LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Low Back Pain

Back Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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Chiropractic Hospital –

CHIROPRACTIC CARE OF LOW BACK PAIN IN HOSPITALS IMPROVES CARE?  There have been many stories of the better outcomes and happier patients when chiropractic care is added to the ER care for patients with low back pain, but this is the first study that I’m aware of that actually proves it.  It makes sense.  I can’t tell you how many times patients went to the ER with their neck pain, headache, shoulder pain, mid back pain, low back pain before they came in to see me.  Rarely do they ever feel the visit produces any real benefit.  What if that patient had a chiropractor to see after everything else had failed (actually…it should be BEFORE everything else failed, but that’s an even larger hurdle to jump..)?  Reports from hospitals that have added chiropractic care to their ER consistently shows happier and better satisfied patients who presented with low back pain. Read More…

Steroid Injections and Chronic Pain – Knee Pain Doctor Mesa AZ

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SO MY DOCTOR WHIPS OUT THIS NEEDLE…It is far too frequent that patients tell me that they have had steroid injections for this pain or that. Elbow, shoulder and knees seem to be the most common sites. Its frequent use suggests that the doctor giving the injection thinks that there are little safety concerns (other than localized injection issues) and it’s always worth a try. However, this really indicates that they may know little about soft tissue healing and the nature of chronic pain. Cortisone is an anti-inflammatory, and yet, if you looked at the tissues involved in, let’s say tennis elbow, under the microscope you would see very little inflammation. So what the heck is the point of the steroid? Further complicating this is that steroids interfere with normal healing mechanisms. This review supports this, finding that steroids help in the short term, but actually make conditions worse in the long run. Bottom line…skip the injection and find a chiropractor that uses Graston (like me!).

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Neck Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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Chronic Neck Pain and Car Crashes –

I DON’T WANT TO MILK THE SYSTEM AFTER SOMEONE REAR-ENDED ME… A not uncommon response after getting into an accident that is not your fault is to think that getting care is just “milking” the system.  Because of this, some people will actually forgo care for their injuries, be they major or minor. Never a good idea. It may require only a simple visit or two or a more lengthy course of care, but leaving an injury go without treatment is never a good idea. It is becoming clearer through current research that the time to begin treatment of an injury is NOW. This especially applies to soft tissue techniques like Graston.  Anything past immediate may be less than ideal (I’m not saying I’d come out to the crash site if you called our office, but…).  This goes for car accidents or any other type of injury. Sooner is better. Of particular note in this study is that, whether participants in this study had neck pain or not, they suffered a loss of quality of life!  This is serious and yet another reason to seek the care of a chiropractor sooner rather than later.  I think I know a good one… Read More…

Knee Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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Don’t Wait, Pain Gains

SHOULD I WAIT TO SEE IF MY PAIN GETS BETTER FIRST?  It is very common for someone who has injured themselves, be it their back, shoulder, neck, knee or spleen (ok…maybe not really the spleen), to wait and see if the pain goes away.  Sometimes is does, but sometimes this is the beginning of what will ultimately develop into chronic pain.  I can tell you that, from my chiropractic perspective, that the sooner someone comes in to see me after pain begins, the sooner they recover.  If someone comes in within a week or so, many times we can knock out the problems in just one visit (for established patients that understand the way we treat soft tissues).  This particular study finds that, at least for low back pain, not getting relief within the first 3 months and being afraid to move too much for fear of worsening the injury were risk factors for chronicity.  I can tell you that these are factors we address heavily with every patient.  Many patients are still told to restrict activities for a period of time until they get better. This is usually very bad advice. Read More…

Find a Back Pain Chiropractor Mesa AZ

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Chronic LBP:

SHOULD I WAIT TO SEE IF MY PAIN GETS BETTER FIRST?  It is very common for someone who has injured themselves, be it their back, shoulder, neck, knee or spleen (ok…maybe not really the spleen), to wait and see if the pain goes away.  Sometimes is does, but sometimes this is the beginning of what will ultimately develop into chronic pain.  I can tell you that, from my chiropractic perspective, that the sooner someone comes in to see me after pain begins, the sooner they recover.  If someone comes in within a week or so, many times we can knock out the problems in just one visit (for established patients that understand the way we treat soft tissues).  This particular study finds that, at least for low back pain, not getting relief within the first 3 months and being afraid to move too much for fear of worsening the injury were risk factors for chronicity.  I can tell you that these are factors we address heavily with every patient.  Many patients are still told to restrict activities for a period of time until they get better. This is usually very bad advice. Read More…

Having Orthopedic Surgery? You NEED to Know this Scary Risk

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orthopredic surgery and troponin
lenetsnikolai / Dollar Photo Club

Everyone knows that there are risks associated with any surgery. But the risks that you know about are the obvious ones.

