The days are warmer and the birds are back.  It is actually light when I get home from work.  What does this mean? For me it means running season.  The 5ks, 10ks, and marathons are all scheduled.

Don’t let the possibilities of running injuries stop you from all the fun! Here are the 5 most common runners injuries  AKA *The Big 5* to watch for:

1. Runners Knee/Chondromalacia Patella

   This is pain under and around the knee cap due to improper tracking between the condyles of the knee.  It causes wearing of the underside of the knee cap and often leads to disorders of the knee such as tendonitis and other inflammatory disorders.

2. Plantar Fascitis

   This is an inflammatory disorder of the plantar fascia.  The plantar fascia is a band of tissue, much like a tendon, that runs from your heel to the ball of your foot.  A common complaint is pain upon waking in the morning.  Patients report the first few steps are very painful. It is also aggravated after running, walking, or standing for long times.

3. IT Band Syndrome

   This is also an inflammatory disorder of the a tendon that runs from your hip to your knee. It commonly cause hip and knee pain. If you’ve had this one you know how painful it can be.

4. Achilles Tendonitis

   This is inflammation of the achilles tendon.  The achilles tendon connects the calf to the heel. I commonly find this Inflammatory disorder with plantar fascitis.  Inflammation weakens connective tissue and can lead to achilles rupture.  Not good!

5. Shin Splints

   Generally it is inflammation of the posterior muscles behind the shin bone. It is caused by improper foot mechanics. Other muscles around the shin may also be affected such as the anterior tibialis muscles.

Do you notice a pattern here?

The common denominator is inflammation. Commonly Doctors are quite familiar with this pattern and treat the inflammation through rest, immobilization and NSAIDs ( non-steroidal anti-inflammatories).  If this does not work many times they do use cortisone through injections.

Why is this not enough?

That is because every condition that was described above is simply an explanation of the symptoms.  They are all describing the result of injury and the course of treatment only addressed the symptoms.  Little or no attention was put into the “cause” of the problem.

If the doctor or patient are pro-active they may seek out physical therapy.  A successful plan of therapy will address the actual cause of the symptoms not just the resultant symptoms.

posted  Monday, March 15th, 2010, by Dr. John Doepper on http://www.capitolrehabofwinchester.com/blog/.

Having been a physical therapist for almost 20 years now, one of the biggest rehab challenges I have seen my patients struggle with is the “why me” mindset. Having a catastrophic accident is life altering – no 2 ways about it – but you have to dedicate yourself to rehab, give it all you’ve got and not sit around moping day after day. It’s the very rare rehab patient who doesn’t have a bad day mentally – but try to stay in control and look forward towards recovering and not backwards to the way things were. Life can be altered, sometimes irreversibly, in a split second – you are dealing with the consequences for months, years or sometimes for the rest of your life. There are plenty of people out there to help you – don’t be afraid to ask for help – a carefully chosen word or two from a trusted professional can make all the difference in your journey.

originally posted by Alison at Alison’s Physical Therapy Blog

When you witness a crushing tackle during a game of Monday Night Football, you probably wonder how these guys can continue to get out and play again the following week. Besides simply being big and tough, one way players in the National Football League (NFL) get back on their feet is through chiropractic treatment. Sports chiropractors focus on treating injuries of the muscles and bones. With back pain alone appearing in as many as 75% of professional athletes every year, and possibly even a greater percentage of football players, NFL players are requiring chiropractic care for their aches and pains.

To determine the use of chiropractic in the NFL, a questionnaire was sent to the head athletic trainers of every team in the league. The questions related to frequency and type of treatment used to treat injured players. Of the two-thirds of all trainers who responded, the results indicate a strong use of chiropractic:

45% of the NFL trainers had personally seen a chiropractor;
77% of trainers had referred players to a chiropractor;and
31% of NFL teams had an official chiropractor on their staff.

The trainers surveyed in this study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics predominantly referred players to chiropractors for low back pain, neck injury, and headaches. With professional sports organizations beginning to embrace chiropractic, perhaps more of the general public will seek out this natural, safe alternative to drugs and surgery.

Reference:
Stump JL, Redwood D. The use and role of sport chiropractors in the National Football League: A short report. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2002:25(3), p. e2.

This article originally posted by: Brian Starry, D.C., on http://northdallaschiropracticblog.com/

In general, the chiropractic adjustment is a very safe procedure for children.With millions of children visiting a chiropractor every year, adverse events (the technical term for injury) are very rare. A study published in 2008 in the prestigious medical journal Pediatrics found only nine incidents of adverse events related to spinal adjustments in children worldwide over the past 100 years, an enviable safety record.
All doctors understand that any form of health care comes with some degree of risk, whether we’re talking about a dose of antibiotics or a chiropractic adjustment. As with any procedure, your chiropractor should discuss the benefits and the risks of the adjustment as it applies to your child.

