Archive for February, 2011
It’s time to start paying attention to bone density
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
Did you know that your bone density will be at it’s highest at age 30? In other words, whatever bone density or bone strength that you have at age 30 will be the most that you will ever have — it will just go downhill from there. Most people don’t even think about their bone density until they are in their 40′s, 50′s or 60′s and by then it’s really hard to reverse bone loss known as osteopenia or osteoporosis. So if you think that you are too young to worry about bone loss — think again!
To prevent osteoporosis, the best decision you can make is to start taking at least 1000 mg of calcium citrate (not calcium carbonate) as a teen or twentysomething. Men and women should supplement, but it is most important for females because they often eat less calcium containing foods than males. Make sure you are purchasing a good quality calcium supplement that has calcium citrate in it, not calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate is what Tums are made from and do not readily absorb into your blood stream. That’s why they are such a good acid buffer in your stomach!
Taking calcium supplements often is not enough to maintain bone density in today’s sedentary society. You must stress your bones through weight training or resistance exercises. Walking or running isn’t enough. You need to perform some time of resistance exercise with your arms, shoulders, spine, hips and knees to maintain bone density throughout your body. If you simply do lower body exercises, your upper body and spine will lose bone density – what’s the point in exercising if you still get osteoporosis in half of your body?
If you are female and above the age of 50, a bone density screening called DEXA can be performed to see if you already have started to develop bone loss. I suggest that you have this test done every couple of years or as your primary care physcian suggests. If you do show up as having bone loss, talk to your doctor about additional calcium supplementation and weight bearing exercise as an alternative to the bone density drugs touted by celebrities. Many studies are showing significant side effects to these drugs including hip fractures (of all things!) And as always, feel free to talk to me on your next visit and I would be glad to help you protect yourself from osteoporosis.
Going back to babyhood?
Wednesday, February 16th, 2011
Have you ever noticed that we all enter the world in a fetal position, straighten out and then slowly return to that same fetal position as we age? We also start out walking with wobbly, unstable movements as toddlers. Most of us gain our stability as children. But somewhere in adulthood, we start getting a little more shaky and eventually have difficulty keeping our balance as we walk — just as we did when we were 1 year old.
In the rehabiltation world, a lot of time and research is spent on studying how we all learn to move as children. This research is important for treating children with movement disorders, but is also very valuable for use in adult rehabilitation as well. When we become injured, a little part of our brain forgets how to move that body part properly. If the injury is small, we might not even consciously notice this change.
Slowly these small injuries add up and we develop incorrect movement patterns (like using our hamstrings to do what our butt muscles should do and having raised shoulders all of the time). The longer these incorrect patterns are there, the more discomfort we feel and the less coordinated our movements are. Eventually, these incorrect patterns can cause you to lose your independence while walking and doing household chores.
To retrain the brain after an injury, we use many movements/exercises that mimick what we did as infants/toddlers such as crawling and reaching based exercises. Although our patients think we are crazy, the research shows that these movements are the best way to regain stability and strength. Even seniors with balance difficulties can see impressive gains with some of these simple exercises.
My feet are killing me!
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
Foot pain is such a common thing in most our lives that we think that its just something that we have to live with. Reality is that foot pain is a warning that something is wrong with your foot, ankle or calf and it needs to be taken care of.
For some people, poor footwear choices cause their foot pain. Many women and men wear shoes that are too narrow or have very little arch support, which puts pressure on the ligaments on the bottom of the foot and also the nerves in between the long bones of the foot. Examples of poor footwear choices include dress heels or tight dress oxfords, but also expand to such footwear choices as flip-flops, Ugg boots, ballerina flats or shoes that are simply too narrow for your size foot. I always suggest going to a knowledgable shoe store such as Dick Pond Athletics (athletic shoes), New Balance Chicago (dress shoes) or a store that carries a wide range of shoe sizes such as Nordstrom. You may have to pay $70-150 for your shoes, but that’s a lot cheaper than foot surgery down the road!
Some of my patients have foot pain even though they are wearing the correct shoes. A common cause of this type of foot pain could be overly tight posterior calf muscles that change the way that you walk, irritating your foot’s joints and ligaments. Calf muscles commonly tighten if you have a weak glute maximus muscle, sit for long periods of time or wear shoes with heels regularly. To treat this common cause of foot pain, start by stretching your posterior calf (runner’s stretch or hanging heel off of a stair) and icing the painful area on your foot. You should start to see results within 2 weeks. If not, schedule an appointment and we’ll be able to see if there is complicating factors such as adhesions, nerve damage or other foot pathology.
As with any injury, it’s always better to treat the problem when it first starts and not wait until there is further damage. Foot surgery and cortisone injections are not pleasant experiences and it’s always our goal to help you avoid those interventions if we can!
