LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

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A New Years Resolution: Feel More Energized!

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Chiropractor

Are you feeling happy?  Man, I hope so… But the reality is – as a chiropractor I hear from patients all day long how wiped-out they feel after the holidays.   

This can be an incredibly stressful time of the year for many of us.  Between the extra obligations, the added expenses, travel, hosting (and possibly family drama), the hustle and bustle…not to mention the food and “celebrations” that may have gone a little over-board.  

This is a demanding time of the year for everyone – and can be incredibly stressful. The “Holiday Red Zone” can be really taxing. And your body is now paying the bill. For many people, the months after the holidays can be the “sickest” of the year. Exhaustion, head-aches, weight-game or pain syndromes peak this time of year.  And then, of course, we slide right into “Flu Season”. But we all know the truth about that – right?

“You don’t GET sick – you DO sick!”

Well, this year – you don’t have to. Let’s make a new resolution right now – a critical one:

I am not going to DO sick this year.

If you want the inside track on this here’s a simple tip:

Bottom Line: The best way to feel more energized? Stay active! Top research journals have shown that moderate exercise can increase your energy. A simple 10-15 minute walk can get your blood pumping and increase the oxygen coming into your body, helping you feel more energized and maybe even helping you shed a few extra pounds.

Why it Matters: Moderate exercise can help you feel energized by releasing endorphins, which make you feel happier, while contributing to a better quality of sleep. Additionally, exercise helps train the heart to work more efficiently. Ultimately, your immune system will also function better with consistent exercise. In other words, exercise can not only help you feel more energized, but it can reduce your likelihood of getting sick. And combining a moderate exercise routine with chiropractic care may be one of the best ways to stay healthy and energized all year long.

  ▪  Exercise releases endorphins which make us feel more energized and happier

  ▪  A simple 10-15 minute walk per day can improve your energy level by over 20%

  ▪  Regular exercise can help you sleep better and reduce your risk of getting sick

Next Steps: Start with a simple calendar. Schedule at least three days per week that you can take a 10-15 minute walk. By putting the activity on your schedule, it’s more likely that you will follow through. Also, ask us about how chiropractic care may be able to keep you pain-free and on track with your exercise goals. We want to partner with you to make this year your healthiest and happiest year ever!

Chiropractic Care

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Chiropractor Mesa, AZ

As I usually mentioned in these chiropractic-related blog posts, I need to add in the “I’m clearly biased” disclaimer.  That being said…

There are some clear stereotypes associated with chiropractic care.  The most powerful of which is that we use adjusting to treat acute low back pain that does not involve either arthritis or a disc bulge.

In a typical chiropractic office, this stereotype is blown out of the water on almost every single patient every single day.  Gut problems, diabetes-promoting diets, shoulder pain, knee pain, neck pain, headaches…the list is pretty endless.

Despite this a typical chiropractic office does see a lot of patients who complain of low back pain.  Some patients come in with his or her very first ever episode of low back pain that is simple and straightforward.  Others have decades of pain and come in bearing MRIs looking like they came from a skydiver with poor chute-packing skills.

This particular study (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003999314003670) takes a look at manipulation’s ability to have a positive benefit on low back pain in 40 men diagnosed with degenerative disc disease instead of simple low back pain.  They looked at specific aspects of improvement:

  1. Height using a stadiometer (that measurement thing at the top of the medical scale).
  2. Self-reported low back pain (using a visual analogue scale).
  3. Neural mechanosensitivity (basically checking tension in the nervous system using a simple office test called the straight leg raise / SLR test).
  4. The mobility of the spine while bending forward (using the finger to floor distance test)

These are all pretty cool measures and really would mean a lot to the patient.  Taller? Heck—sign me up. Less pain? I’m in. Touch my toes? Hard to tap out getting stuffed in ju-jitsu—I’m good.

So what did researchers find on the group that got adjustments?  ALL parameters were immediately improved, including standing height.  Not a big surprise for any practicing chiropractor Mesa, AZ trusts at LifeCare Chiropractic, but the world seems to be completely unaware of just how darn effective we can be in JUST A SINGLE VISIT.

Can you tell me how many other medical interventions can provide these same results?  PT takes weeks. Medications may never work, but at the best takes hours. Did that X-ray, MRI or CT scan you get make you feel better?  Of course not.

