LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

chiropractic

Should All Patients with a Migraine See a Chiropractor in Mesa?

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Ok..given my bias everyone probably knows my answer here when it comes to chiropractic in Mesa.
It never ceases to amaze me when a patient has had headaches for years or even decades that have never been to a chiropractor.  Given the evidence, it really should be considered malpractice (lack of informed consent) for a neurologist to NOT refer to a doctor of chiropractic for an evaluation of any headache patient.
And yet the referral to a chiropractor who specializes in soft tissue treatment of the neck almost never happens.  It is the migraine sufferer that loses out.
Just how common is neck pain in migraine headache sufferers?  This particular article looks at this question in 113 migraineurs, who had headache frequencies ranging from episodic to chronic migraine.  These headaches sufferers were examined by headache medicine specialists to confirm the diagnosis of migraine and rule out both cervicogenic headache and fibromyalgia.
For each attack over the next few months, sufferers recorded the whether nausea was present as well as the intensity of headache and neck pain (graded as none, mild, moderate, or severe).  Here’s what they found:
  • There were 2411 headache days, 786 of which were migraines.
  • The majority of migraines were in the moderate pain stage.
  • Regardless of the intensity of headache pain, neck pain was a more frequently present than was nausea.
  • Those diagnosed with chronic daily headache were more likely to have neck pain.

So what does this mean?  From a standard migraine approach, this means that, although the presence of nausea is a characteristic of a migraine headache, neck pain (which is not a characteristic) is actually more common.

From my standpoint of almost 20 years of treating migraine patients, we have totally, absolutely missed the ball.  Since most headache specialist do not touch the patient and wouldn’t even know how to treat problems in the neck is he or she found them, these patients are mis-diagnosed.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had patients come in with a diagnosis of “migraine” only to have the headaches go away with soft tissue treatment of the neck structures combined with manipulation.  These were NOT migraines.  Migraines generally do not respond as well to manual therapies, but most often need a lifestyle overhaul to manage the headaches.

The bottom line?  Neck pain is strongly associated with headaches.  If you have headaches, it is absolutely essential for you to find a chiropractor competent in soft tissue treatment to see if this will help.

Should I See a Mesa Chiropractor for My Chronic Migraine Headaches?

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Why am I even asking this (it was rhetorical, by the way)?  The answer is unquestionably yes.

It never ceases to amaze me how many new patients come into my office that have been having headaches for years and have never been to a chiropractor in Mesa.  Many of these patients begin to feel better in as little as a week.  The caveat here is that you need to find a Mesa chiropractor who addresses the soft tissue (muscle, ligaments, tendons, fascia) aspect of your problem and not just adjusting.  Many times the soft tissue aspect has been present for so long that just adjusting, just exercising, just ultrasounding, just interferentialling (is that a word??), just strengthening or just adjusting is not going to be enough.

This particular study just supports this link, finding close associations between tenderness in the trapezius muscles and chronic tension headaches as well as migraine headaches that were present only on one side of the head.

Chronic Neck and Low Back Pain – Amazing Procedure Helps in ONE Day

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manipulation under anesthesia
Ded Pixto/Dollar Photo Club

As a practicing chiropractor, I see patients who have had chronic problems improve just about every day.  Despite how successful we are at treatment, there are still patients that we can’t help.

At least not in the office.  And not while the patient’s conscious.

There is a little-known procedure called manipulation under anesthesia (MUA) that involves a team of physicians in a surgical center working in a unique matter to help patients who have lost all hope at responding to any other treatment.  Some of these are surgical candidates who want to avoid the pain, rehab and uncertainty of invasive surgery.  Some of these are not surgical candidates because they don’t have a specific “lesion” to go in and fix surgically.

And, quite frankly, the results from surgery in clinical trials for back and neck pain are not exactly stellar.  The research study results from pain management procedures like epidural injections is even worse.  This from someone who reads a LOT of medical literature.

One anesthesiologist that I worked with called MUA “yoga in a can.”  Which pretty much sums it up.  So much of the problems that I see in my office are linked to poor movement.  Movement at the individual spinal level (let’s say L5-S1 as an example) or movement of the spine as a whole (the entire lumbar spine, for example).  While it is not common, it is rare for me to see someone with good flexibility who is very active to have low back and neck pain.

This is one of the reasons why yoga is so bad for a chiropractic practice.  Because it gets the spine moving.

