Monthly Archives: July 2013
What one Chiropractic Patient Did to Finally Stop her Knee Pain
Knee pain is very common and more and more people are taking medications for it. Athletes and active people are susceptible to knee pain and injury as well as increasingly younger populations of people who develop knee osteoarthritis.
Unfortunately, the use of pain medications has increased for these treatable conditions sometimes delaying treatment and creating harmful side effects. The use of Vicodin alone has grown dramatically from 112 million doses prescribed in the U.S. in 2006, to 131 million in 2011, according to a national survey done by IMS Health.
Pain medication can have serious side effects. Nausea, internal bleeding and heart disease are just a few. A trial conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, stated that taking ibuprofen or acetaminophen twice or more weekly resulted in a higher risk of hearing loss. Pain medications are also associated with tripling the risk of stroke, according to a January 2011 published trial in the journal BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.
One chiropractic client, Jan, came to see her chiropractor because she had knee pain all the time. She also complained about slight amounts of dizziness that she was regularly experiencing.
She was taking a strong over-the-counter pain medication once a day and sometimes more, but her knee pain wasn’t going away.
Her chiropractor discovered that Jan had restricted joints not only in her knees but also in her hips and back. She couldn’t walk very well. All of these problems pointed to imbalances in her body that hadn’t reached a critical point yet (where she would need surgery), but obviously caused her a lot of pain.
Worse than her pain, the chiropractor found that Jan had symptoms of bleeding in her stomach from the medications she was taking. The internal bleeding was making Jan feel dizzy.
Jan got off of the pain medication as quickly as she could and after a course of treatment with the chiropractor…her knees, hips and back moved and felt much better. Jan found that she didn’t have to take the medications anymore. Her knees were feeling strong and pain-free and it was much easier to stand and walk all day.
Knee pain is inconvenient and unpleasant and can change your life forever. It can stop you from your normal sports or leisure activities and then go on to cause more health problems because you may have to stay sedentary. These problems can result in relying heavily on pain medications that can cause even more serious problems or eventually lead to surgery.
The good news is that knee pain can often be cured naturally. We have experience assessing the reasons for it and getting rid of it. We also know when your joint pain is more serious and needs other treatment, but most often we can help you put an end to it naturally.
Here are some steps you can take to get to the bottom of what’s causing your pain:
1. Get a handle on how your body feels without the pain medication. Stop the pain medication for a day and see how you feel. Determine what activities make it worse? Is it worse at the end of the day or the beginning? After activities or before? Take note of this information and tell your chiropractor.
It’s important to feel your pain so you are able to explain it to your doctor. When you do so, your doctor will have a clearer picture of what’s going on and how to help you get out of pain naturally so you don’t have to rely on the harmful pain medications.
2. Get your pain evaluated- let us evaluate you to find the root cause of your pain so you don’t have to deal with it regularly. We can help you feel pain-free, healthier and happier if you seek treatment as early as possible.
Also, ask yourself, “Are your pain medications causing symptoms that are hurting your body?” Reflect on any new symptoms you may be experiencing after starting the pain medications such as intestinal or stomach bleeding (which may cause black stool), dizziness, or others.
If you found this helpful, you may also be interested in the free report on our website, “10 Questions to See if You are Heading towards a Foot, Ankle or Knee Injury…And How to Prevent it”. Grab it today on our website.
5 Foods that can Cause Joint Pain and What to do to Relieve Your Pain Now
Unknown to many, some foods are the culprits of body pains. Certain foods can cause a mild to moderate allergic reaction in your gut that causes inflammation throughout your body. You may feel this inflammation as pain in your muscles or other areas but most often you feel it in your ankles, knees, wrists, elbows and shoulders.
Decrease Your Joint Pain:
As a chiropractor I can tell if you have an imbalance in the joints of your body that is causing you to feel joint pain. I can recommend tips and techniques that help your body feel energized, strong, and pain-free. Often this involves decreasing the levels of inflammation in your body so your joints move properly.
One effective way to decrease your pain is to figure out whether you are eating some of the major inflammation-causing foods we list below and determine if they are affecting you.
Foods that can cause joint pain:
There are foods that cause sensitivities such as mild to moderate acid reflux disease, hives, itching, trouble with breathing and achiness in your joints…often at low levels. We are not talking about major food allergies where you swell up and can’t breathe, but mild symptoms that are often easy to overlook when you’re busy or distracted, but enough to bring you down.
The sensitivities that your body may have to these foods are as unique as your fingerprint. While you might feel symptoms to some of these foods, your friends or relatives are untouched when they eat the same thing.
You may feel low levels of body pain or other disturbing symptoms. Sometimes these symptoms are so mild that you just think your energy is off or your joints are acting up for the day, but underneath it all is chronic inflammation which can lead to pain and issues over time. Studies have even linked chronic inflammation to heart disease. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27435/)
By looking at your food choices and comparing them to how you feel, you can test the levels of inflammation that the following foods may cause you.
Here’s a list of some of the top inflammation causing foods:
• Gluten (wheat products)
• Milk
• Eggs
• Peanuts
• Refined sugar
• Vegetables of the Tuber Family: Potatoes, beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, and yams. Unless they are cooked and peeled thoroughly, they can be toxic to your body. They contain glycoalkaloids which can initiate pain and produce headaches or stomach cramping when these vegetables are not prepared correctly.
• Processed foods (which may contain hidden elements of the foods above or other chemicals your body doesn’t handle well)
Test these foods yourself:
You can systematically test your body’s reaction to these foods by keeping a journal and jotting down how you feel up to 12 hours after you eat them. Do this test with one inflammatory food at a time. Some symptoms you may have and want to take note of are: muscle tension, headaches, joint aches, joints are cracking a lot, stomach pain or bloating, skin rashes, a decrease in mood, or an increase in anxiety.
When you notice that one symptom keeps reoccurring after eating a certain food, try eliminating that food for up to two weeks and record how you feel in your journal during that time.
Some of the notes you can make are whether your joints feel strong and less “crack-y” or “achy”, if your moods have improved, if you have more energy, if you feel lean and bloat-free in your stomach, or how your normal aches and pains are now feeling (Are you still having headaches? …swelling in joints? …muscle tension or other pains?).
You can have more happy and pain-free days when you get to the bottom of what’s been dragging you down, deflating your energy, or decreasing the strength and balance of your body. With our help you can stop feeling pain and fatigue because of your achy joints. One easy visit with us can get you on track to clearing your body of joint imbalances so you feel exquisitely pain-free.
Call us at (610)216-0790.
