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.      

Do I Have Frozen Shoulder And Can I Fix It?

Frozen shoulder is a common name of a condition where it is very difficult to move the shoulder. The movement is restricted in all planes but the motion that seems to be most difficult is lateral elevation or lateral flexion, it's also noted that internal and external rotation can be quite limited and bothersome as well. The proper name of this condition is adhesive capsulitis, basically it's where the joint capsule does not want to allow normal shoulder biomechanics. This condition can be long standing and is usually gradual of origin. I usually judge someone having adhesive capsulitis by them having less than seventy degrees of arm lateral elevation with pain. Many people report this condition started by simply waking up with some pain or they slept on it wrong, this seems to aggravate it and then it snowballs from there getting worst.

Treatment protocol with chiropractic care is very beneficial and responds very well. The treatment protocol should be focused first by decreasing pain and restoring proper mechanics to the joint in questioned. A contrast therapy of cryotherapy and heat can work well to make the tissues pliable for manual therapy and chiropractic adjusting. After cold/heat therapy the use of electric muscle stimulation (EMS) could also be of benefit to help gate pain and fatigue some muscles that have gotten contracted during the process. EMS should be arranged where the pads can be concentrated into the shoulder joint for maximum effect.

Chiropractic adjusting works well, although sore at the beginning it really loosen up the tissues surrounding the shoulder. The chiropractic adjusting should be directed in the position where the shoulder is restricted the most. For example if the patient is having trouble with lateral elevation the adjustment should have a contact on the superior portion of the shoulder joint and the thrust should be in a superior to inferior vector. The superior to inferior vector is essential to increase superior to inferior glide which is the motion that makes lateral elevation of the shoulder possible. Once treatment is rendered on a regular protocol there will be some improvements in overall global range of motion. Exercises can also be prescribed which are extremely beneficial to continue the process of recovery at home to get to the wellness phase.         

How Do I Make My Immune System Better?

If you suffer from an erratic and unreliable immune system you may want to listen to this one. While the immune system and neuroimmunology is a rapidly growing field it is also not well understood, there is not a ton of research in the neuroimmunology field. So I will be explaining what we do know and how we can make your immune system and health function better. The immune system is responsible for keeping you healthy from disease and viruses, it can be your best friend and sometimes your worst nightmare. It can quell a serious infections or it can completely overreaction to something as little as dust or dander causing allergic symptoms such running nose, watery eyes, hives, shortness of breathe and other issues.

So first how does our immune work, when the immune system notices something that is foreign to the body it creates an immune response. The immune response is very complicated and still not completely understood, for simplicity sake we will just say the immune response bring cells and chemicals to the area also know as inflammation. Sometimes the inflammation is needed, other times it is completely overblown. So how do we get our immune system to work normally most of the time? How do we get it to work when we want to but not overwork at other times.

Well the first step is to reset the system so to speak. If you're not living a healthy life and you're walking around and very inflamed that's going to be a problem. We need to reset the system, and we need to do it naturally. The first suggestion would be to try to eliminate everything in the body that would cause inflammation and remove it from the diet. Well, how do I do that? This is the easy part, a food sensitive test which test up to three hundred different substrates will tell you what foods are pro-inflammatory so you can remove the food in question from your diet. Once those foods are eliminated you could have a reduction of the abnormal immune response.

Recent research also suggest from a systematic review of the literature at 9th Chiropractic, Osteopathy, and Physiotherapy Annual Conference in the UK in which Jack Neil of the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic showed that chiropractic adjusting could show a decrease of pro-inflammatory chemicals and an increase in antibodies (good reaction) involved in the immune reaction. Also noted is that chiropractic adjustments may increase the production of leukocytes which support the white blood cells in fighting off a threat  These immunological changes could show why chiropractic can decrease inflammation and pain while supporting overall wellness. In essence the two options touched upon could help in making your immune system function better. If you're interested in both chiropractic treatment and food sensitivity testing we can do both at Twisted Spine and Joint Center, visit our website at http://twistedspineandjoint.com if you have any questions or would like to schedule an appointment.         

Should I Be Eating Seafood?

The simple answer should be yes in regard to you of course liking it. Seafood has a plethora of vitamins and minerals that are important in everyday body functions. Seafood is very high in protein and low in fat which makes it an excellent entrée for dinner. It is high in virtually every mineral and vitamin, most importantly iodine which is used to make thyroid hormones. The iodine mineral is somewhat lacking in land creatures and greens, with the exception of seaweed which is extremely high in iodine. Seafood sometimes gets a bad rap in the media in regard to sensationalism, but I assure you if you listen to a couple of rules to can get great seafood.

The rules are smaller the fish the better, when the fish are smaller they have less expose to mercury and other trace elements. Very young children should stay away from fish due to mercury levels could interfere with developmental processes. Adults have virtually no problems with mercury when eating fish at reasonable rate, although if you are worried smaller fish have less mercury.

The next rule is you want to be eating fresh caught fish, fresh fish is healthier due to them being in their natural habitat. If they are farm raised you don't know what they are eating and you don't know the amount of fish in a pin. They could be swimming in large pools of bacteria and excrement laden pools or ponds, not a pleasant picture. So the two rules in recap fresh caught and smaller the fish the better.

If you like fish but have problems eating fish because how it makes you feel you could have a food sensitivity to certain fish. Certain food sensitivity tests like the ALCAT test between a large range of different type of fish, depending on the test you may have to omit one fish and switch for another in your diet. The test can help you substitute other fish to eat to still gain all the nutrients and help you on your wellness path.          

How Does A Food Sensitivity Test Work?

Food sensitivity testing is very easy to do once you've committed to getting one done because you want to know why you are having certain symptoms. It's important to know about certain foods and what they do to the body and your overall wellness. Blood needs to be drawn and sent to the lab where the testing is being done. You're blood can be drawn at our Frisco Chiropractic office, your home or at your work. The blood is then shipped overnight to one of our labs that we work with. Once your sample has arrived a the facility it undergoes rigorous testing.

Once at the lab the test is compare to about 350 different tests which match your blood with a certain food or substrate. If your blood shows a certain reaction to a certain food this can be picked up during the test and it can be graded in three different sensitivity grades, mild, moderate, and severe. The lab will compile all the data in a color coded and easy to read manual. This whole process usually take about a week or two, once your results comes back we can schedule a follow-up appointment to discuss the best plan of action. Our Frisco Chiropractic office is always here to help!

What are we eating?

In our country food is readily available and many people think see food eat food, this is a large problem. A large amount of people may have sensitivities to these foods without even knowing it. Patients may misinterpret food sensitivity issues with other symptoms such as muscle pain, fatigue, headaches, and weight gain. A lot of people believe that the above mentioned symptoms are just them getting old, they don't even understanding it is from what they ingest. We are raised to not pay any detail to food sensitive and only food allergies. The problem is food allergies can mostly be seen and related to the food you ingest food while food sensitive is mostly hidden and hard to pinpoint a certain food, meaning sometimes symptoms are not correlated.  Although, the damage from food allergies and sensitivity can be the same.

It’s important to get food sensitivity testing to find out what foods could be a causing a problem, getting rid of them and eating foods you’re tolerable to. Decreasing the foods you have a sensitivity to will decrease overall inflammation and allow your body to function to peak performance. Having decreased inflammation will decrease muscle aches, fatigue, and weight gain. All of those symptoms that have been making you feel old are actually not because you’re old or you’re overeating, it’s from what you’re eating.