My profession really does rock, but I did mention that this article was going to be biased.

Hydration Myths; What to Avoid, What to Increase

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What Should You Be Drinking

Stay hydrated. Drink 8 glasses of water per day.

Somewhere along the way, society got brainwashed.

Maybe it was well-meaning personal trainers. Maybe it was an attempt to manage society’s increasing waistlines. Maybe it was financially motivated by the bottled water companies (although they likely jumped on the bandwagon that was already moving.

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, this will come as no surprise—there are hundreds of scenarios where we have been tricked into doing things in the name of health that don’t make any sense.

This article is going to go into the long list of fallacies that relates back to staying hydrated and what we should be drinking.

[Click here to read more on Modern Health Myths]

MORE EVIDENCE TO SIMPLY LOWER BREAST CANCER RATES

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I just have to ask…if you’re not supplementing with Vitamin D yet, why not?

The research is very strong and the bottom line is that we were designed for heavy amounts of sunlight.  Our paleolithic ancestors didn’t have sunscreen.  Didn’t have the option of staying inside and playing Xbox instead of hunting for food.  Granted, my Irish ancestors weren’t hanging out in the Sahara, but they still were getting lots of sunlight at their latitude.

There is also something in today’s society leading to lowered blood levels of D.  Sunscreen, obesity, spending much time indoors, sunlight coming through glass, showering at night and particulate matter in the atmosphere are all likely playing a role in too low of levels in the blood.  Good thing supplementation is so darn cheap (in our office, $20 for about a YEAR for the highest quality vitamin D).

In this particular study, researchers found that, in those women with the highest vitamin D levels, there was a 27% lower risk of developing breast cancer.  However, for women under 53 years of age, this protection jumped to 40%.

Pretty good numbers for such an inexpensive and safe supplements.

Which Comes First? Abdominal Fat or Prediabetes?

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Which comes first?  The insulin reistant chicken or the egg with abdominal fat?

To a certain degree, the answer doesn’t really matter all that much because the answer (lifestyle changes) is the same in either case.  But it may change the perspective on which we view the condition of obesity and diabetes.  Diabetics and overweight people are constantly being told they need to take off weight to be healthier.

Unfortunately, the reality of the way our bodies work is the opposite of this common misconception.

I have always told patients that taking off weight is a side effect of taking better care of yourself.  The key is to not focus on the weight.

This particular study supports this idea, AND shows just how fast the fecal matter hits the physiological fan.

In just 28 days of taking in too many calories (1250 extra calories / day) in healthy adults set up prediabetes / insulin resistance without accompanying inflammation in the abdominal tissue.  The insulin resistance in the abdominal fat will then lead to more fat and subsequent inflammation.  THEN things get progressively, rapidly worse.

In other words, excess fat in the abdominal region is the secondary consequence of taking in too many calories.  It is only later that inflammation and abdominal fat starts to accumulate.

Preventing Heart Disease: Do Cardiologists Help?

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cardiologists and heart disease
pixdesign123/Dollar Photo Club

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t inherently have a problem with cardiologists. But, for heart disease to be almost entirely preventable and remain the #1 killer in the industrialized world, we’ve absolutely dropped the ball.

I just don’t see any excuse for a clearly preventable disease to be the #1 killer.

And I cannot accept the fact that medicine is doing better at preventing cardiac deaths (largely due to technology saving lives when the fecal matter hits the fan).  We are doing absolutely awful at preventing cardiovascular disease.

This is in the face of a truly massive amount of evidence on how to prevent cardiovascular disease using lifestyle.  Maybe cardiologists are really spending the time needed to educate their patients about the best lifestyles to drastically lower the risk of having a heart attack or stroke and patients just aren’t listening.  Or maybe mainstream medicine is so caught up in procedures and prescriptions that they have let lifestyle advice to patients fall to the wayside.

The answer likely lies somewhere in between.  I think society is just as heavily to blame because we have created an illusion where medicine actually fixes things.  You do not need to exercise or change your diet because the drug you are taking has lowered your blood pressure, stopped your irregular heartbeat or lowered your cholesterol.  And when that doesn’t work you can go in for a quick in-and-out Roto-rooter procedure and you’re good to go.

