LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

Corticosteroid

Epidural corticosteroid injections for sciatica – (06-23-03)

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Epidural corticosteroid injections for sciatica

The epidural for low back pain is always one that hits close to home. In my own practice, I rarely see long term benefit from steroid injections. Flexion/distraction therapy is an extremely effective and safe treatment for sciatic pain. Also, I see a high number of patients that have been told they have sciatica but, clinically have no evidence of it. This may be another example of clinicians using advanced imaging like MRIs instead of using their exam findings and intuition.

Ann Rheum Dis — Abstracts: Valat et al. 62 (7): 639

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CORTICOSTEROID USE ON BONE MINERAL DENSITY IN CHILDREN (05-04-09)

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Effect of Long-term Corticosteroid Use on Bone Mineral Density in Children

This study look at the use of chronic and short burst use of inhaled steroids in children w/ mild to moderate asthma. Frighteningly, this pattern of use was associated with reduction in bone mineral accrual at a very important time of there bone forming years.

I guess the frustrating aspects of this study is that asthma treatment in children rarely takes a comprehensive course. You can bet that, in many of these children, both food allergies and poor gut health are contributing if not causative factors. Prolonged courses of antibiotics without any thought of the importance of normal, healthy flora, will lead to imbalances of immune function and Th2 dominance of cytokine expression (consistent w/ asthma and allergies).

Add into this nasty mix the new research that gut inflammation negatively impacts bone health and you’ve got a recipe for diminished bone health.

Read entire article here