Problems with the anesthesia such as aspiration pneumonitis or respiratory failure.  Problems with the surgery itself such as excessive blood loss, damaging the spinal cord or spinal nerves, infection or blood clots.

But what if there was something more insidious that can occur?  Something that won’t kill you today or tomorrow, but waits in the shadows until years later?

Before I tell you what this scary thing is, I do need to point out that there is a time and a place for orthopedic surgery.  But this should only be considered as an absolute last option.  All too often we THINK something is a last option.

But time and time again research proves that this is just not true.  Some examples:

This list is much longer, but you get the idea.  There are an uncountable number of orthopedic surgeries done every year that were unnecessary.  Which would be fine if there weren’t dangerous risks associated with orthopedic surgery and the chance that you will be no better after the surgery, or worse, in more pain after the surgery.

Side note–these comments do not apply to trauma-induced orthopedic surgeries–in these cases there are usually no options for avoiding an emergency surgery after trauma.

All of this brings me to this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at a scary side effect of orthopedic surgery called myocardial necrosis.  As you may be able to tell from the name, this is a condition were the heart muscle dies as a result of the stress on the heart from the surgery.  This bad effect from surgery is well known and characterized for short term mortality after orthopedic surgery.

What is not as well-known is what happens in the long term.  To get a better idea of how often this happens, researchers looked at levels of troponin (a protein found in the heart; elevated troponin levels are a sign that damage to the heart has occurred) immediately after orthopedic surgery and whether this related to long term death in hip, knee, and spine surgery 3 years later.  Here’s the details:

  • There were 3,050 surgeries with an average age of 60.8 years.
  • Myocardial necrosis occurred in 179 cases (5.9%) and heart attacks in 20 (0.7%).
  • In those patient who experienced myocardial necrosis, 16.8% of them did not survive in the long term (3 years).
  • In those who had normal troponin levels around the time of surgery only 5.8% did not survive.
  • To put it clearer, those orthopedic surgery patients who had higher levels of troponin were 233% more likely to die in the long term evaluation, while those who had a heart attack after the surgerys were 351% more likely to die.

Now certainly, if you had a heart attack just after your orthopedic surgery you’d know about it.  But myocardial necrosis may not have been fully explained to you if it had been identified.  Either way, if you DO end up having orthopedic surgery, it may makes sense to push your surgeon to run troponin levels along with everything else to get an idea about whether or not you’re going to be around in the next 3 years.

Seems simple enough.

 

Tylenol for Your Pain; Surprising Finding on How Well it Works

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Tylenol for back pain
Radosław Brzozo / Dollar Photo Club

Society would never consider going without over the counter pain meds. Doesn’t matter what’s it’s for; headaches, knee pain, shoulder pain, back pain.   We don’t seem to care where the pain is; that magical little pill hones in with radar precision to zap the pain and give you relief.

Or at least this is what the advertising messages would have you believe.

For starters, there is no magical honing; all drugs reach all areas of the body.  This is one of the reasons why so many side effects occur in organ systems that have nothing to do with the reason for taking a drug in the first place.

Personally, I haven’t taken any over the counter or prescriptive medications for at least 20 years (it may have been longer—I just can’t actually remember…) despite my share of martial arts injuries over the years.  But I certainly have my share of patients who take them on a regular basis.  We’ve become somewhat immune to the idea that every drug has a risk / benefit ratio.  There is not a drug out there that does not have side effects; since every single drug interferes with the way your body functions to some degree or another this is inevitable.

Paracetamol, the active ingredient found in Tylenol and generic acetaminophen, has a long list of side effects.  Just some of these include:

But, as mentioned, sometimes the side effects are worth the risk (although anyone on the liver or kidney transplant waiting lists may disagree…) so long as there are benefits.

