The White stuff is here in West Michigan and it's getting cold outside. Its is a time for sledding, snowmen, skiing, snowball fights, and school cancellations. It is also a time for weather-related slips, trips, and falls on icy surfaces. These injuries can trigger (or re-aggravate) spinal problems. This can lead to neck pain, back pain, sciatica, and headaches. Of course, the doctors of Zehr Chiropractic are well equipped to treat these when injuries when we see them, but the following steps may help you prevent such an injury.
Steroid injections are a very commonly used tool in the medical community for dealing with lower back pain, but does this seemingly safe practice have a downside? Well, according to a recent study, steroid injections may pose an increased risk of vertebral fracture in older adults. In other words, a broken back.
Have you ever gotten out of a car after several straight hours of driving and felt like your back was as stiff as a board? Now imagine if you already have an underlying spinal issue. This magnifies this effect greatly. Let’s face it: the human spine was not designed to sit hunched over a steering wheel for hours at a time.
Stain drugs are some of the most popular (and profitable) drugs of the modern world. They net $19 billion annually in the United States alone. The misguided notion that blood cholesterol levels are the end-all be-all predictor of heart disease has been pushed on the American people for decades. I will not address this issue in this post (although there are many great resources on this topic). Instead, I would like to cover a “not-so-rare” side effect statin drug users encounter that is commonly seen in a chiropractor’s practice: muscle pain.
In my chiropractic practice, I see prolonged sitting as a constant cause of back pain, neck pain, and headaches in my patients who are chained to a desk all day. I see this a lot in young professionals whose bodies are not used to being stuck in this new position. I encourage them to get up and move around every 15 minutes. I show them exercises they can do to help keep the muscles loose and warmed up. But what about older adults? Should they be worried about spending too much time on their fanny?