Chiropractic Treatment for Sciatica

Sciatica?  Sciatica is the term given to pain that radiates along the sciatic nerve pathway. The sciatic nerve starts in the lumbar spine, goes to the top of the buttocks, down through the pelvis, and then posterior down each of the legs to the feet.  People usually only have sciatic pain down one leg at a time.  The sciatic nerve is the largest nerve of the body, about the size of your thumb, and it functions to connect the spinal cord to the leg and foot.  The staff at Twisted Spine & Joint has helped many people with this condition and can help you.

Typically, people who have sciatic pain suffer from misalignment of the pelvis, herniated disk, have osteophytes or bone spurs causing inflammation and pain, muscle dysfunction, tumors, infection, or injury to the lumbar spine.  This causes lumbar pain (lumbago), hip pain, leg pain, foot pain, and buttock pain.  Symptoms of sciatica include:  burning along the back of the leg, numbness of the leg &/or foot, cramping of the leg &/or foot, or tingling/paresthesia of the leg &/or foot.  Pain can increase with walking, sitting, driving, sit to stand motion, laying on affected side, bending, and standing too long in one place.

Misalignment or "subluxation" of the pelvis and lumbar spine can be present for years.  Three things cause pain:  1) change in position of a joint;  2) degeneration over time;  and 3) inflammation or muscle spasms.  Sciatica can occur suddenly due to injury, but it can also be due to an old or existing problem.  When different joints or levels of the spine are not moving smoothly, the nerves can become irritated due to inflammation and muscle spasms.  Previous injuries accumulate over our lives and conservative care should be the first choice when treating sciatic pain.   

Sciatica can be diagnosed with a proper medical history and physical examination.  Orthopedic tests are performed by a trained health professional to diagnose sciatica.  X-rays can be used to identify the cause, and sometimes advanced studies, such as lumbar MRI or CT scans are necessary. 

Conservative care is the first choice when treating sciatic pain.  Chiropractors treat sciatica with a series of prescribed adjustments, physical therapy to reduce muscle spasms, core exercises to balance the pelvis and back, stretching exercises to improve muscle balance and to improve spinal health.  If necessary, referrals are made for pain medication, anti-inflammatory medications, and even surgical procedures as a last resort. 



 

Professional Athletes & Their Use of Chiropractic

Why are professional athletes using chiropractic more and more whether they are in pain or not? This is a great question and the answers lies in the effectiveness. Chiropractors allow athletes to get the most out of their body, allows them to recover faster, prevents injures, and optimize their performance. The proof is in the pudding that athletes know that chiropractor keep them on the field longer and if they do come off, it gets them back sooner. As of now almost all profession sports team in every sport have chiropractors on staff, including the Olympics. Jerry Rice, Tiger Woods, and other athletes have state that chiropractic care is one of the most importance factors that can be directly related to their success.

Since athletes use chiropractors so frequently why isn't everybody using chiropractic with a certain frequency. Chiropractic is beneficial to everybody, whether you're a high level athlete or a desk worker, injuries occur in both facets, the cause is just different. The athlete injury is usually from trauma and the desk worker injury is usually from micro-trauma that is usually built up over time. The injuries can almost be treated the same, once the injuries are treated you do the same type of preventive treatment for the athlete as we would for the average Joe. It's all about optimizing your body's performance and keeping it working correctly.    

Chiropractic Adjustments, Short Term Pain Remedy or Lifestyle?

The answer is yes, chiropractic can be what ever you want it to be. If you have pain and only want to get rid of it chiropractic can help. If you want to make chiropractic part of your bi-weekly or month schedule you can do that as well. Here at Twisted Spine and Joint Center while we like to help people as much as we can we can only tell you the benefits of chiropractic and it's your choice what you want to do with your condition of lifestyle. I can tell you a few things, first short term chiropractic will sometimes yield short term results. The chances are the symptoms did not show up overnight so they may not go away overnight. Once pain is gone, the area that was treated is very fragile and mostly likely not stabilized which can allow many of the symptoms to return. The proper way to fix a musculoskeletal problem is to decrease pain, stabilize and strengthen the area, and prevent future occurrences. Again, we will help you no matter what option you think is better for you, but based on our experience it's better to prevent problems then always try to fix reoccurring ones.    

