LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Whiplash

Discover Lasting Pain Relief with a Shockwave Therapist in Mesa

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If you’re struggling with chronic pain, limited mobility, or injuries that just won’t heal, finding the right Shockwave therapist in Mesa could be the life-changing decision you’ve been searching for. At LifeCare Chiropractic, we specialize in advanced, non-invasive pain relief treatments like shockwave therapy that help you heal faster, feel better, and get back to doing what you love — without surgery or long recovery times. 

What Is Shockwave Therapy?

Shockwave therapy is an innovative medical treatment that uses high-energy acoustic waves to stimulate your body’s natural healing mechanisms. These healing waves:

  • Increase blood flow
  • Help break down scar tissue and calcifications
  • Stimulate cellular repair and tissue regeneration

Unlike pain medications that simply mask symptoms, shockwave therapy targets the root cause of your discomfort, promoting long-term healing. 

Conditions a Shockwave Therapist in Mesa Can Treat

Whether you’re an athlete struggling with tendon pain or someone with nagging chronic discomfort, shockwave therapy is versatile and effective. Common conditions we treat include:

  • Plantar fasciitis and heel pain
  • Achilles tendonitis and chronic tendon injuries
  • Shoulder pain and rotator cuff injuries
  • Tennis elbow and golfer’s elbow
  • Knee pain, hip pain, and muscle strains
  • Chronic back or neck pain

Shockwave therapy works by stimulating the body’s internal healing response, meaning your tissues regenerate and regain strength — often after just a few sessions. 

Why Choose a Shockwave Therapist in Mesa?

Here are the advantages of working with a trained shockwave therapist based right here in Mesa, AZ:

1. Non-Invasive Treatment

No knives, no incisions, and no anesthesia. This means no surgical risks and no long downtime. Most patients return to normal activities immediately after sessions. 

2. Scientifically Supported Pain Relief

Clinical research and real-world results show shockwave therapy can significantly reduce pain and improve function in stubborn conditions where traditional treatments have failed.

3. Faster Healing with Minimal Risk

Shockwave therapy enhances circulation and cell activity, reducing inflammation and allowing your body to heal naturally and effectively. Side effects — if any — are usually mild and temporary.

4. Cost-Effective Solution

Compared to surgery or long-term medication use, shockwave therapy is a cost-effective therapy option that treats pain at the source.

What to Expect During Shockwave Treatment

Your experience with a shockwave therapist in Mesa begins with a comprehensive assessment. We evaluate your medical history, perform a physical exam, and create a personalized treatment plan tailored to your needs. 

During the session:

  • A gel is applied to the treatment area
  • A handheld device delivers targeted acoustic waves
  • Most sessions take about 15–30 minutes
  • You may feel mild tapping or pulsing, but most patients find it very tolerable

Afterward, you can usually go right back to your daily routine with minimal restrictions.

How Many Sessions Will You Need?

While some people feel relief after just one session, most protocols recommend 3–6 treatments spaced about a week apart to maximize healing. As your body responds, pain decreases and movement improves. 

Is Shockwave Therapy Right for You?

Shockwave therapy is safe and effective for most people — but like any treatment, it may not be suitable for everyone. Individuals who are pregnant, have bleeding disorders, or have certain medical conditions should consult with a healthcare provider before treatment. A consultation with a qualified shockwave therapist in Mesa at LifeCare Chiropractic will determine your best path forward. 

Ready to Get Back to Life Without Pain?

Don’t let pain hold you back one more day. Our experienced Shockwave therapists in Mesa are standing by to help you start your healing journey.

👉 Call LifeCare Chiropractic today to book your shockwave therapy consultation!
📞 Schedule now for faster pain relief and improved mobility! 

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…

Can Supplements Help with Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries?

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As a chiropractor, I am familiar with mild traumatic brain injuries following head traumas and car accidents.

I was very surprised at the information I covered in a previous blog post on post concussive brain injury that can be read by clicking here.  That research study pointed out just how common these types of injuries were after motor vehicle collisions.  Far more common than I would have thought, and I see car accident patients all the time.

