Had back pain before? Yes? It’s common to fear its return, but do
not let it hijack your life! This holiday
season, consider Santa. Think he’s felt
back pain before moving all those boxes and bags? Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka expects he has!
Santa can’t quit, and neither can you. Sitka
chiropractic care can help manage new back pain and chronic
back pain and guide our Sitka back pain
sufferers to be a bit less fearful and a bit more confident getting around this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your Sitka chiropractor knows
this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers studied this common clinical finding and found that this fear of bending forward also affects postural sway or balance by disrupting hip balance control, causing weight shifting from
side to side to maintain balance. (1) What is an undesirable
effect of being off-balance? A fall. Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka
finds it very critical to help our back pain patients –
especially our older back pain patients – to keep
their balance!
HELP TO KEEP BALANCE AND DECREASE FEAR
“There’s an app for that!” Just what our
older Sitka chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can frustrate some of its users,
particularly some older users, it can help! The new
smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is accessible.
Researchers have verified that it is able to measure
age-related differences in balance not necessarily picked
up during clinical exam measurements like postural stability,
step time, step length and cycle. (2) These insights can assist
healthcare providers like your chiropractor create a more beneficial
and individualized treatment plan to reduce fear of movement and
increase balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are doing more research study
to quantify the benefits of multimodal chiropractic care in its
ability to affect gait, balance and/or fall risk and
prevention. (3) One encouraging study with older lumbar spinal
stenosis patients (average age 83.5 years) found that their postural sway and
entropy in addition to function and symptomatology were improved
with a course of chiropractic care including Cox® Technic Flexion Distraction Decompression
spinal manipulation. (4) Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka uses this treatment along
with nutrition and exercise to help our patients keep moving fearlessly and balanced!
BIOMARKERS FOR BACK PAIN
One new nutrition finding this month
may also help this effort. It comes from researchers evaluating
levels of biomarkers – C-reactive protein, vitamin D, neuropeptide Y and others
- in low back pain patients tested with blood tests with pain
and disability. Vitamin D which keeps appearing in many health
news reports today also appears to be a potential biomarker for
back pain relief and disability. A reliable randomized control study
found a link between vitamin D levels and changes
in both pain and disability for low back pain patients cared for with
spinal manipulation. (5) Some day, we may do blood tests to check
for back pain risks!
CONTACT Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka
Listen to this PODCAST
with Dr. Joel Dixon on The Back Doctors
Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates his helping
a Vietnam veteran deal with his back pain for 20 years,
incorporating the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Make your Sitka chiropractic
appointment soon. Calling all our Sitka back pain patients!
Bring us your back pain and your fear of back pain, bending and falling. We can
help you handle them as well as Santa fearlessly and efficiently delivers
all his packages in a single night!