Chiropractic & Overall Well-Being

It's so wonderful in our Frisco Chiropractic office to find patients who love to get the best out of their health. We treated a patient today in our office that reported he felt a wonderful sense of well-being. He stated for the first time in his life he feels wonderful well-being. I told him "that is exactly what chiropractic is about, of course we can help with pain but maximizing your health potential and getting the most out of your body is the number one goal".

Most patients do not realize this is the ultimate goal of health is to optimize their well-being. We want to help as many people as possible and obviously we will help you reach whatever your health goal is. We see many patients who understand getting out of pain when they have symptoms is important to them, we further lecture to them that if they continue to do what they did before their injury without maintaining or maximizing their health their symptoms will return, and they will be "yo-yo" patient. A "yo-yo" patient is a patient that only uses chiropractic as a method to get out of pain, they come in when their health status yo-yos down and ends care when their health status yo-yos back up.

We find in our Frisco Chiropractic office that patients who choose to use chiropractic as a tool to maximize their well-being, live healthier and better lives. They simply have less symptoms than the "yo-yo" patient and get the most out of their body weather it's training for a marathon to building a barn. As stated before we will help any patient that wants chiropractic and in our expert opinion can be helped by chiropractic, but wellness care in the long run will be more cost-effective and your body will definitely thank you for it. If you want to make chiropractic part of your life like so many people do visit our Frisco Chiropractic website.

   

How Can Chiropractors Help With Headaches?

Headaches are a very common condition that many people complain of that enter our Frisco Chiropractic office. If the headaches are caused by a musculoskeletal condition then chiropractic can most definitely help. In our experiences headaches respond very well to chiropractic care. What we find most of the time is cervicogenic headaches which are headaches that have origin in the cervical spine. If the problem in the cervical spine is cleared up and function is restored then most of the times headaches usually cease. Most of the dysfunction in the cervical spine causing the headaches occurs at the first and second vertebra, this area is very small and there are a lot of small muscles and nerves which can easily be compromised and irritated. The job of the chiropractor is to find the areas of dysfunction, restore function and keep that area healthy by stabilizing the area with exercises and corrective adjustments. Twisted Spine and Joint Center has literally helped thousands of people with headaches, if you have headaches we want to help you.       

Can Chiropractic Help With Acid Reflex?

Many patient seek out a chiropractor or come to our Frisco Chiropractic office for neck pain, lower back pain or some other musculoskeletal pain. There are many other aliments that chiropractic could help with. If you think of the spine or spinal nerves as origin of all communication from the brain to the body it's not unreasonable to think that there could be a disruption between the brain and the body from time to time. If there is disruption or lack of communication what does that mean? If a nerve goes to an organ or a certain tissue then the nerve controlling that tissue when the nerve has dysfunction will be dysfunctional as well. There will be a lack of optimal communication, when that optimal communication is missing your body is not functioning at one hundred percent.

When the body is not at it's best other problems can arise, for example if the nerve that goes to your stomach is not functioning properly, the stomach may not be functioning properly either. The stomach perhaps may not be breaking foods down with the right ratio of chemicals or maybe the stomach does not have enough rhythmic contractions to usher the food in the duodendum, or lastly maybe the nerve controlling he esophageal sphincter does not quite close the sphincter properly and acid regurgitation can happen. If we treat to eliminate the cause of this dysfunction than the stomach should work properly. The best part about chiropractor is this works for any time a nerve has dysfunction. Will chiropractic cure everything, of course not only your body can cure things, chiropractic merely gives your body the tools to try to work at optimal efficiency and cure it yourself. True health comes from within, not in a pill!         