I’ve been doing MUAs for almost a decade now and have seen some amazing results.  What I have never seen is a negative outcome.  I’m not saying that I haven’t seen patients not respond, but I can honestly say I’ve never had a patient get worse after an MUA.  Try asking a surgeon if he or she has ever had a bad outcome.

Even better, people who have observed or assisted with the procedure (there are any number of videos available on Youtube.com) all state that it looks like it would feel REALLY good after.  Ever heard anyone observing spinal surgery say the same thing??

Some conditions respond better than others.  For neck pain and headaches, the procedure is darn near a miracle (check out one of my patient’s testimonials by clicking here).  Shoulder problems, especially frozen shoulder, respond so well that insurance actually recognizes this as a condition they will pay for.  Low back pain generally relates to how “tight” the patient is in the first place.  Highly flexible patients may not respond as well to manipulation under anesthesia from my experience, but patients who have very little flexibility will do very well.

The problem with MUA is that there is just not enough money to fund good quality clinical studies.  For spine surgery, if a device manufacturer is charging $1,000 for a single screw, they’ve got the money to throw around on a study or two.  That leaves research on MUA in the realm of case studies.

Which brings us to this particular article.  In it, researchers looked at 30 patients with chronic neck and back pain who had failed to respond to conservative therapy underwent a SINGLE MUA by a single chiropractor.  Here’s the details:

  • A mere 2 weeks after the MUA procedure, 52% of the patients reported improvement.
  • At four weeks, this number was 45.5%.

While I would prefer to see this number at 100% response, we all know this isn’t realistic.  But having almost 50% of the patients who were likely at their wit’s end from pain and loss of quality of life respond from a SINGLE session of MUA is nothing to disregard.

At this point I would like to add that many of the MUA protocols recommend 3 sessions of MUA.  It is likely that, while still not 100%, the number of patients who responded to MUA would go up.  In addition, because of my personal background with soft tissue treatments like Graston, I utilize these procedures during the MUA with the hopes that outcomes will be even better.

Make no mistake about it-manipulation under anesthesia IS a surgical procedure, although it is non-invasive.  There are costs involved and risks of anesthesia.  But when balanced against constant pain, loss of quality of life and the risk of surgery, it seems a simple decision.

 

Is Mesa Chiropractic Care Dangerous for Seniors?

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Mesa Chiropractor as your back specialist
Mesa chiropractic care and seniors

This is not the first time I’ve written about Marge, my 80-something severely osteoporotic patient who was told by her PCP not to see a chiropractor in Mesa for her neck pain.

Yep. Don’t see a chiropractor.  Instead, try steroids (which is what destroyed her bones in the first place) or NSAIDs (well known to destroy joints, cause ulcers and greatly increase your risk of a heart attack or stroke).  If those don’t work, then certainly neck surgery is a safer option than those wickedly dangerous chiropractors.

I am sure that there are a large number of people out there, seniors and youngsters alike, that have been steered away from seeing a chiropractor purely out of ignorance for what we do.  I know that in my 15+ years of practice it has been a story I hear occasionally.

With Marge, I’m not sure what exactly her PCP thought I was going to do.  Maybe it involved jumping off of my desk, landing on her unsuspecting mid back region with a loud yell in the hopes of getting bones to move.  The reality is that very, very few of these doctors out there (not just PCPs, but I’ve heard it from neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons as well) haven’t the foggiest notion of what we do.

Knock on wood, but in my 15 (almost 16) years of practice, seeing some 5000 patients for a countless number of treatments, I have not had a serious adverse event occur.  Never fractured anything (although there have been a time or two that I really pissed off a rib with thoracic adjusting).  Never caused a stroke.  Never had anyone die from any type of treatment rendered in my office.  And I’ve never heard of it happening to a colleague (although it’s not exactly something you post of Facebook or Twitter).

In general, chiropractic care is incredibly safe.

However, were you a medical journal “title reader,” then the title of this particular article, “Risk of Traumatic Injury Associated with Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation in Medicare Part B Beneficiaries Aged 66-99,” would confirm everything you always thought about chiropractic care.  It’s dangerous and should be avoided at all costs because we are killing and maiming patients left and right.

I have to admit that, even for myself, when I read the title of this article I was instantly pissed off, expecting a research attempt to discredit my beloved profession.  Reading the first paragraph didn’t help much:  “to evaluate risk of injury to the head, neck or trunk following an office visit for chiropractic spinal manipulation, as compared to office visit for evaluation by primary care physician.”

