Have you experienced back pain before? Yes? It’s common to fear its return, but do
not let it slow you down! This time of year, just think of Santa. Think he’s experienced
back pain before delivering all those packages
and parcels? Johnson Chiropractic imagines so!
Santa cannot stop, and neither can you. Richmond
chiropractic care can help you deal with new back pain and chronic
back pain and lead our Richmond back pain
sufferers to live
a bit more fear-lessly and confidently this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your Richmond 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, bringing about weight shifting from
side to side to keep balance. (1) What is an undesirable
effect of being off-balance? A fall. Johnson Chiropractic
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 Richmond chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can annoy some of its users,
especially some older users, it can help! The new
smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is available.
Researchers have documented that it is able to track
age-related differences in balance not necessarily noted 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 effective
and individualized treatment plan to reduce fear of movement and
increase balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are exerting more research effort
to measure the benefits of multimodal chiropractic care in its
ability to influence 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 better
with a course of chiropractic care including Cox® Technic Flexion Distraction Decompression
spinal manipulation. (4) Johnson Chiropractic offers 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 using blood tests with pain
and disability. Vitamin D which appears in many health
news reports today also seems to be a potential biomarker for
back pain relief and disability. A reliable randomized control study
found a correlation between vitamin D levels and changes
in both pain and disability for low back pain patients cared for with
spinal manipulation. (5) One day, we may do blood tests to check
for back pain risks!
CONTACT Johnson Chiropractic
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 manage his back pain for 20 years,
incorporating the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Schedule your Richmond chiropractic
appointment soon. Calling all our Richmond 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 one night!