Your Plano Chiropractor's Deep Thoughts.

From time to time in our Frisco Chiropractic office, Twisted Spine and Joint Center, we are allow to reflect. We reflect on why we are chiropractors and why we decided to help people get better and stay well. I was talking to my colleague simply about the trend of medicine, on how medicine has been wrong about lower back pain for awhile. First they wanted to operated on the discs which is a failed methodology, it has been determined at only one in one hundred disc herniations need surgery yet back surgeries continue to rise and has brought upon a new diagnosis called failed back surgery syndrome. See back surgery failure rate is so high there is actually a term for it. There has been numerous studies that also show fusion surgeries are not needed in approximately seventy percent of the cases and you risk death every time you're under the knife.

There has also been recent scandals in device companies paying doctors to write bogus research journals to say how there products work and are the best. One doctor in particular made around $8.5 million dollars for a few years of work. The main problem with this is that other doctors see the research and based their treatment recommendation off these journals, this is the biggest ethical dilemma plaguing medicine, almost as big as the American Medical Associate taking money from tobacco companies to endorse tobacco as having "therapeutic effects". Recently it has show that it roughly takes fifteen years for a therapy to reach mainstream after the research shows it is effective. What is terribly wrong is that it take forty-four year for a therapy to be eliminated from mainstream after it has been deemed ineffective or harmful.

Sadly to say with medicine you never know what's going to be helpful and what's going to harm you. Think about spinal fusions they have been shown for the most part to be ineffective but they will still be doing them for the next forty years. What medication in the near future will be label harmful or cause disastrous effects? You should choose to do the safest and most natural less invasive treatment first as it is the lowest risk and work your way up the medicine hierarchy to riskier treatment option as lower risk treatments are ineffective. This is where chiropractic comes into play natural safe healthcare without the harmful effects since chiropractic care is the safest healthcare on the planet. If you have musculoskeletal problem chiropractors should be your first treatment option of choice.             

Can Chiropractic Help My Sacroiliac Pain?

Sacroiliac pain is a very common and annoying symptom that many people reports to us in our Frisco Chiropractic office. Weather the patient is a pregnant woman or an athlete sacroiliac pain is a common theme. Sacroiliac pain can be gradually built up due to dysfunction or can come on very suddenly and can cause pain while sitting, walking or doing your daily activities. In my experience sacroiliac pain is probably prevalent in about fifty percent of the patients we treat in our Plano Chiropractic office who complain of lower back pain.

Many people wonder how their condition arises or what makes it so annoying. The problems that we see is common sacroiliac dysfunction, dysfunction causes inflammation and inflammation causes pain. This means there is usually a pelvic unleveling and the pelvis is tilted causing dysfunction in both of the sacroiliac joints, both sides can become inflamed. Weather one side is overworking and the other is underworking this a problems on both accounts, we want the pelvis and the sacroiliac joints to function with symmetry as much as possible. Chiropractors try as much as possible to keep the body in a constant state of balance, having balance allows the body to function at peak performance and at this case with no pain or dysfunction. Chiropractic adjustment do wonders for keeping the sacroiliac joints free of problems.
    

Plantar Fasciitis, Help Me!

In our Frisco chiropractic office plantar fasciitis is a common complaint in patients with foot pain. Plantar Fasciitis is an irritation of the plantar fascia which is on the bottom of the foot. It is usually caused by an over pronation of the foot during gait and occurs in athletes as a micro-injury that adds up to cause the condition. The plantar fascia gets very inflamed due to the improper biomechanics of the foot. The diagnosis of plantar fasciitis is usually easy to determine and the hallmark complaint is the first step in the morning being very painful. On radiographic study there can also be a calcaneal spur which is seen in this condition.

