Had back pain before? Yes? It’s natural to fear its return, but don’t let it hijack your life! This time of year, just think of Santa. Think he’s felt
back pain before throwing all those packages
and parcels? Satterwhite Chiropractic imagines so!
Santa cannot stop, and neither can you. Oxford
chiropractic care can help you deal with new back pain and chronic
back pain and guide our Oxford back pain
sufferers to be a bit less fearful and a bit more confident getting around this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your Oxford chiropractor realizes
this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers studied this common clinical finding and found that this fear of bending forward also influences postural sway or balance by disrupting hip balance control, bringing about weight shifting from
side to side to keep balance. (1) What is an undesirable
result of being unbalanced? A fall. Satterwhite Chiropractic
finds it very important to help our back pain patients –
especially our older back pain patients – stay balanced and upright!
HELP TO KEEP BALANCE AND REDUCE FEAR
“There’s an app for that!” Just what our
older Oxford chiropractic patients with balance issues want to
hear?! As much as “tech” can annoy a few of its users,
particularly some older users, it can help! The new
smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is offered.
Researchers have documented that it is able to assess
age-related differences in balance not typically 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 beneficial
and individualized treatment plan to decrease fear of movement and
improve balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic
researchers are exerting more research effort
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) Satterwhite Chiropractic 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 appears 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 relationship between vitamin D levels and changes
in both pain and disability for low back pain patients treated with
spinal manipulation. (5) Some day, we may do blood tests to manage risks for back pain!
CONTACT Satterwhite Chiropractic
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.
Make your Oxford chiropractic
appointment now. Calling all our Oxford back pain patients!
Bring us your back pain and your fear of back pain, bending and falling. We can
help you manage them as well as Santa fearlessly and efficiently delivers
all his presents in a single night!