If society really knew just how little these approaches really help things might change.  And I think that the foundation for this perceptual change needs to begin with the cardiologists.  It is a profession that needs to stand up and work as hard as possible to destroy itself.

While destroying itself sounds a wee bit, well…self-destructive, this is the way our office functions when it comes to chiropractic care.  I tell patients that it is our job to destroy the practice by pushing for patients to become more active, eat right, treat injuries appropriately and engage in positive musculoskeletal behaviors like yoga.

While it don’t think it will ever happen, it’s still the attitude that we maintain every day.

Cardiologists need to hop on board with this attitude and take a good hard look at what kind of information they are giving their patients.  It would be hard for any professional to look at a client, customer or patient and tell them straight on that he or she has little to offer.

Certainly cardiologists have procedures they can offer to patients.  And, at the end of it all, there is absolutely no doubt that cardiologists are amazing at saving lives.  But they just seem to have a hard time diverting current patients from needing that end-of-the-line lifesaving procedure.

I thought all of this would be a good primer for this particular study.  In it, researchers looked at cardiac outcomes during 2 large, national cardiology conferences over the course of 9 years.  They then compared these same outcomes to 3 weeks before and 3 weeks after the conferences to see how rates compared.

One would think that, with hospital cardiologists being out of town during these big conferences, it would spell trouble for patients who have heart disease during these time periods.

But here’s what they found:

  • In teaching hospitals, risk of high risk patients dying from heart failure during the meeting times was lower (17.5%  vs 24.8%).
  • Deaths from cardiac arrest were also lower during meeting times (59.1% vs 69.4% ).
  • Rates of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI–the procedure used to put stents in blocked arteries) were, as expected, lower during meetings (20.8% vs 28.2%;).  However, lower rates of PCI did not affect a high-risk heart attack patient’s chance of dying (39.2%  vs 38.5%–in other words, despite not having cardiologists to do these procedures, no one was dying any faster).
  • On the flipside, in nonteaching hospitals, there was no difference in the risk of dying or having a procedure (both high- and low-risk patients ).
  • There was also no higher risk of dying in teaching hospitals for low-risk patients.

Wow.

Not sure that there’s any other way to look at this other than saying that there is a chance that teaching hospitals may be doing slightly more harm than good when it comes to the cardiovascular departments.

As an example, it is estimated that half of the non-emergency cardiac stenting procedures are unnecessary.  Considering that these procedures have risks associated with them, it would not be a surprise to see less procedures leading to less deaths.

In an area that has several teaching hospitals, I can assure you that the perception of these teaching hospitals by patients is very high and many will bend over backwards trying to get into them for their problems.

That just may not always be the best idea.  The bottom line is that, even in prestigous teaching hospitals, your cardiovascular health may be better off where it has always been–inside you.

 

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

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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.

 

Chiropractic: The Red-Headed Stepchild of Injured Workers’ Care

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chiropractic care for injured workers
Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/pamhule/

As a practicing chiropractor here in sunny Mesa I can tell you that seeing injured workers in my office is a rare event.

Even rarer is a patient who was injured at work who was sent in by his or her HR department to my office for care.  Almost always it is a current patient who was injured at work and wants to be seen in our office for care because they know how effective we are.

It is rare for me to get frustrated over anything, but having a representative for a patient’s workman’s comp insurance tell me “we don’t refer to chiropractors” just irks me to no end.  Even worse is an existing patient who comes in for care of a work injury and then is told, ILLEGALLY, that they can’t come into our office for care.  The worker is scared to go against his or her employer, even after assurances by us that they can see us for treatment.

Here in AZ, with a few self-funded exceptions, patients all have a right to see the provider of their choice.  They may be required to make a single visit to a provider that is chosen by the employer, but that is all they have to do.  However, once they have seen a provider twice, that provider controls all care for the course of the injury.

So the patient sees the provider that the employer requires.  That provider (which is almost always one of the two larger occupational or urgent care clinics that use PTs for treatment) then coerces the patient to come back for another visit under one pretense or another and they get them back in quick.  Frequently the next day.

The patient ends up falling into the scheme and is NEVER given his or her rights, which would be to see a chiropractor if he or she chose to.

