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Archive for December, 2009

Better Health through Diet and Chiropractic

A lack of symptoms or sickness does not make you well.

Every patient in my San Diego Chiropractic practice wants to be healthy.  The question is, however, what is health? And, how do we “get” healthy?

I always try to encourage health maintenance beyond the treatment of neck pain, back pain and headaches that represent the bulk of my patients’ concerns.  Many of my current patients entertain the idea of making lifestyle changes for the sake of improving their overall health picture.  That being said, some want nothing to do with it.  This is a shortsighted view of your health.

I always explain to my patients that with the exception of some catastrophic injury, most cases of neck pain and back pain begin as a mild irritation that we are totally unaware of.  With time and additional stresses, these slight irritations can become magnified to the point where they become symptomatic.

Our diets act the same way.  A few poor meal choices won’t destroy your health by themselves, but frequent poor meal choices over longer periods of time can have a significant negative impact on your health.  You only have to look at a McDonalds or Burger King drive-through to see the long lines of people making poor food choices.  These people who make frequent poor food choices (fast foods in this example) probably won’t suffer anything more than a little indigestion as a result of each meal.  However, the accumulation of the effects of all of these poor food choices will do damage down the road.

Unfortunately, this all becomes more apparent as we age.  We pay for our poor eating habits as we age for a couple of reasons.  First of all, poor eating choices become habitual.  Like any bad habit, changing poor eating habits is difficult.  Secondly, with normal aging, our metabolism slows making our poor eating habits more detrimental than they were when we were younger and more active. 

Regaining your health takes work on several fronts.  Some of these things you can accomplish yourself and other things you need help with. 

Patients that come to my chiropractic office for treatment for their neck pain or back pain often find this task one of the easy parts of getting healthy.  In order to get help with pain, all the patients have to do is come to the office for their treatment.

The difficult part of restoring your health is dealing with the bad habits that result in ill health.  Unhealthy diets, smoking, drinking and the like are major culprits that can easily derail any efforts that we make with exercise and conservative chiropractic treatment.  Overcoming bad habits takes an exceptionally motivated person.  Thank goodness that San Diego is such a perfect setting for complimenting healthy lifestyles.  Focus and you can overcome them and have a healthier body to show for it.

Call Steve Jones at his San Diego Chiropractic Clinic

(619) 280 0554

www.jonespainrelief.com

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Chronic pain is defined as pain that persists longer than 90 days beyond the course of the natural expected healing time.  As a chiropractor in San Diego, I get calls from both new and established patients on a regular basis who complain of back pain, neck pain, etc.  One of the factors that comes into play when planning a chiropractic treatment program is the duration of the patients pain.  In genereral, the longer that a patient suffers with a painful condition, the longer / more intense the treatment is needed in order to fix it.  Acute or recent episodes of pain respond much quicker than do chronic conditions. 

Pain is very difficult to quantify by any practitioner.  Pain is subjective in nature and completely defined by the person experiencing the symptoms, the fact that chronic pain can exist without an obvious cause makes it much more difficult to treat.  

I see the difficulties that my chronic pain patients have with their conditions on a daily basis.  Aside from the actual pain that they experience, those who suffer with chronic pain often limit their activities for fear of exacerbating their conditions.  They also have a much harder time focussing on mental tasks as the pain is a constant source of distraction.  The more severe the pain, the more difficulties these people have with attention demanding tasks.

While we strive to avoid pain, pain is a wonderful tool of the nervous system.  Pain lets us know of actual or potential tissue damage with an unpleasant sensation that directs our attention to the affected area so that we can either immediately take action to stop the process or focus on healing the injured body parts.  Chronic pain sensations are a bit more insideous. 

Chronic pain often involves a decrease in the sensativity of the nerve fibers that send messages of pain from the damaged area.  With a decreased sensativity (threshold), the nerve is much more likely to transmit painful sensations to the brain then a healthy nerve / tissue combination.  This activity within the nervous system is know as a wind up phenomenon and it is very difficult to stop once it has been established.  In some other cases, nerve fibers that normally don’t carry painful sensations not only begin to transmit pain signals but it is thought that they may actually generate the signals themselves.

