Active Family Chiropractic

Empowering Your Health

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How Do Rotator Cuff Injuries Happen?

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Have you ever had a shoulder pain that just wouldn’t go away? Maybe you couldn’t determine when it started or how but it bothers you. You could have a rotator cuff injury from overuse. Seeing a CBP Chiropractor can help get you back pain-free.

How do rotator cuff injuries happen?

The most common cause is a trauma, like a car accident, work injury, fitness injury, or just wear and tear. Wear and tear comes from overuse. For example, baseball players tend to sustain rotator cuff injuries due to wear and tear over time and could lead to a tear.

Can improper structure lead to rotator cuff injuries?

If you don’t have the proper structure in the shoulder joint, if it is subluxated, it can lead to improper forces on the muscles and tendons which can result in tendon/muscle damage. A lot of injuries that people have seemingly out of nowhere if it is not an obvious trauma, is usually an overuse, wear and tear type of thing. That over the years they were slowly creating wear and tear on those muscles and joints, which they were not addressing, by getting regular adjustments and stretching. What ends up happening is the wear and tear on the ligaments starts to create damage and then eventually, the smallest of stimulus could cause a complete tear of the ligament.

One of the other things that can cause rotator cuff injuries is the way the joints are shaped. Sometimes people have genetic deformities, where the shape of the ball and socket joint is not ideal, and that is not something that anyone can do anything about. If this is the case, strengthening the area is the only thing that can be done.

The rotator cuff is the most complicated series of joints in the body. Anyone of those joints, at any time, could become subluxated, overworked, and ultimately injured. Those injuries are very difficult to come back from.

How can a CBP Chiropractor help?

A CBP Chiropractor can identify what is going on structurally, and if there is something structurally wrong, it can be addressed by adjusting the joints and help the muscles to work more evenly. Seeing a CBP Chiropractor can help to prevent injury.

If someone has had a rotator cuff injury already, they may have had surgery, in that case, what a CBP Chiropractor can do is help by giving exercises to help strengthen the joints that haven’t had surgery on. In addition, they can help by strengthening the muscles around those joints as well.

For the most part, you can prevent those types of injuries if there is not a direct trauma. Getting a check-up with a CBP Doctor will give you the tools you need to strengthen the rotator cuff area and get on the road to living pain-free.

For more information ask Dr. B at [email protected].

 

Can CBP Chiropractic care help my balance?

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Losing one’s balance can happen to anyone. It could be any number of reasons why you or a loved one is losing their balance and getting a checkup with a CBP Chiropractor could help fix the issue.

Cause: Improper Alignment

CBP has helped a lot of people and their balance, especially older people who feel like they are off-balance. Balance problems sometimes come from the way that the spine is shaped. If your spine is very shifted to the right, gravity is going to pull you to the right and you will feel like you are going to fall over, especially as you get older and you start to lose some of the muscle strength that would normally right yourself.

Older people are always falling because they lose their balance, a lot of the time because their spine is shifted. So they are either falling forward because their head is forward and their body is pulled forward or they’re falling to the side because their spine is shifted.

Cause: Inner ear issues

Sometimes balance problems can come from the inner ear. Sometimes as people get older they have more ear wax buildup or they have nerve damage to their ear which can throw off their balance in a major way.

It really depends on what the problem is. If a person has been diagnosed with some type of inner ear problem, like damage to the nerve in the ear, then probably the adjustments won’t help with the balance issues. However, if it is something like impacted ear wax or pressure on the nerve from the neck area, where the nerves control the ear function, then absolutely the corrective adjustments can help.

Seeing a CBP Chiropractor can help you determine a course of action.

It’s just about finding out what’s wrong first. Finding out where the loss of balance is coming from. Is it coming from the inner ear, or a neck subluxation, or the way that your body is shaped? That is the first thing to figure out because then a CBP Chiropractor can figure out whether or not they can help. So start by making an appointment with your CBP Chiropractor and get a check-up. You don’t have to live with poor balance.

For more information ask Dr. B at [email protected].

What causes a muscle knot?

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What causes a muscle knot?

Muscle knots can come from a lot of different things. In terms of CBP, when you have poor spinal structure, subluxations, which are misalignments in your joints, can cause severe problems with your muscles. If your head is shifted all the way to your right then all the muscles on your right side will be shortened because the attachment sites are closer to one another. So everything on that side is going to get very short and tight. Then everything on the opposite side gets very stretched, elongated and weakened.

A poor spinal structure could be the root of the issue.

