LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Osteoporosis Cures and Bone Health

Shockwave Therapy: How This Advanced Treatment Helps You Recover Faster

by

If you’ve been struggling with long-term pain, slow recovery, or stubborn muscle injuries, Shockwave Therapy has probably come up in your search for effective treatments. This non-invasive, science-backed therapy is quickly becoming one of the most trusted solutions for both men and women looking to recover faster without surgeries, medications, or downtime.

Understanding What Shockwave Therapy Really Is

Shockwave Therapy uses targeted sound waves to stimulate your body’s natural healing process. These high-energy waves penetrate deep into tissues, breaking down scar tissue, increasing blood flow, and boosting cell repair.

This means your body starts healing from the inside, naturally and effectively. It’s one of the reasons athletes, physiotherapists, and rehabilitation centers prefer this therapy for acute and chronic pain.

How Shockwave Therapy Works Inside Your Body

When the shockwaves reach damaged tissues, several beneficial reactions begin:

  • Improved blood circulation at the injury site
  • Increased cell regeneration for faster repair
  • Breakdown of calcifications that cause stiffness
  • Release of tension in muscles, tendons, and ligaments
  • Stimulation of collagen production, which improves strength and flexibility

The result? Faster healing, reduced pain, and better mobility.

Conditions That Benefit Most from Shockwave Therapy

Shockwave Therapy is highly effective for a wide range of issues, including:

  • Plantar fasciitis
  • Tennis elbow
  • Calcific tendinitis
  • Chronic back and neck pain
  • Achilles tendon injuries
  • Muscle knots and trigger points
  • Shin splints
  • Hip or shoulder pain
  • Sports injuries and repetitive strain injuries

It’s widely used across fitness centers, sports rehabilitation clinics, chiropractic practices, and physiotherapy setups.

Why Shockwave Therapy Helps You Recover Faster

Boosts Cellular Activity

Shockwaves activate dormant or slow-healing cells, encouraging rapid tissue repair.

Reduces Chronic Pain Naturally

By blocking pain signals and improving circulation, long-term pain gradually decreases.

Breaks Down Scar Tissue

If you’ve had an injury that healed incorrectly, this therapy helps remove old scar tissue and rebuild healthier tissue.

Non-Invasive With Zero Downtime

You can resume your daily activities immediately, ideal for busy lifestyles.

Enhances Mobility and Flexibility

With reduced tension and improved blood flow, your joints and muscles move better and feel lighter.

Is Shockwave Therapy Safe for Everyone?

Yes—Shockwave Therapy is considered a highly safe, FDA-approved treatment. It is suitable for most men and women experiencing pain or slow recovery.

However, it may not be recommended for:

  • Pregnant women
  • Individuals with blood clotting disorders
  • People with tumors near the treated area

A consultation with a professional ensures the treatment fits your body and condition.

Conclusion

Shockwave Therapy is one of the most powerful, modern, and effective solutions for reducing pain and accelerating your body’s natural healing process. Whether you’re dealing with long-term injuries, muscle stiffness, or chronic discomfort, this advanced treatment can help you recover faster and get back to a pain-free lifestyle.

If you’re looking for professional, research-backed recovery solutions, Dr. James Bogash offers safe and result-driven shockwave therapy to support your healing journey.

Ready to reduce pain and speed up recovery? Book your Shockwave Therapy session with Dr. James Bogash today and start healing smarter.

Drug Treatment for Depression “Bad to the Bone?”

by

The understanding of the relationship between bone, the gut and diabetes has had exponential gains in the past few years.

Heck–just the fact that there IS a relationship is new news.  For pretty much forever, we have viewed bone as a static tissue that holds stuff up and a place to attach muscles to.  But every system in our body connects and has an impact on every other system; bone is no exception.

We cannot treat “systems” in a bubble and not expect to have an impact on other systems.  In this particular review, authors look at the relationship between serotonin and bone health.

Two-thirds of the body’s serotonin is produced not in the brain, but in the gut.   Higher stress (poor digestion, drugs that increase serotonin levels like the SSRIs, etc…) will actually damage bone growth.  Stress out the gut, produce more serotonin, and you’ll have less bone.

Bone Density Medications; Injections for Osteoporosis News

by

injections for osteoporosis
tashatuvango / Dollar Photo Club

Forteo was approved in 2002 as a one-time injection for osteoporosis that was the first new bone density medication to come along in awhile.

When I first heard about this drug I had my concerns.  Mainly because of the increased risk of cancer from forcing bone to do what it was not meant to do.  Of even bigger concern is that any “bone density medication approach” to low bone density is just not the right approach.  These medications do absolutely nothing to fix the problem that ate away at your bone in the first place.