Improve Performance Through Hamstring Flexibility
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
In all track and cross country events, the flexibility of the hamstring muscle is crucial for speed, power and acceleration. Unfortunately, hamstrings are tight in almost all of the athletes that participate in these sports at every level even though coaches have been leading their teams through hamstring stretches for decades at almost every practice. Why can’t we seem to loosen up?
Whenever you stretch a muscle and it snaps back to its original tightened state by the next day, you know that you aren’t just dealing with a tight muscle, but a muscle imbalance. Muscle imbalances are formed by incorrect firing patterns being used over and over in a repetitive activity. For instance, you may have a track athlete who overuses his hamstrings to propel himself forward while jumping because his glute max is weak. Do this enough times and the bad muscle firing pattern is ingrained into his brain. You can stretch the hamstring, but if he jumps a few times afterwards, you will be right back where you were before you started stretching!
Because its so easy to “train” a muscle like the hamstring to be tight, it’s important to start stretching this muscle early in the athlete’s development. In addition to traditional stretching, try integrating foam roller mobilizations to the hip and thigh as well (see video). If you notice that they are consistently tight for more than 2 weeks or if the tightness in the hamstring is causing any other pain, refer them to your local chiropractic sports physician for evaluation.
Chiropractic physicians that are trained in sports medicine will be able to diagnose where the muscle imbalance is and also will be able to treat it with a variety of techniques such as Graston Technique, Kinesiotaping, manipulation and therapuetic exercise to reverse the bad firing pattern. The earlier this process is started, the faster your athlete recovers.
If you have further questions or would like more information on this topic, please email me at drerin@ducatchiropractic.com.
Biomechanics Are Key For Injury Prevention
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011
Every manager and coach is aware of the dangers of little league elbow and little league shoulder. We all are aware of the pitch counts and at what age it’s okay to allow athletes to throw a fastball or curve ball. What many managers tend to forget is that kids can develop elbow and shoulder pain despite following all of the rules if their biomechanics are incorrect.
You can spend hours correcting hitting and pitching form, but biomechanics will make or break you every time. Your athlete has a certain “program” that plays in their brain that tells certain muscles to turn on or off when they try to any repetitive motion such as hitting, pitching or throwing. If certain muscles are too tight and overused and other muscles are too loose and weak, the brain’s “program” is altered and they will injure themselves more quickly than an athlete who is in balance.
To prevent biomechanical imbalances, make sure that your team is performing proper stretching, warm-up and conditioning drills on a regular basis (on and off season). The problem is if they already have one of these bad “programs” in place, no amount of warm-ups is going to change it without proper diagnosis and treatment by a sports chiropractor.
Wall Angel Test
An easy test to perform to see if your athletes already have upper body imbalances is the Wall Angel Test. To conduct this test, have your athlete stand against a flat wall with their feet no more than 3″ away from the wall. Put their arms in an “angel” shape and tell them to keep their head, shoulders, midback, elbows, wrists and fingers all flat on the wall at the same time. Make sure to double check that their midback is flat against the wall. It’s okay if their low back isn’t touching, but the mid and upper back should be.
If they can complete this test without any of the body parts coming off the wall, their risk of injury is low. If they can’t, their risk of injury is high, no matter how close you monitor pitch counts and they need to be examined by a sports chiropractor to determine if any rehabilitation is required to keep them safe.
For more information on muscle imbalances or if you want help learning how to conduct the Wall Angel Test, please email me at drerin@ducatchiropractic.com.
Strong Glutes Will Save Your Butt While Shoveling
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011As I write this blog post from the comfort of my snowed in home, I immediately start thinking about the patients who will be in my office on Thursday and Friday with low back pain after shoveling out their homes this afternoon. The act of shoveling is great exercise and shouldn’t hurt you at all — unless you have a weak glute max muscle. If that muscle doesn’t do its job, you will end up with low back pain.
Let me explain. The glute max is the largest muscle in your hip area that makes up most of your buttock region. It’s primary job is to extend the hip (see picture).
This movement is vital to getting up from a seated position, walking, running, jumping, squatting and you guessed it, shoveling! If the glute max muscle is deconditioned, your body will automatically start using your low back and hamstring muscles to create hip extension — a job that they were not built to perform. When muscles do jobs that they weren’t meant to do, pain and spasms result. Hence the visit to the chiropractor after a big storm.
So if you start getting sore while shoveling later today, give our office a call and we’ll get you in tomorrow. First we’ll get to work relieving your pain. After that, have me check your glute max muscle. If his laziness was the reason for your back pain, let’s design a plan to get him back on board so that we don’t have to repeat this tradition next winter!