Depending on what structural problems you have, you could be overworking some muscles and underworking others. This is where a lot of muscle knots come from and it’s also where a lot of injuries come from. It is a muscular imbalance due to a bad spinal structure. It is also one of the most overlooked things by Physical Therapists, Osteopaths, Fitness Trainers, Massage Therapists, just about anyone in that world, they overlook the fact that spinal structure dictates muscular function. So that’s where muscle knots come from and that’s why you seem to get the same ones over and over again. Because your muscles are pulling unevenly due to what your structure is doing.

The issue could be a lack of stretching!

You can also get muscle knots if you don’t do proper mobilization after exercise. So say you go out to weed the garden, you’re pulling, tugging, bending, and twisting, your muscles are getting a workout but instead of stretching you go inside and flop on the couch. This will cause muscles knots. After any type of activity, you need to stretch. If you don’t all of the muscle byproducts, metabolic waste, that you just caused by using your muscles will settle into your muscles and cause muscle knots, instead of being flushed out of your system by drinking water and stretching.

Dehydration also plays a role.

The last thing that can cause muscle knots is dehydration. If you don’t have enough hydration in your muscles then the metabolic waste will stay in the muscles and that will give you even more aches and pains. It’s important to stay hydrated. You can become dehydrated even if you don’t think that you’ve done a lot of activity. Something like weeding a garden, even if you are not sweating, will dehydrate you.

How do I get rid of muscle knots? Where do I start?

In order to decrease and eliminate the frequency of muscle knots, it is important to stretch, hydrate, and above all else make sure your spine is in good alignment by getting regular check-ups with your CBP Chiropractor.

For more information ask Dr. B at [email protected]

Why Won’t My Child Sit Up Straight?

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All of us has been told as a kid to sit up straight. Did you find it impossible to do? It always seemed more comfortable to slouch, doesn’t it? However, you always see parents telling their children to sit up straight.

Why won’t my Child Sit up Straight?

A child won’t sit up straight for a number of reasons. Usually, it’s because the child has something wrong with the structure of their spine. Because of that, it is impossible for them to sit up straight, no matter how much you try to encourage them to do so. A lot of the habits they do every day, such as using handheld devices, playing video games, sitting slumped at school, all those things can lead to bad posture habits. However, usually, they stem from the structure itself, because we know structural abnormalities start in-utero. They can also happen at birth.

That is why we encourage parents to have their babies and children spinally assessed because they are acquiring subluxations at birth which can influence their posture, which can then influence how they present themselves later on in life as young children, teenagers, and adults.

Are there any exercises that my child can do to help them sit up straighter?

You want to encourage your children to have good posture as they are growing. However, most adults don’t know what good posture is. You see it every day. Parents let their children sit slumped while playing games or using their handheld device for hours on end and don’t realize that this is bad for them. The first step is to understand what normal is and the only way to know what normal is is to see a CBP chiropractor and get a check-up. Regardless of whether or not they have pain every person should have a spinal check-up because that is how you learn what “normal” is. That is how you learn how to identify good posture versus bad posture, not only in yourself but in others.

Is there potential for a child’s growth to be stunted from poor posture habits?

Yes, you can see that the child may grow unevenly. One leg could be longer than the other or their bones will grow in the direction of which they are slumping. Now we’re seeing because of the influx of handheld devices, forward head position on a lot of young children that never existed before. Because these kids have never spent so much time looking at these devices before, it’s actually pulling their head forward and creating structural changes. This is something that previously had only been seen in adults.

How can we correct this?

The first thing to do would be to bring your children to see a CBP Chiropractor for a check-up. Having an understanding of how your child’s spine is structured is very important to identify any structural abnormalities. Knowing to restrict time on handheld devices and encouraging your children to have good posture should be in addition to your CBP care, so make an appointment today.

For more information contact Dr. B @ [email protected]

How do I continue my CBP care while traveling?

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Wouldn’t you rather look like this…

Instead of this? 

How do I keep up my CBP care while traveling?

There are Chiropractors who practice CBP worldwide, with the exception of maybe some rural parts of the world, you would be able to locate a doctor to take care of you while you travel. A great resource is www.idealspine.com. This resource allows you to locate CBP Chiropractors in whichever area of the world you are looking to travel to.

You can always find a CBP chiropractor if you wish to continue your CBP adjustments while traveling. It’s a simple phone call to the CBP office in the are you are looking to travel to and tell them what you’ve been doing with your CBP doctor and they should be able to see you. Because CBP doctors speak the same language it is really easy to send a patient to another CBP doctor for care.

When in doubt exercise & stretch.

The second part is the keep up your exercise routine. Your CBP doctor will have given you some regular exercises to do on a daily or weekly basis. By maintaining these exercises you are maintaining your treatment, especially if you are not able to make it in to see a CBP doctor. If you are not able to do the exercises at least stretch. Especially if you are doing excessive walking or sitting, you want to make sure that you are stretching after every day. If you find yourself on a long flight, make sure to take frequent bathroom breaks, so that you can stretch. Being compressed for a long amount of time is not good for the spine.