Bone is not a static tissue, merely hanging around to provide support to keep you upright and attach muscles to.  The past decade has been filled with research on just how much bone is integrated in with the rest of your body.  As crazy as this may sound, your bones are intricately connected to your GI tract, your risk of diabetes and your fertility.  And probably much more that we aren’t aware of just yet.

In other words, if you have been diagnosed with osteopenia or osteoporosis, there is something very much wrong with the way your body is functioning as a whole.  It could mean that you’re stressed and your gut is inflamed.  It could mean that your prescription for SSRIs or acid-blocking drugs has destroyed your bones.  It could mean you’ve got runaway inflammation and this is sucking the calcium out of your bones.  It could mean you’re deficient in vitamin D.  It could mean you eat too many animal products.  And on and on.

Hopefully you get the idea that bone density is a systemic problem and in now way do any of the bone density medications fix the underlying problem.  Even if bone density medications increase your bone density for a short period of time, unless you fix the underlying situation that put the low bone density there in the first place there are going to be problems in the future.

And, if the bone density medication that your doctor chose just happens to be the injection for osteoporosis, aka Forteo (teriparatide), the problem may be much larger than you know.

You see, Forteo doesn’t fix the problem (I know, I know–I’ve said this at least 4 times already).  So what happens AFTER you’ve had your injection for osteoporosis?  Turns out that, if you are NOT put on ANOTHER drug for bone density after your injection, you lose bone even faster.

This has already been well established for postmenopausal women.  This particular study evaluates whether the use of injections for osteoporosis in premenopausal women lead to the same dilemma.  Here’s what they found in a study of 21 premenopausal women with osteoporosis who were given Forteo:

  • The women all had increases in bone density after the injections (lumbar spine 10.8%, hip 6.2%, femoral neck 7.6%).
  • 15 of these premenopausal women who had gained 11.1% at the lumbar spine and 6.1% at the hip were not given any additional bone density medications.
  • Two years later bone density declined by 4.8% at the lumbar spine, but less at the hip (-1.1%) and femoral neck (-1.5%).
  •  The 10 women who lost more than 3% at the lumbar spine (an average of -7.3% lost within 2 years) where the ones who had larger increases in lumbar spine bone density during the teriparatide treatment.  These women also tended to have more bone turnover markers (not a good thing).

So, while the injection for osteoporosis did indeed lead to an increase in bone density, merely TWO YEARS later, their bones were headed south.  It would not be much of a stretch to imaging that these women were going to be worse off then before they started Forteo just a few short years down the line.

The key is understanding that bone density should be checked decades before it hits the crisis stage.  Our office has done bone density testing for years now and promote patients in their 20s, 30s and 40s to have their bone density checked.  We’ve identified more than a few patients whose bone density was 5 or even 10% lower than what it should be for his or her age.

At this point, the changes need to be less dramatic and can sometimes be as simple as increasing intake of vitamin D.  Sometimes it requires a full lifestyle overhaul.  Either way, your best bet is to find out where YOU stand, so you can do something about it before it becomes a crisis and medications are used that may leave you worse off then when you started.

I’ll Bet You Had NO Idea Your Bones were Damaged by this…

by

Up until maybe 10 yrs ago, we considered bone as an inactive tissue that our muscles and tendons attached to and allowed us to stand upright.  Boy were we wrong!!

Increasing evidence suggests that bone plays an integral role in maintenance of body weight and is part of the connection between gut health and bone health and weight.  Basically, we now know that, when the gut is inflamed (such as with stress…), the gut produces more serotonin.  This elevated serotonin has a devastating effect on bone mass, reducing the amount of bone we have.

Loss of bone THEN, in turn, affects the fat cells surrounding our organs, increasing our risk of becoming diabetic and increasing insulin resistance.  This particular study suggests the reverse is likely truly–that becoming prediabetic will also work slowly at eating away our bones.

I don’t know about you, but there is absolutely NO way I would not want to take the best care of myself possible.  Anything less releases a maelstrom of devastation on our health.