Anyone who has experienced a brain injury following a crash knows how frustrating it can be.  I usually tell patients it can last anywhere from a few months to a year or more.  Symptoms can include:

  • Headaches
  • Difficulty thinking clearly
  • Short term memory loss
  • Irritability
  • Anxiety
  • Problems sleeping
  • Dizziness

Given how disrupting this can be to life, anything that can be done to shorten or decrease the severity of these symptoms is a good thing.  This particular article looks at just this question.  In it, the author evaluates the ability of the omega 3 fatty acid DHA (docoshexaenoic acid) to impact symptoms of post concussive disorder.  Given that the cell walls of our brain are made up of fats, this makes sense.

Here’s a summary of the benefits of DHA on post concussive syndrome:

  • There is evidence that DHA in the diet provided either before or after brain injury improves certain outcomes like spatial learning and memory.
  • Early evidence also suggests that DHA can positively influence aspects of the damaging pathway that occurs after brain injury.

While this is a review and not a study, the mechanisms certainly make enough sense to suggest that it may help for post concussive syndrome.  Looking deeper, it would make sense to suggest that regular use of DHA, in addition to all the other benefits, could protect your brain in the event of a head injury.

The bottom line is that if you participate in any contact sport or your son or daughter participates in a contact sport fish oil supplementation should be on the list.  While I can’t guarantee that it will help protect your brain in the event of brain injury, given the cost and safety of fish oil supplementation, it certainly makes sense.

Car Accidents and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury; Is It Real?

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If you’re an insurance adjustor reading this, you KNOW that patients involved in a car accident are faking it.

Those of you out there who have actually been on the receiving end of a whiplash injury would beg to differ. Sure, maybe not at the scene of the accident, but by the next morning you’re feeling it. Owning a chiropractic office, we see patients who have been involved in car accidents all the time. Most recover on a very straightforward trajectory, especially when we apply soft tissue treatment along with manipulative therapy.

Some, however, refuse to heal at a rate that is expected. Damn patients. If only we handed out the pamphlets beforehand so these patients would know how fast they are supposed to heal. We are currently dealing with a case right now that continued FAR longer than we had thought originally (care extended beyond a year—NOT at all a usual length of treatment in our office). The insurance people who reviewed the case stated that she should’ve been all better by 12 weeks.

She definitely should’ve read the pamphlet.

The real world, however, does not always follow the guidelines we make for it. And sometimes, we later find out that the guidelines weren’t really all that representative of what happens when later research informs us. The problem here is that these guidelines change with the speed of a snail on 1,000 mg of gabapentin TID.

This particular study has so many interesting aspects to it that I’m not really sure where to begin. But, since the article really focuses on mild traumatic brain injury, maybe that’s a good place to start. For those of you unlucky ones who have never experienced MTBI follow head trauma, either in sports or in a car accident, let me enlighten you to just a few of the symptoms:

  • Fatigue
  • Irritability / behavioral changes
  • Inability to focus / fuzzy thinking
  • Headaches
  • Dizziness

In a nutshell, it sucks. Worse, if you are involved in a relationship, have a job or a life, it begins to disrupt all of these by frustrating those around you.

When this happens to my patients, the best answer I usually have for them is that it just takes time to recover. In some it’s weeks, in some up to a year. When symptoms are more severe, there are certain supplements that may help protect the brain and allow it to heal faster. These can include CoQ10, vitamin E and magnesium threonate.

In this research study of 7170 adult residents injured in car accidents from Saskatchewan, Canada (for those of you who ever wondered where Bigfoot is hiding out—it’s here), 1716 met the criteria for MTBI. For those of you good with math, that’s 24%. A pretty hefty number and far higher than I would ever have expected. Here are some details of the MTBI sufferers:

  • Most common in the 18- to 23-year-old group.
  • Most were not hospitalized (73%).
  • Loss of consciousness in 28% and 23% reported posttraumatic amnesia.
  • Average time to recovery was 100 days, or a little over 3 months.
  • 23% did not recover by 1 year.

Looking at what we have here, we can make a quick assessment that a very large chunk of people involved in car accidents end up with criteria for MTBI, yet a quick screen based on loss of consciousness or memory would’ve missed a huge chunk of those suffering MTBI. After seeing this information I KNOW I have missed patients over the years by not looking for MTBI because there was no overt signs of head trauma reported or a loss of consciousness or memory.