Don’t forget about your traction device.

If you have a home traction device that the doctor has provided for you, make sure that you bring it with you because you can do those exercises anywhere and although the units may be bulky they are extremely light and portable. This way you can continue to do your home exercises.

Try to stick to your routine from home.

Make sure that you reign in your diet. You do not want to be eating sugar every night. People tend to use vacations as an excuse to overindulge. However, if you maintain your diet and stay fairly consistent your spine will thank you for it. Try to be mindful of what you are eating and make sure that you are drinking enough water.

Having a good water source is important. If the water where you are is not potable, make sure to load up on bottled water or stock up on iodine tablets which will help purify water. People tend to become dehydrated when they travel, which leads to swelling of the extremities and compression of the spine. Try to drink at least 1/2 your body weight in ounces. If you find you’re sweating you will need to drink more.

You’re going to be sitting and standing and walking and doing things that you may not normally do so there is going to be some bodily response to that. However, you can minimize it by continuing with some of your routines. Talk to your CBP Chiropractor and work out a travel plan together.

For more information talk to Dr. B at [email protected].

 

What is the definition of health?

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CBP Definition of health.

The definition of health for everyone is different. If you ask the general populace to write down what their general definition of health is, a lot of people would write down, not having any pain, which is a very limited view of health. In Chiropractic Biophysics they promote 100% nervous system function as being healthy. If you have 100% nervous system function then your body should work at 100% as well.

Along with that, you have to make sure that you are exercising. You also need to make sure that you are hydrated with a good source of water. That you make sure to minimize and manage stress. Lastly, you need to make sure that you are eating properly for your body. That means finding out what fuels you better and on the reverse what drags you down.

Health is very different for everyone and it is up to each person to individualize and really think about what it means to be healthy for them. Then they have to figure out what steps they need to take to make that happen.

How do you achieve optimal health? 

Always start with your spine because that controls your whole body. Having a spinal check up done with a  CBP chiropractor, which is a complete exam and x-ray analysis.

Once any structural issues are addressed the next step would be to stay with whatever you can stay consistent with. If adding extra water to your body every day is what you can do then start there until it’s a habit. If exercise seems more doable, start there. You have to start with baby steps and commit to them. Don’t add anything until you have done them regularly for about a month’s time before you add something new and then you can be consistent with it. Otherwise, you’ll get overwhelmed if you try to change everything at once and then you won’t do anything.

Health is very different for everyone and it is up to each person to individualize and really think about what it means to be healthy for them. Then they have to figure out what steps they need to take to make that happen.

And as mentioned earlier the first step is to make an appointment at a Chiropractic BioPhysics office. Get your spine checked and start the path to optimal health.

For more information contact Dr. B at [email protected].

Why do people sometimes pee when they laugh?

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Have you ever laughed so hard you peed your pants…just a little? Why is it that the older you get the more frequently that happens? So why do people pee?

It’s more common than you think.

It is a common problem as people get older, especially for women. In particular, women who have had children, they tend to have trouble with bladder control. Sometimes, it’s structural, meaning that there was some damage done to the body parts from pregnancy, labor, and delivery. But often times it’s not that at all.

The nerves that control the bladder comes from the lower back area. They control not only the bladder itself but the muscles around the bladder to help it function properly. If you don’t have the right structure in your low back it can put pressure on your lumbar nerves that control your bladder and functionality.

If this is happening to me, where can I start to correct it?

If you are having issues like that, one of the first places to start is by seeing your CBP (Chiropractic Biophysics) Chiropractor and getting a check up on your lower back.  The doctor will check your low back structure to make sure that is normal because if the nerve pressure is great enough it will absolutely create problems with the function of the bladder, thereby leading to a small amount of urine coming out when you laugh or sneeze or jump.

Nobody really talks about it but it does happen to people a lot. It’s a very common problem that can be easily solved.

Are there exercises I can do along with seeing my CBP Chiropractor?

Kegel exercises are very helpful because they help to strengthen the pelvic floor for men and women. Also, women should consider buying Ben Wa balls. They are recommended by Gynecologists. The way they work is when inserted they give your pelvic muscles something to contract against, therefore making the Kegel exercises more effective. Please consult your OBGYN before use.

The best exercises are those prescribed by your CBP chiropractor. Starting with a checkup to make sure that your lower back is in alignment and that your lumbar nerves are not compressed and following up with exercises to help strengthen your pelvic floor will ward off incontinence.

For more information contact Dr. B at [email protected].

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