Chiropractic care for children is very different than chiropractic care for adults. The adjustments are much softer and gentler because the child’s joints are looser and easier to move. The procedure is quite comfortable and children often look forward to their chiropractic treatment. In addition, children generally heal much more quickly than adults, so typically require just a few treatments to restore normal motion to their joints, and thus restore normal function to their nervous systems and related end organs.

Since chiropractors improve the health of the nervous system by removing irritation stemming from the structural elements of the body, chiropractors can help children with a wide range of conditions, from colic to ear infections to asthma.

If your children aren’t already receiving regular chiropractic care, talk to your doctor about getting them into the office for an initial visit.

from an article posted by Dr.Theresa M. Tarcha, D.C., of http://www.thenaturaldoc.com/

1. Remember the importance of fireworks safety: Fireworks are illegal in most cities and they are a fire hazard. Outside city zones where you are allowed to use fireworks, there is still the danger of fire and also of bodily injury. Always read all instructions properly and do not use near wooded or dry areas.

2. Always have water available to put out any sparks or flame that may occur when using fireworks.

3. Never point fireworks at people.

4. Do not allow children to play with fireworks or firecrackers.

5. Don’t drink and drive. Always have a designated driver and don’t let your friends drive drunk.

6. Be extra cautious on the road. Even if you are not drinking, other people can be. Drivers also become distracted by fireworks and other excitement in the area. Be extra cautious if you must be on the road this weekend, especially at night.

7. Be careful during barbecues that you do not start a fire. Be sure all coals are completely out before leaving the barbecue unattended. Be cautious of children playing around the barbecue area.

8. Store food properly to avoid food poisoning. Be careful of leaving food out- especially in the heat.

9. Remember to drink responsibly and to serve foods at the proper temperature.

10. Also, if you have pets, remember pet safety too. Don’t let your beloved pet become a casualty this 4th of July.

Statistics show that over 7,000 people each year get treated for 4th of July related accidents. Don’t be one of them. Stay safe this year.

Have a happy 4th of July!

Originally posted by: Lisa A Mason on http://ezinearticles.com/

Here are some related articles on this website that may also be helpful:
*Chiropractic Treatment for Whiplash from a Car Accident.
*Have You Been Hurt in an Auto Accident? Here’s What to do Next!

As people get older, they have to take better care of themselves and try to live just a bit healthier than they did when they were younger. Our bodies won’t easily overcome some of the types of stressors put on them when we’re young, so we need to make sure we know certain things about how to keep our health so that we can live long, fulfilled lives as we age.

Here are 5 tips and information on aging healthily.

1. We eat less as we age.

One day you’ll get to the point where one egg and a piece of toast will seem like a pretty good meal. The body doesn’t need as much energy as it did when you were younger, unless you’ve been able to continue running marathons and lifting all sorts of weights, which few of us do.

2. Bones will get brittle and finer.

That’s the reality of aging, so we need to make sure we find ways to take care of ourselves. Some people continue drinking milk, which is great if you’re not intolerant. If you are, you might need to start taking calcium supplements or eating more foods rich in calcium, which includes a lot of seafood.

3. Exercise is still very important.

If you’ve always exercised, keep doing it. If not, you need to start, or at least you need to be more physically active. A good walk will do your body more good than it would have when you were younger, but movement is what you need. It can help your bones stay stronger, it certainly will make the muscles around those bones stronger, and it will help your blood flow better because it’ll help keep your heart strong.

4. Read and do puzzles.

Strange as this sounds, the basic idea is to keep your mind active in some fashion. In today’s world, people don’t spend as much time reading, watching more TV instead, but overall that doesn’t engage the brain as much as reading. Also, working crossword puzzles or jigsaw puzzles of at least 250 pieces every once in awhile helps to keep the brain stimulated, and studies have shown that helps slow down memory loss, including Alzheimer’s.

5. Stop smoking and drink less alcohol.

Hopefully you stopped smoking when you were much younger, but if you’re still smoking into your 50’s and your doctor hasn’t told you that you have cancer, it’s a good time to stop. We tend to breathe less deeply as we age, and therefore we need as much oxygen in each breath that we can possibly get. Smoking reduces how much oxygen your body can take in. Drinking and smoking kind of go hand in hand, so if you can reduce how much you drink, it can help you give up smoking. That, plus drinking too much inhibits anything else you might want to try to do to keep your body healthy.

