrease and melatonin levels go up. In the morning, the opposite occurs. What does this all mean? First of all, you want to make sure you have the right production of cortisol and melatonin at the right times. Believe it or not, what regulates brain function and what regulates the cortisol and melatonin production are nerves that come out of your spine. If these nerves are not working properly, then you may have a situation where not enough melatonin is being produced at night and you have trouble falling asleep. You also might have an issue of not producing enough cortisol in the morning and you have trouble waking up. How does a nerve stop working properly? It's pretty simple! It's called a subluxation. A subluxation is when a spinal bone misaligns and irritates or pinches a nerve that exits an opening between one vertebra and another.. When this happens, the messages between the brain and the body and the glands are not transmitting as they should. So, in this case, these two glands (the pineal and adrenal) may not produce melatonin and cortisol in the proper amounts and at the proper times. Chiropractic care is designed to realign the spine, correct the subluxation and allow the nerves that connect the brain and body and deliver messages back and forth to one another to function properly.. When the brain and the body are connected, good things happen! In this case, hormones get produced in the right amounts at the right times, allowing you to sleep better and wake up more refreshed in the morning! If anybody is out there is suffering from insomnia or having any other sleeping issues, give us a call or look us up. We'd love to talk to you about it. I've personally had lots of patients who come in after their first adjustment and say, "I haven't slept like that in years!". I hope this blog helped explain the physiology behind sleep issues and how chiropractic can help these issues, and I look forward to seeing you in the office!  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! |
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