Now, before you walk away already amazed at the information in this study, there’s more (and it’s NOT free shipping). The researchers were able to identify factors associated with slower than expected recovery from MTBI:

  • Age above 50 years
  • Having less than a high school education
  • Having poor expectations for recovery
  • Depressive symptoms
  • Having arm numbness
  • Having hearing problems
  • Having headaches (good thing no one has a headache after a car accident)
  • Having low back pain
  • Having thoracic back pain
  • Surprisingly, loss of consciousness and posttraumatic amnesia were NOT associated with recovery.

After reading through this article and thinking back to the aforementioned patient, she absolutely, positively met many of the symptoms for MTBI as well as experienced 5 of the above factors associated with a delayed recovery. Is it possible that I could’ve done something different early on to change the outcome trajectory? It’s not exactly clear, but maybe I could’ve expected a more realistic outcome and burned the pamphlets.

So What Do I Do for My Neck Pain?

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I hear this question quite often for just about every ache and pain you can imagine. Many people want miraculous answers or miracle treatments. I find that most of us don’t really want the simple answer.

Many times the simple answer requires a change on the patients part. And not just a month long change, but a lifelong change. This is a wee bit harder to accept.

For low back pain, it would seem that moving around more and exercise is intuitively a good idea. And sure enough, studies on exercise and yoga have proven to help chronic low back pain sufferers as well as patients in my office that are more active. I always say that couch potatoes are much harder to fix than athletes.

But if exercise is good for low back pain, what about neck pain? In 2008, the worldwide Neck Pain Task Force took a very hard look at the evidence surrounding neck pain (causes, prognosis, treatments) and determined that exercise was a strong recommendation for whiplash associated neck pain, but there was not enough evidence at the time to make a judgment call on exercise for other types of neck pain.

This particular study is a new look, done by the same group, at research that has been done in the past decade on exercise for other types of neck pain. Here’s what they found:

  1. Supervised qigong and Iyengar yoga were helpful for the management of persistent neck pain.
  2. In addition, therapies combining strengthening, range of motion, and flexibility are also effective for the management of persistent neck pain.

Qigong is of Chinese origin and has its roots in Chinese medicine, martial arts and philosophy. There are similarities to Tai-chi, although Tai-chi’s forms are generally considered more complex.

Iyengar yoga is a form of yoga derived from Hatha yoga.

While you may not practice either of these, keep in mind that these are the types of exercise that the joint task force found evidence for, but you can rest assured that all forms of exercise are going to be beneficial for neck pain. Movement is good. Sitting on the couch or spending hours of the computer is not.

Development in pain and neurologic complaints after whiplash – (03-18-03)

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Development in pain and neurologic complaints after whiplash.

I realize that this article is a little off the usual topic, but I am a DC after all. Basically, there has been many attempts to minimize the injuries sustained during a whiplash. Well, any physician that treats these types of injuries knows that they are real and patients do experience both short term and long term effects. 74% of whiplash patients had pain 1 year later. Personally, I think that number reflects poor care following the accident….

Neurology — Abstracts: Kasch et al. 60 (5): 743

Click here for more information.

Quick Manual Treatment in Whiplash is Best – (08-21-00)

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Quick Manual Treatment in Whiplash is Best

Ask any chiropractor and they could have saved alot of money on this research project. As with any injury, the longer treatment is delayed the less likelihood of a good outcome.

Spine 2000 Jul 15;25(14):1782-1787 – In patients with whiplash-associated disorders caused by a motor vehicle collision treatment with frequently repeated active submaximal movements combined with mechanical diagnosis and therapy is more effective in reducing pain than a standard program of initial rest, recommended use of a soft collar, and gradual self-mobilization. This therapy could be performed as home exercises initiated and supported by a physiotherapist.

Melatonin for Chronic Whiplash Syndrome – (01-24-02)

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Melatonin for Chronic Whiplash Syndrome

I must admit that this seems like quite a novel approach, even coming for a nutrition-oriented physician that treats whiplash patients frequently. A certain percentage of whiplash patients will experience a syndrome, sometimes referred to as post-concussive syndrome; a constellation of symptoms including fuzzy thinking, diffuse headache and poor sleep. I do know that sleep is an essential part of the healing process, and that patients in severe pain to not usually sleep well. This approach may end up being another tool in the toolbox of effectively treating patients after trauma.

Read entire article here