Originally posted November 27th, 2009, by Action Chiropractic and Rehab

We just got this terrific update from Stephanie Lippincott at the Northeast Florida Division of the March of Dimes, and had to share it:

“What a great day we had on Saturday, April 24th…all for the babies! The weather was perfect and an impressive 5,000 First Coast residents came out to the Northbank Riverwalk for the 2010 First Coast March for Babies. To date, $580,000 has been raised to help give every baby a healthy start.

Still want to help? The Northeast Florida Division is still taking donations to help reach its $600,000 goal. You can make donations by cash, check or credit card. For more information call our office at 904-398-2821.

Thank you so much to everyone who came out and to those who were with us in spirit.”

This is a good cause; all of us were babies ourselves, once. Nice to be able to help others.

Thank you for sharing this update, Stephanie!
Best of luck to our Northeast Florida Division of the March of Dimes towards reaching and exceeding your goal.

The long-awaited final report on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) chiropractic demonstration project, conducted from April 2005 through March 2007, is good news for chiropractic, with 87 percent of patients surveyed giving their doctor of chiropractic a score of 8 or higher when asked to rate their satisfaction with care (1-10 scale), and 56 percent rating their chiropractor a perfect 10.
Moreover, in all but one of the demonstration sites (metropolitan Chicago), health care costs did not increase significantly with the addition of chiropractic services.

The demonstration project, “Demonstration of Coverage for Chiropractic Services Under Medicare,” was mandated under section 651 of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003. The project evaluated the effects of expanding coverage of chiropractic services in four different regions of the country: Maine, New Mexico, 26 counties in northern Illinois and one county (Scott) in Iowa, and 17 counties in rural Virginia. Approximately 40 percent of eligible DCs in the four regions participated in the project at some point or another.

Key findings from the summary report, relative to patient experiences with chiropractic care and analysis of chiropractic-specific Medicare costs during the project, include the following. To review the report in its entirety, visit www.acatoday.org/pdf/demo_report.pdf.

* “Medicare beneficiaries reported good relief of symptoms and high degrees of satisfaction with the chiropractic care they received.”

* “The most frequent reasons given for seeking care from chiropractors were favorable earlier experiences (59 percent) and insufficient relief of symptoms by prior treatments of other health professionals (39 percent).”

* “Clinical problems involved the back in 78 percent, neck in 50 percent, hip in 38 percent, and shoulder in 32 percent. Pain was the most frequent symptom, followed by difficulty walking. … Sixty percent of [survey] respondents indicated that they received ‘complete’ or ‘a lot of’ relief of symptoms from their chiropractic treatments.”

* “Chiropractic care was felt to be easily accessible, and nearly 95 percent of respondents indicated that they had to wait no more than one week for appointments. Similarly high proportions reported that chiropractors listened carefully and spent sufficient time with them.”

* “Among users of expanded chiropractic services, visits increased by 60 percent overall and related Medicare expenditures increased by $34.8 million. … Essentially, all of the increased costs occurred in urban non-HPSA [Health Professional Shortage Areas] and in Illinois, and especially in Chicago and its suburbs.”

* “Illinois accounted for 80 percent of the total increase in costs and also had the highest per-person increases in costs of $485 per person compared with increases of $136 per person in Virginia and $35 per person in Maine, and decreases in the other two states.” [Per-person costs decreased by $178 in Iowa and $59 in New Mexico.]

* “The types of prior treatments received from other health care professionals differed strikingly from those received by chiropractors, including pain pills in 58 percent, pain injections in 30 percent, both pain pills and injections in 22 percent, and surgery in 12 percent. … The high reported use of pain medications and surgery in treatments received from other types of health care professionals suggests the potential for achieving cost offsets [by using chiropractic care].”

The stated purpose of the demonstration project was “for evaluating the feasibility and advisability of covering chiropractic services under the Medicare program (in addition to the coverage provided for services consisting of treatment by means of manual manipulation to the spine to correct a subluxation described in section 1861(r)(5) of the Social Security Act.” Chiropractic was defined as “care for neuromusculoskeletal conditions typical among eligible beneficiaries and diagnostic and other services that a chiropractor is legally authorized to perform by the State or jurisdiction in which such treatment is provided.” Chiropractic care needed to conform with CMS’s policy for reimbursement of chiropractic services, meaning treatment was for active conditions with reasonable expectation of improvement or resolution. Maintenance and prevention services were excluded per the CMS policy.

For additional background information on the Demonstration of Coverage for Chiropractic Services Under Medicare project, read “Details of CMS Demonstration Project Revealed” in the April 9, 2005 issue.