I would just be whining and complaining in this article if it weren’t for one important fact…

It’s a very, very bad idea to NOT see a chiropractor first or at least have one on the care team as soon as possible.  Why?  Here are a few of the reasons:

  1. The alternative is far more costly.
  2. Patients take longer to get back to work and are more likely to become disabled.
  3. Medications that actually promote chronicity are more likely to be used.
  4. Patients are generally not as happy with the care they receive.

As a chiropractor one would think that I’m just being petty and biased.  But regular readers of the Rantings know that I can back up everything that I put in writing.  This is no exception.

In this particular study, researchers looked at 14,787 injured workers over the course of 8 years to evaluate care patterns for low back pain.  They identified 5 distinct patterns of care for the injured workers:

  1. Information and Advice (59% of injuries): The first 6 weeks basically consisted of information gathering or advice seeking but no overriding pattern.  This included simple office visits, laboratory tests, emergency department or hospital visits, talk therapy, or visits involving imaging (x-ray, ultrasound, CT, or MRI) but no other procedures.
  2. Complex Medical Management (2% of injuries): Included more than a single visit to a physician for nerve blocks, surgeries, or comparable procedures.  This is expensive and fragmented care and runs completely contrary to the way low back pain should be managed.
  3. Chiropractic (a paltry 11%):  Self-explanatory.  Used by the most intelligent injured workers (ok…so I made this part up).
  4. Physical therapy (11%):  Self-explanatory.
  5. Dabble (17%): Workers who had one visit to a non-chiropractic physician, chiropractic physician or PT, or at most one visit to two or more of these categories.

Overall, being good at math, it looks like 89% of the injured population were not under the care of a chiropractor.  Keep this in mind as we go through the rest of the study.  I know that here in AZ, this low percentage is likely a result of steerage by the insurance company, HR employees who do not understand how effective chiropractic care is, as well as the schemes played at the patient’s expense by other providers that treat injured workers.

After identifying the 5 patterns, researchers looked at well accepted guidelines for the treatment of low back pain that is backed up by medical research.  There were 11 guidelines that were used to evaluate the 5 treatment patterns, but here are some snippets to think about:

  • Early use of (MRI) has been linked to prolonged disability, higher medical costs, and greater use of surgery at the same time finding no benefit on health or disability outcomes for low back pain.
  • Chiropractic has been shown to lead to lower likelihood disability recurrence over non-chiropractic physicians and physical therapists.
  • In addition, chiropractic care with shorter duration (likely meaning more effective chiropractic care that seeks to get the patient better ASAP) also leads to shorter disability duration.
  • More frequent and stronger dosages opioids leads to longer claim durations.  Worse, the likelihood for a catastrophic claim (total cost of $100,000 or more) when spinal surgical procedures were performed increased 10-fold when treatment included opioid use.

It goes without saying that chiropractic care is the antithesis of opioid use.

With all this in mind, here are a few snippets from the study:

  • Care to injured workers that was in line with 10 of 11 guidelines led to lower total costs.
  • Of the five patterns, complex medical management followed the guidelines the worst in regards to imaging, surgeries, and medications as well as having the highest total costs.
  • Complex management was also linked to the highest rates of prescriptions for four of the seven drug classes—opioids, other pain medications, SSRI/SNRI/tricyclics, and anxiolytics/sedatives/hypnotics.
  • The PT group was highest in NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, and oral steroids.
  • Chiropractic care was on the opposite end of the spectrum, leading to the most alliance with accepted guidelines, lower total costs and the lowest prescription rates in all seven classes of drugs.
  • Previous treatment choices by injured workers influenced future choices for another injury.  This means that, if someone did NOT choose chiropractic care for an initial work injury, if they got injured again they were not likely to seek chiropractic care for the second episode.

There is really not much more to say.  Except that maybe all of this information is not new and is consistent with the findings from a large handful of other studies.  Hopefully you can understand my frustration with the care of injured workers here in Arizona, as well as the extreme confusion when it comes to chiropractic care being treated as the red-headed stepchild of healthcare when, in reality, we really rock when it comes to doing what we do.

By avoiding or discouraging chiropractic care for injured workers here in AZ, workers are not getting the best and most cost-efficient care possible.  That, quite frankly, is a travesty.