Had back pain before? Yes? It’s common to fear its return, but do
not let it hijack your life! This holiday
season, consider Santa. Think he’s experienced
back pain before throwing all those boxes and bags? Executive Chiropractic of Iowa imagines so!
Santa cannot quit, and neither can you. West Des Moines
chiropractic care can help manage new back pain and chronic
back pain and direct our West Des Moines back pain
sufferers to live
a bit more fear-lessly and confidently this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your West Des Moines chiropractor realizes
this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers looked
into 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’s an unwanted
consequence of being off-balance? A fall. Executive Chiropractic of Iowa
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 West Des Moines chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can annoy a few of its users,
especially some older users, it can help! The novel
smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is accessible.
Researchers have verified that it is able to assess
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 help
healthcare providers like your chiropractor design a more effective
and individualized treatment plan to decrease fear of movement and
enhanced balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are doing more research study
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) Executive Chiropractic of Iowa uses 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 keeps appearing in many health
news reports today also appears to be a potential biomarker for
back pain relief and disability. A respected randomized control study
found a link 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 manage risks for back pain!
CONTACT Executive Chiropractic of Iowa
Listen to this PODCAST
with Dr. Joel Dixon on The Back Doctors
Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes his helping
a Vietnam veteran manage his back pain for 20 years,
incorporating the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Schedule your West Des Moines chiropractic
appointment now. Calling all our West Des Moines 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 presents in a single night!