But what if what you’ve been taking your Tylenol for really doesn’t work?  I can tell you that it certainly seems like many of my patients who are in pain and take many of the OTC pain medications aren’t jumping up and down for joy over how well they work (because, after all, they are in a chiropractor’s office looking for additional pain relief.

At the most, they seem to help “take the edge off” or help for a few hours at the most.  This particular study seems to agree with what I’ve experienced in my office.  In it, researchers looked across 13 different clinical trials looking at the use of paracetamol for back pain, knee or hip arthritis pain.  In the review, the researchers looked for the quality of the studies to see what the outcomes were.  Here’s what they found:

  • High quality results from the studies found that paracetamol is ineffective for reducing pain intensity and disability or improving quality of life in the short term in people with low back pain.
  • High quality results from the studies found that paracetamol used for hip or knee osteoarthritis for that any short-term improvement on pain and disability was not clinically important.
  • High quality results showed that those taking paracetamol were nearly four times more likely to have abnormal liver function tests.

When it comes to research, there are no absolutes and no single study can determine whether something works or not. To make it a little more complicated, there are good quality and bad quality studies.  But when you have multiple high quality studies pointing to the same outcome, you can be far more confident that the results from that study may apply to you.

That’s what we have here.  Could you be one of the few for whom Tylenol is going to work for back, knee or hip pain?  Possibly.  But it should not be your first choice given that there is a long list of side effects associated with the use of Tylenol and this review strongly suggests that it is not going to work.

Of course, being somewhat biased towards chiropractic care for these conditions, I would strongly suggest that chiropractic care should be your first choice for treatment of these conditions.

Is Your Job Giving You Low Back Pain?

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occupational back pain
Is your job giving you back pain?

There are many factors that contribute to low back pain.  Some obvious, some not so.  But in many cases, these factors are under your control.

However, without some serious reworking of your life, you occupation is not easily changed.  But does your job contribute to your back pain?  Sometimes.

I hear it almost daily.  “If I just had a job that I didn’t have to sit all the time.”  “If I just had a job where I could sit down.”  The truth is that we are designed to be out hunting boars and gathering berries.  Not a whole lot of job openings for these positions, however.

I consider myself very lucky because my job has me up and down, sitting and standing, bending and straightening, pretty much all day long (unless I happen to be doing a blog post at my computer, of course).

There has been no real clarity in studies over the years looking for factors that predispose to the development of back pain.  Nothing can be clearly identified in a pre-employment physical that would indicate that a worker is more likely to suffer injuries.

However, there has been a consistent pattern over the studies on workman’s compensation injuries; those who are not happy with their jobs or feel unempowered are more likely to suffer an injury.  Not that anyone is faking an injury because he or she does not like his or her job; rather, this reflects the complex interplay between the mind and the body when it comes to pain.

This particular study, however, seems able to add some insight.  In it, researchers looked at 2,161 men working in various occupations across France who were followed across 5 years.  Twenty-one biomechanical, organizational, psychosocial, and individual factors were assessed in the first survey.  Five years later, in the second survey of these workers, they were asked about low back pain during the previous week.

Here’s what they found:

  • 394 (30.0%) men had low back pain in the second survey.
  • Frequent forward-only bending increased the risk of low back pain by 45%.
  • Frequent forward-and-sideways bending increased the risk 213%.
  • Driving industrial vehicles increased the risk 35%.
  • Working more hours than officially planned increased risk 38%.
  • Reported low support from supervisors increased risk 35%.

Notice that psychological factors showed up on this list again (low management support and working longer hours than planned).

There are other, general factors that play a role in low back pain.  Things like smoking and a sedentary lifestyle play a role in back pain, but these are easily modifiable.  If your occupation requires any of the behaviors or movements noted above, there is going to be a challenge.

The best you can do is manage your workstation, using back posture support devices when possible or lumbar support cushions if your job requires prolonged sitting or driving.  If you happen to own a company that uses team members who have to perform these repetitive movements, it might be well worth your while to invest in an ergonomic evaluation to see if any changes can be made to the workstation to minimize your team’s risk of low back pain.