Wow.  Really seems like the authors have it out for us.

Before those of you out there who have never been near mortalty wounded by a chiropractor get too upset, here’s what the researchers found:

  • Those seniors who saw a chiropractor were (are you ready for this???), 76% LESS LIKELY to experience a traumatic injury.  (Yes–that is 76%).

The conclusion is not exactly in line with the title here.  Basically, something occurs with a chiropractic visit that led to a drastically lower risk of a traumatic injury in the 7 days following the visit.

It is highly likely that the work done (stretching, adjusting, exercises) wakes up the nervous system and as a result, these patients have better balance and are therefore less likely to fall and suffer a traumatic injury.  Kind of makes sense.

The bottom line is that Mesa chiropractic care is an incredibly safe option for musculoskeletal complaints; not dangerous like your doctor incorrectly believes.

 

Time a New Hip? News Your Ortho Doesn’t Want you to Know

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hip replacement and exercise
philhol/DollarPhotoClub

Arthritis in any joint is a bad thing and sucks your quality of life. At a time when should be enjoying life more, you find you can’t move because of hip pain.

When you were younger, nothing slowed you down but now, even a short trip to the mall sucks.  And forget exercise—it’s way too painful.

I see this scenario all too often in my practice.  And certainly not just the hip, but also the knee and spine.  Arthritis in any of these areas can be painful enough to put a dent in your quality of life.

The best way to deal with arthritis is to prevent it in the first place by staying active, maintaining an ideal body weight and living an anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory lifestyle.  All of these things will go a long way towards keeping arthritis at bay for a lifetime.

If you read my recent blog post on the links between arthritis and heart disease (which can be read by clicking here), then you already know that joints need motion to get nutrition in and waste products out.  And this applies to a perfectly healthy joint or a joint riddled with arthritis.  Movement is key.

That is one of the reasons why we are able to help most of the arthritis sufferers that come into our office.  The combination of advanced soft tissue techniques (like Graston, ART, NMR and Fascial Manipulation) with stretching and chiropractic adjusting goes a long way towards keeping joints moving and lubricated.

However, if the patient that comes into our office decides to leave our office and sit his or her butt back on the couch, the outcome is not going to be nearly as good.  As I mentioned, exercise is a key component to the management of arthritis, both treatment and prevention.

For clarification, I am not talking about “exercises” that you would get from a therapist or from an orthopedic surgeon.  I have always explained to patients that, when combined with treatment in our office, life is rehab enough.  Hiking, yoga, tai-chi, tennis, racquetball—these are the types of activities that will keep your joints lubricated and moving.  Not spending 20 minutes every morning doing hip-specific stretching and exercises.

But just how powerful can exercise be if you already have arthritis of the hip?  Even worse, if you have been told your only answer is a hip replacement?

For that answer, I bring you this particular study.  In it, researchers asked just this same question in a group of 109 patients who had painful arthritis of the hip confirmed by X-ray.  They were given either exercise therapy and patient education or patient education only and followed for 6 years to seen what effect the exercises had on saving the hip and preventing the hip replacement.

The results may surprise you:

  • 22 patients (59%) in the combo group ended up having a hip replacement while 31 (75%) patients in the education-only group had a total hip replacement.
  • To put this another way, 41% in the combo group save their hips, but only 25% in the exercise-alone group avoided the hip replacement.
  • Overall, this meant that those who did the exercises had a 44% lower risk of having the hip replaced.
  • Even better, in those that did end up with a hip replacement, the exercise group delayed the surgery for 5.4 years while the education-alone group had the replacement done at 3.5 years, almost a full 2 years earlier.

This is not too shabby for a treatment that has no cost, no side effects and is going to have lots of additional benefits.

Contrast this with the use of anti-inflammatories to control the pain of hip arthritis.  NSAIDs will destroy your intestinal tract, destroy your brain, give you a heart attack or stroke and, paradoxically, lead to the destruction of the joint that you are trying to protect.

Quite a difference.

 

Mesa Chiropractor Vs. Lumbar Disc Herniations Surgery

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HOW CAN WE SAVE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF $$$ ON LUMBAR DISC HERNIATIONS??