In my office, chronic pain is often the result of untreated sprain / strain type injuries of the joints.  In untreated or under-treated sprain / strain injuries, the joint or the muscles that move the joint are laden with scar tisuue that acts to either limit or alter motion of that joint.  With time, the awkward, unnatural biomechanics of the scar tissue laden joint results in irritation, inflammation and finally pain and spasm.  While chiropractic care is often successful at re-establishing “clean” biomechanics of a joint, it is always better to get the care in the beginning of an injury versus waiting for that injury to become chronic, with a requiring more care with a decreasing chance of complete recovery. 

Because of the possibility of an acute painful condition becoming a chronic one, I always encourage my patients to take care of themselves immediately when they first start to experience pain.  I have practiced chiropractic care for almost two decades now and I can say that chronic painful conditions of the spine are devastating.  Not only do they make you expereince pain, but in most instances they limit your physical activities creating a situation that can easily degrade from inactivity secondary to pain, to deconditioning and eventually to obesity and ill health in general leading to a dissatisying lifestyle. 

The bottom line on chronic pain is this – avoid it if you can.  Don’t ignore your pain.  Painful acute conditions that are left untreated can easily spiral into a chronic condition that has the potential to alter your lifestyle in a negative way.

Call Steve Jones at his San Diego Chiropractic Clinic

(619) 280 0554

www.jonespainrelief.com

Visit our Adjustable Economical Mouse Platform website to learn more about or Buy Ergo Nav

Visit my San Diego Chiropractic Website to make an appointment

Read More Articles on Chiropractic, Nutrition, Preventative Health, Back pain, Neck Pain and more

 Chiropractic Treatment for Low Back Pain

Why do I have back pain?

Being a chiropractor in San Diego, I hear this question all the time.  Back pain and neck pain are the two most common complaints that my patients have.  The fact that my practice is in San Diego probably decreases the frequency of these complaints.  People in San Diego tend to be more active which actually lowers the incidence of low back and neck pain.

Over fifteen years ago when I first started practicing chiropractic care in San Diego, most of my low back pain patients and neck pain patients for that matter were not related to office work.  Most of the cases that I had when I first started practicing were do to injuries like car accidents and falls or heavy work.

In the mid to late nineteen nineties, I started to see a trend in injury mechanisms among my patients.  They were starting to attribute their pain to long hours of sitting at the computer.

Sitting all day at the computer not only causes back pain but it also causes neck pain, headaches, carpal tunnel syndrome and various arm problems.

Lower back pain is primarily due to poor sitting posture.  When we are standing up with good posture, our lower backs have a sweeping forward bowing curve that resembles a stretched out letter “c”.  This shape distributes our bodies weight evenly throughout the spine.  When we sit, this curve reverses, greatly increasing the stress on the joints and discs in the spine.

With time, this postural stress results in irritation and inflammation resulting in pain and muscle spasms.

Once the low back has reached a point of pain and spasms, chiropractic care is necessary to relieve the pain, improve the bio-mechanics of the spine and relax the muscles.

In addition to chiropractic care for back pain, the patient must seek out an ergonomic chair and have it adjusted properly for their body.  In many cases, I suggest a complete workstation analysis to help prevent future problems with other computer related stresses.    

Writers Bio

Dr. Steven R. Jones is a licensed Chiropractor in the state of California. He received his doctorate from Palmer College of Chiropractic-West in Sunnyvale, California. Dr. Jones has treated his patients for over 15 years at his own San Diego Chiropractic practice.

Dr. Jones is accepting new patients and would be happy to consult with you regarding your chiropractic needs.

Call Steve Jones at
(619) 280 0554
San Diego Chiropractic

Ergonomically Correct Mouse Platform Website to learn more about or Buy Ergo Nav

Chiropractic San Diego Website to make an appointment
Better Health Steve Jones