Gastric Reflux Medications and Bone Damage

by

WILL GASTRIC REFLUX MEDICINES HARM MY BONES?  First off, let me say that long term use of drugs that suppress the production of stomach acid is incredibly devastating to your long term health for a variety of reasons.  Shutting down digestion to a screeching halt opens up a Pandora’s box of potential problems that range from diarrhea, constipation, colon cancer, colitis, liver problems, small-bowel-bacterial overgrowth, malabsorption of nutrients and, in this study, fractures.  It is a very rare instance when someone makes too MUCH stomach acid.  Most of the problems that patients experience are actually from having too LITTLE stomach acid.  Supporting digestion can work wonders in most cases, as well as stress mangement (which is what usually starts the problem in the first place).Shutting down digestion to a screeching halt opens up a Pandora’s box of potential problems that range from diarrhea, constipation, colon cancer, colitis, liver problems, small-bowel-bacterial overgrowth, malabsorption of nutrients and, in this study, fractures.  It is a very rare instance when someone makes too MUCH stomach acid.  Most of the problems that patients experience are actually from having too LITTLE stomach acid.  Supporting digestion can work wonders in most cases, as well as stress mangement (which is what usually starts the problem in the first place). Read More

3 Servings of Dairy per Day for Good Health? Or Death?

by

At times I question my anti-dairy stance because every public health recommendation includes 3 servings of dairy.   This is NOT one of those times.

I would challenge you to find a public health recommendation from a government agency that does not include 3 servings a day of milk, cheese or yogurt.  Schools teach it like it’s gospel.  And you can’t go a day without hearing some ad on TV or the radio that portrays dairy as the ultimate health food designed to build strong muscles teeth and bones.

Even the National and local “Healthy Kids” groups designed to combat the childhood obesity epidemic pays homage to the 3 servings per day mantra.

Personally, I just can’t get past the reality of what we are doing by drinking milk.  While you may be drinking it out of a cup, it’s essentially breastfeeding from a cow by proxy.

Let that image sneak through your brain for a moment.

Nursing is great for the early periods of mammalian development (i.e. for humans 6 months up to 2 years), but beyond that it serves no purpose.

Here’s another thought to consider.  Just how does that cow continually produce milk?  Think of human females—milk production is tied to pregnancy and delivery and does not continue for years and years after that time frame.

In order to achieve this near-continually milk production in dairy cows farmers have to impregnate cows as soon as the milk dries up after birth, far sooner than they would in nature.

Regular readers of the Rantings will know that none of this information is new.  I even have an eBook on the evils of dairy that can be purchased by clicking here.

So what does my current Rant have to do with this particular article?  It is because this article does not beat around the bush.  In it, researchers in Sweden (a country that, just like the US, have a very high consumption of dairy) looked at 61,433 women and 45,339 men to look at how dairy consumption related to the risk of death or fracture.  Arguably, death was considered the more serious outcome…

Specifically, an initial questionnaire looking at dairy intake was done in women as young as 39 and men as young as 45 years of age.  They were followed up on an average of 20.1 years later.  Here’s what they found:

  • The women who followed the recommendations of three or more glasses of milk a day were 93% more likely to have died compared with women who drank less than one glass a day
  • Basically, for every glass of milk the women drank, they were 15% more likely to die (the men were 3% more likely, which was not considered significant).
  • For every glass of milk in women there was a 9% increased risk of a hip fracture (no association was found in males).
  • When the researchers looked at a smaller sample size in the group, they also found an increase in inflammation (interleukin 6) and 8-iso-PGF2α (a marker of oxidative stress).

Even looking at this large study through rose-colored glasses, you have to admit that, at its BEST, dairy did nothing good for your health.

Looking at it through the lens of hundreds of studies that found associations between animal proteins and fracture as well as dairy intake and several types of cancer, you have to admit that the concept of dairy as a health food is a wee bit glim.

This article, for some strange reason, did not get picked up by the popular press.  Until articles like this get brought to the publics’ eyes, our society will continue to be deluded by millions of dollars in advertising and buying government influence by the dairy industry.

 

Diabetes , Prediabetes = Osteoporosis? The Funny Math of Physiology

by

diabetes and osteoporosis linked
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/naudinsylvain/

I recent taught a 12 hour CE class on gut to bone to gut on the links between the GI tract, bone and the risk of diabetes.

The links between these body systems are so far outside the realm of how we “treat” in medicine today   as to make medicine appear as up to date as bloodletting and performing surgery with a blood-stained lab coat.

Somewhere along the line the powers that be that control medicine decided that splitting the practice of medicine into specialties was a good idea. Unfortunately, the body has never respected these boundaries. As a result, the chronic diseases we see so often today quite frankly can’t be fully managed by the specialists assigned to treat them.

The endocrinologist does not and could not fully address the cardiology and neurological complaints of a diabetic patient.   The cardiologist does not and could not address the colon cancer developing in a high number of his or her heart disease patients.

This interconnected relationship exists in all systems for all diseases. This particular study does a great job of illustrating this. In it, researchers looked at the relationship between HBA1c (a marker of diabetes) and C-telopeptide (CTX-a marker of bone turnover—higher levels indicate that bone is breaking down faster).