Chiropractors are well versed in treating musculoskeletal conditions and plantar fasciitis responds well to chiropractic. The overall treatment protocol should first be focused on decreasing pain and inflammation. The method to decrease inflammation is going to be cryotherapy, in our Frisco chiropractic office we usually tell patients to fill an empty soda bottle with water and freeze it. We then instructed the patient to roll the frozen bottle with their foot for a certain period of time, this method works well. Also therapy to the soft tissues around the foot like stretching can also be a useful tool as tight muscles pull the foot out of place during gait. Chiropractic care will also involve chiropractic adjusting of the joints in the foot that are fixated and an evaluation of the lumbar spine could reveal a biomechanical problem. Along with home exercises and continued care a patient should respond quite favorable to chiropractic care for this condition.      

What Is Better For My Muscles, Ice Or Heat?

Well it really depends, both can be harmful and both can be helpful, it really depends on what stage of healing you are in. There are three types of phases during the healing process and your chiropractor will be able to identify and recommend which one is best for you. The phases of healing are the acute, sub-acute, and chronic. The acute phase is usually the first seventy-two hours of the injury, the sub-acute phase is from after the first seventy-two hour to two weeks, and the chronic phase is anything after two weeks.

Due to the physiological process of each phase cryotherapy or heat therapy can be indicated or contraindicated. The first phase is going to be the acute and ice phase, ice will be recommended to help decrease inflammation and help gate with the pain. The process of reducing the inflammation with help the tissues heal faster and regain functionality sooner. If heat is used in the acute phase, while it may feel good at the time, the next day will be extremely painful. Large gatherings of exudate or liquid will be present causing the area of injury to swell, also this swelling will promote pain, and the area of injury will be unusable for a few dates.

The next phase is the sub-acute phase which as stated above ranges from after the first seventy-two hours to two weeks. These phases can overlap and it's your chiropractors job to assess the current situation. In the sub-acute phase I still like to recommend ice treatment most of the time. The ice treatments continue to decrease pain, and only slightly decrease inflammation. If a patient has problems with ice I will recommend an ice-heat contrast therapy, with heat for ten minutes then ice to follow up. The ice-heat contrast therapy can act as a pumping acting to first bring the exudate to the area and the cold to contract and pump it away.

The last phase is the chronic phase, which is after two weeks from the injury date. During the chronic phase heat is going to be beneficial. The heat usually helps the tight muscles to relax and breath so to speak, most people also report just the general feeling that heat feels good. The heat seems to elongate the muscle fiber to make them more pliable meaning the muscle will be able to help preform a larger range of motion. Heat is also used in muscle work or reforming tissues, where the heat is used to relax and elongate the muscles and after the therapy ice is used to make sure the treatment does not have painful effects. If you have an injury it is always important to get it evaluated by your chiropractor first since they are experts in musculoskeletal injuries.  

It's Funny What We Find In Our Back Yard

A few friends were assisting me in chopping down some pretty tall plants when my wife noted about some of these not-so-friendly-looking plants. She pointed to one of the plants that I was getting ready to knock down. "I said I do believe that is milk thistle, I believe it's got some therapeutic value. "I explained how cool and interesting that was as I continued to work. However the following day I did some research. Low and behold, this spiny, purple-flowered plant has been used for thousands of years as a remedy for a variety of ailments.  According to Rational Phytotherapy, a classic, science-based guide to herbal medicine, that milk thistle I chopped to the ground is considered one of the few plant-based medicines to have undergone "state-of-the-art pharmacologic testing" and well-controlled research studies.

If something this easy is growing in our backyard and has great value then why are we going to the store and buying other items that seem like garbage. The point is you know what your getting when you grow things in your back yard or even in a farmer's market. If you can eat locally produced foods in a high abundance I can guarantee we would be healthier. We would not need food sensitivity test or have as many food allergies. The problems with food from long distances is a logistical problem. How do you keep fresh foods that stay fresh in a truck for a week? It's easy you genetically modify them to grow larger and stay fresh and healthier longer. The problems are this is not good for us as humans, we need to eat naturally grown food, that's how we were made. If you grow foods out of your back yard I'm sure they can be just as therapeutic as the wonderful milk thistle plant.