Chiropractic care in Mesa has been shown to be effective in case control and clinical studies to be an effective option for chronic and acute low back pain.  Numerous studies have shown that, if Mesa chiropractic care is the FIRST (rather than the last!!) point of entry for any musculoskeletal complaint, the cost savings are tremendous (upwards of 30%).  Looking at this study, we can begin to see how chiropractic care is a net SAVINGS, not a net expense.  Sometimes legislators have a hard time seeing this.  Researchers looked at the costs for services prior to lumbar discectomy and chiropractic care was a measly 2% of overall costs.  Based on what we know, if more people selected chiropractic care as a point of entry (driving chiropractic costs up to maybe 30%), we’d see a massive savings in the overall amount of money spent.

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Chiropractic Care in the Workplace: Money Extremely Well Spent

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Employers have been getting hip on ways to increase worker productivity and jazz up the workplace.

Some have added full gyms and relaxation areas.  One large, local employer that I’m aware of now has an on-site nurse practitioner.  Overall, the addition of some level of urgent-care-ish care is becoming more and more common.  This saves the employee from having to leave work for routine visits to his or her doctor for things like ongoing prescriptions.

It also means that they don’t have to spend hours going to the doctor for urgent care stuff like sore throats, upper respiratory infections and coughs.  It works out well for everyone involved.  The employer is happy because productivity is preserved and the employee is happy because they waste less time running around to doctors’ offices.

What is notoriously, glaringly absent from these relationships is an on-site chiropractor.

Now maybe my opinion is biased (OK, OK…it’s clearly biased…), but given that the typical office or industrial worker is particularly prone to overuse injuries, it just makes sense to have a provider nearby who can most aptly handle these complaints.  And handle these complaints quickly to get the employees back to working as comfortably as possible.

It is has already been solidly shown that outside of the workplace, whether within an injured workers / worker’s compensation environment or among patients experiencing most types of musculoskeletal pain, chiropractic care is extremely cost-effective, safe and clinically effective.

In this particular study, researchers took a look at what happens when chiropractic care is offered inside of the workplace.  They looks at the claims from a single employer health plan that had employers who received chiropractic care on-site or off-site over the course of two years.  Here’s the details:

  • There were 876 on-site and 759 off-site participants.
  • The off-site group received more radiology services overall (55.5% vs 38.2%) including MRI, ultrasound, and X-rays.
  • The off-site group also had higher outpatient and ER visits.
  • The off-site group also has greater use of chiropractic care and physical therapy.

Given how darn effective chiropractic care is at already reducing imaging, outpatient visits and ER visits, to see that these numbers were EVEN less when a chiropractor was on-site gets me pretty darn excited.

If you happen to be an employer that does not yet have an on-site chiropractor (even if it was just a day or two per week) this should certainly give you cause to think that you’ve been missing an excellent opportunity to do something wonderful for your employees that is going to SAVE you money, not cost money.

So what are you waiting for??

 

Exercise or Mesa Chiropractor for Long-Term Relief of Leg Pain?

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As usual, I have to give my “this article is going to be biased” disclaimer because back related leg pain is something I see all the time in my Chiropractic office in Mesa.

Despite the experiences of myself and countless numbers of my colleagues, chiropractic care is not well associated with the treatment of leg pain. Some of this may be because the actual research documenting chiropractic’s effectiveness for many conditions is not common.  Much of this is financial—there are too little government-funded studies on chiropractic care and we certainly do not have drug companies funding billions for chiropractic research to find out how to use less drugs in healthcare.

Which brings us to this particular study. In it, researchers compared the short (12 weeks) and long-term (52 weeks) effects of manipulation coupled with home exercise / advice to only home exercise / advice to check out the ability to reduce back-related leg pain.

While this study used the generic term “spinal manipulative therapy,” keep in mind that Mesa chiropractors perform the bulk of manipulations in the US and also perform it with the highest levels of safety.

Here’s the details of the study:

  • 192 patients were enrolled who had back-related leg pain for least 4 weeks.
  • They were put into one of the two groups above for 12 weeks.
  • Chiropractic plus home exercise had better pain improvement at 12 weeks.
  • After 52 weeks global improvement, satisfaction, and medication use were still improved.
  • Not surprisingly, no serious treatment-related adverse events or deaths occurred.

Compare the outcomes of this to treatments like steroid injections of the spine: FAR, FAR more expensive, serious risk of side effects (such as early disc degeneration, nerve damage and increased risks of spinal surgery) and very little evidence that the benefits are sustained beyond the first few months.

Of course, I DID give the disclaimer at the beginning of this article…