Here’s the important factor: all the women in this study had normal glucose tolerance, meaning that they were not diagnosed as being diabetic or prediabetic.

Despite the fact that these women were not labeled as prediabetic, those with the highest levels of HBA1c also had the highest levels of bone turnover as measured by CTX. In other words, even if you have not (yet) been diagnosed with prediabetes, as you become more and more prediabetic (and ultimately diabetic) you will start losing more and more bone.

How can this happen? It has to do with the hormone osteocalcin. Osteocalcin is a hormone released from healthy osteoblasts (the cells in bone that helps us build new bone) that helps actually acts on abdominal   fat cells to help them fight off diabetes.

While this study finds an association between HBA1c and bone, it does not really give an indication of what direction the association lies. Is prediabetes bad for the bones or does poor bone health increase your risk of diabetes?

While the fact that poor bone health will increase your risk of developing diabetes (through the hormone noted above, osteocalcin), it would not surprise me to find that diabetes is also bad for the bones (not to be confused with “bad to the bone,” which would relate to something else entirely).

The bottom line is that healthy lifestyle changes geared to help with avoiding diabetes are also going to improve bone health and dietary changes to help build more bone are also going to be anti-diabetic as well.

 

Miracle Supplement for Bone or Waste of Money?

by

Resveratrol can increase bone density
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/naudinsylvain/

Coral calcium, Tums, dairy. The list of miracle compounds to increase bone density can be found easily on the Internet.

And if you read it on the Internet, it’s got to be true, right?

Just how many times has it been drilled into your brain that 3 servings of milk, cheese and yogurt per day will make your bones, teeth, nails and nasal hair stronger? Ok, so maybe you missed the nasal hair ad, but you get the point.

So, given all the hype (and BTW, yes the whole dairy = strong bones thing IS way more hype than reality), how can you piece together what’s good for bone health.

Luckily for you, on I’m a plane heading to dreary Chicago as I write this to teach a 12 hour class on the relationships between the gut, bone health and diabetes. So I couldn’t be more brushed-up on this topic.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first. Healthy bones are not about talking calcium supplements. This couldn’t be further from the whole story. Rather, you need to view this in the context of “bone health,” understanding that bone is not an inert tissue that we happen to attach our bones, tendons and ligaments to. Rather, bone tissue is an incredibly active tissue being affected by the health of your GI tract and, in turn, affecting your risk of diabetes. It also plays a critical role in producing immune cells, platelets and red blood cells. Do you really think calcium alone can handle this enormous task?

The list of things playing a positive or negative role in bone health are quite long, but the short list includes:

  1. Optimal levels of vitamin D
  2. Eating a plant-based diet loaded with natural calcium sources like green leafies
  3. Weight bearing exercise
  4. Avoiding drugs that affect serotonin levels (like SSRIs)
  5. Avoiding drugs that block acid production in the stomach (like Nexium)

The long list is enough to take up an entire eBook (which is in the development stages).

So what does all this have to do with this particular article? In it, researchers looked at the ability of a high dose of resveratrol (the protective compound found in red wine from the skin of the grapes as well as from peanut skins) to have an impact on bone density. They specifically looked at 74 middle-aged obese men who were pre-diabetic (Metabolic syndrome, or MetS) because being pre-diabetic is bad for your bones.

Here’s the details of the study:

  • They were given either 1,000 mg or 150 mg of resveratrol a day or a placebo daily for 16 weeks.
  • Bone alkaline phosphatase (BAP) was measured to look for how fast bone was being remodeled (higher = more bone turnover).
  • BAP increased the most with the highest dose (around 4%).
  • The volume of the bone in the lumbar spine increased 2.6% in the high dose group.

Before you go digging around in your “Principles of Bone Density” textbook you’ve right by your side, I can tell you can a 2.6% increase in bone volume in just 4 short months is pretty amazing. And all without breaking a single drop of sweat or drinking liquid from a cow’s udder meant to raise its young to an independent heifer.

Not quite in that same breath I can also tell you that 1,000 mg of resveratrol is a pretty high dose. It’s not that you’d have GI upset or grow a third limb; it’s just that this would be a pricey proposition to increase your bone density.  This much resveratrol, from a good quality source, is likely going to run around $100 / month or more.

Of course, when compared to the cost of drugs used to treat bone density, it’s still a very cheap bet. As way of comparison, the newest drug used to treat osteoporosis, Denosumab (Xgeva), runs about $2,000 per monthly injection. Makes the resveratrol look like quite a bargain.