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.
The Bad Foods Runners Choose that Lead to Muscle Cramps
Have you been craving some unhealthy foods lately?
It happens to the best of us, even the seasoned runners and athletes. We sometimes feel like we deserve to eat what we want because we exercise regularly.
Unfortunately, a poor diet can drive your leg and even back muscles into spasm with piercing pain.
Our bad food cravings can drive us to eat a poor diet because nature is telling you that you need certain nutrients while your instincts are telling you that you are just really hungry. Because of this, you can often find yourself choosing the worst foods because they make you feel full and satisfied for the moment, but they don’t cover the nutritional requirements that healthier foods would meet.
In our office we see people who get horrible cramps and piercing pain in their muscles. We often find that there are two things happening, their body is imbalanced and they need some body work and light joint adjustments to get their feet, knees and back feeling better again. They also need better nutrition and consistent hydration to support their muscles so their bodies are stronger. When both of these causes of muscle pain and cramping are addressed, our clients get better very quickly.
Here are some of the foods you may be craving right now that can actually worsen your muscle cramps:
Chocolate
Alcohol
Carbonated Drinks
Oily, fatty foods
Acidic foods
If you look at the list above and find that you are craving some of these foods, you are likely doing so because you are lacking at least two major nutrients in your daily diet – “calcium” and “magnesium”.
Here are some of the food sources that are good for you and can help stop your muscle cramps:
• Raw sesame seeds
• Raw pumpkin seeds
• Yogurt
• Milk
• Sardines
• Chinook Salmon
• Kale
• Broccoli
• Cooked soy beans
• Boiled Swiss chard
• Boiled spinach
Buy some of the groceries above and create a plan to get a lot more of these foods on your menu each day to settle your muscles and make your body feel better.
If you’re running or doing a lot of strenuous activity for a longer period of time, there is one major reason you get cramps during activity. This is, you are losing a lot of water and sodium in your sweat, make sure you rehydrate regularly with electrolyte and sodium-infused beverages to keep muscle cramps away.
These tips can be one key ingredient to putting an end to your muscle cramps. Having us check your body over to create balance in your muscles, joints and posture so they move and feel better is the other most important choice you can make. We can help you feel better quicker.
Call us at (610) 216-0790 to take advantage of our “Athletes Foot, Ankle and Knee Evaluation” or for other body aches and pains you are experiencing.
The 11 Billion Dollar Joint: Your Knees and How to Take Care of Them
Knee and hip replacement surgeries are as in-demand as ever; roughly 11 billion dollars has been reportedly spent on these surgeries in the U.S. Over 9 billion annually has been spent on knee replacements alone in the past few years.
Having surgery is a big deal and often you don’t get your body back to working order exactly as you’d like it to be.
So how do you keep your knees in tip top shape so they keep moving and stay healthy for years to come?
The overall key is to take preventative action to keep your knees from heading down a path of injury and pain so you can stay active and don’t have to waste time in the hospital talking about knee replacement surgery in the future.
Having seen many clients over the years, I know that when knee pain is handled and addressed properly, not only will the patient feel much better but their bodies will be much stronger because of it. This is why I want to share a couple of tips on how you can keep your knees in excellent shape.
Tip #1 The “right” stretch – Stretch your quadriceps and your hamstring muscles regularly. Stretch your quadriceps by touching your toes and your hamstrings by bending your knee and holding your foot to your bottom.
Tip #2 Be careful when your knees are overused or injured – When you’ve used your knee too much or it feels sore after an injury or activity, put an ice pack on your knee joint. When you haven’t been able to stretch properly or you’ve been sitting all day, put heat on your thigh muscles (front and back) then do the stretch in Tip #1.
Tip #3 Get a good foundation – Get some good, supportive, and comfortable shoes that you will wear most of the time when you’re on your feet.
Tip #4 Exercise – There are specific exercises that can help strengthen the complex joints of the knee. These include squats, lunges, lunges in a circle or in a star formation (a quicker lunge that can strengthen your deep knee muscles and ligaments), and running while pivoting around cones or other objects. These should be done proportional to your overall fitness level; we can help you know which exercises are best for your specific knees. Make sure to stretch afterward.
Tip #5 Avoid sitting too long – Inactivity can tighten your hamstrings and put stress on your knee joints. This lack of joint movement can cause it to wear down, especially if your leg stays in a bent position for long periods of time. A chiropractic adjustment to the knee and other specific areas of the body can help with this.
Tip #6 Ask us about supplements or other specific treatments for your unique knees and body. Sometimes this can help your body become fortified from the inside-out.
Tip #7 Knee and whole body chiropractic adjustments – these are light and specific thrusts to your bones to help them move better individually and with your body as a whole. It is important for your body to move well if you want it to be pain-free throughout the day.
Your knees can be vulnerable areas that are affected from the ground-up, by walking, running, jumping, wearing the wrong shoes, or just by the pressure and torque they naturally take while you’re moving. They are also stressed from above-down as your hips, tight muscles, or back posture affect where the stress is placed on them.
Whether you live a very active lifestyle or are sedentary by sitting for hours at a time, put these tips into action and take care of your knees so you can stay pain-free for years to come.
Call us at (610) 216-0790 for an easy and thorough exam of your knees where we will decide if you can benefit from some light knee and body adjustments or other specific pain prevention strategies.
How to Help Your Achy Back and Painful Hip
Body pain and tension are what you feel when you get cramps in your legs, pain in your feet, knees and hips or pain in your back and neck during the day.
Often you don’t know why you feel the pain, it kind of sneaks up on you. But you feel it most when you’re relaxing and not doing anything else, like at night or while you’re sitting.
Many of my clients have found relief at our office and quickly learn how to decrease the pain on their own with what we teach them. With our help, they are able to take care of some of their major body imbalances.
These imbalances are from:
• muscles pulling
• bones stuck and not moving smoothly within the joints that surround them
• nerve irritation
• or joints not providing the proper cushioning because of lack of proper movement
There are things you can do on your own to manage some of these painful body imbalances.
Take a look at one of my body tension stretches. I love to share these tips to help you deal with many of the common pain symptoms I hear about.
The “Back and Hip Pain Relief Move”
Start in a standing position. We’re going to stretch the core postural muscles, called the Psoas muscles, which connect your legs and back and allow you to raise your leg at the hip joint. This muscle can tighten up when you sit too long which leads to pain in your hip and lower back, especially at night.
Action Step: Get into a lunge position with one foot forward and one back while you face forward. Lean your body back to fully stretch the muscle. Hold this stretch for 10 deep breaths. Do the same on the other side
For those suffering from achy and painful legs, take a look at how knee problems can lead to future pain. To find out the surprising information about what your body’s secretly up to, take our free quiz: “10 Questions to See if a Major Foot, Ankle, or Knee Injury will Stop Your Activity (and How to Prevent It)”.
Follow Us!