Article originally posted by Peter W. Crownfield, Executive Editor, in Volume 28, Number 11, of Dynamic Chiropractic.

Massage has a very nice list of benefits to your back, including:

1. Improving circulation throughout your body.

Massage can reduce ishemia (lack of blood flow), which improves the endurance of your muscles, and thus their job of stabilizing your lower back. Move blood flow and endurance equals less pain!

2. Reducing or eliminating adhesions and scar tissue.

Both adhesions and scar tissue in muscles cause decreased blood flow and decreases strength. Massage therapy is an effective method for reducing these that may be found in your back muscles.

3. Improving muscle imbalances.

Massage therapy, when applied to your unique muscle balance, is very effective. When you relax your “tight” muscles, such as the psoas (hip flexor) and quadriceps (front of thigh) can reduce anterior pelvic tilt.

Bottom line…..Massage Therapy = Less back pain!

originally posted November 5, 2008 by Sam Visnic, on his Back Pain Relief Blog at endyourbackpainnow.com.

The Benefits of Regular Massage Therapy.

Benefits of Massage Therapy.

If so, you may be like many Americans who experience whiplash. Whiplash is an injury of the neck that is the result of a rapid forward and/or backward motion of the neck during an accident or trauma. This can cause damage to the joints and ligaments of the spinal region in the neck. Even the intervertebral discs can be damaged. This causes tissue swelling and inflammation and can also cause microscopic hemorrhage in those tissues. The response of the nervous system to trauma, and the injury to deeper tissue of the spine can result in restriction or fixation of the spinal joints. Because of this trauma, one can experience many symptoms such as: – Neck pain – Neck muscle soreness/spasm – Headaches – Decreased range-of-motion in the neck – Shoulder pain/muscle soreness – Dizziness – Blurred vision – Numbness/tingling in arms and hands

Many times whiplash is underdiagnosed. Also, whiplash is often treated with anti-inflammatories and pain medication. However, these medications only mask the symptoms.

Chiropractic care is a treatment that has gotten extremely positive results in patients with whiplash. A chiropractic approach focuses on a complete picture of the mechanism of this injury. The chiropractic therapy is focused to first mobilize the restricted spinal joints and then initiating spinal adjustments. The chiropractic treatment includes non-force and flexion-distraction techniques. Basically, the spinal joints are the main portion of the spine that is given attention when treating a whiplash. Since spinal manipulation means adjusting the spine, extra care should be observed when doing the treatment. Therefore, the chiropractor will wait until the muscles get stabilized before performing the chiropractic adjustment.

In addition to waiting for the muscle to stabilize, the chiropractor will also deal on how to reduce the inflammation using methods like ultrasound, gentle stretching and manual therapies like muscle stimulation therapy. Another method to reduce the inflammation is by means of cold packs or cold treatments. Massage therapy is also utilized, as it helps to increase circulation to the muscles, which facilitates healing, and it also helps to relax those tightened muscles.

Once the inflammation starts to disappear, the chiropractor will use gentle spinal manipulation in order to make the spinal joints go back to their functional movements that have been restricted due to whiplash. In some patients, non-thrusting and non-forceful methods are important to treat whiplash.

Basically, the goal of chiropractic treatment of whiplash is to optimize motion in the spine, treat the spinal discs, reduce muscle spasms and improved muscular strength. As mentioned, the neck is a very sensitive part of the body since it holds the head as well as supports the cervical vertebrae. The chiropractor will do assessments first before doing the treatment to ensure total safety of the entire procedure.

When undergoing a consultation with the chiropractor, he or she will most likely assess your whole spine instead of focusing only on the cervical vertebrae. This is important since even if there is only one area that is symptomatic, there may be other regions of the spine that have also been affected.

Possible chiropractic treatment plans for whiplash really depends on the diagnosis of the chiropractor. This includes specific spinal manipulation to treat the joints that are affected. Another method is the use of flexion-distraction technique, which uses non-thrusting pressure to treat herniated discs.

Other therapies include the trigger point therapy, where direct pressure is applied on the portion of the neck muscle to relieve tension. A therapeutic massage is also used most of the time to also relieve the neck area from tension.

There are several things that you can do to treat whiplash. There is no one-size-fits-all method to treat whiplash. In fact, each individual case of whiplash is treated differently. There is simply no general rule on how to treat whiplash. A chiropractor knows this that is why he or she does an assessment first before proceeding with treatment.

Chiropractic treatment on whiplash helps patients return to their normal activities quickly without undergoing too much pain. Moreover, chiropractic treatment provides a more holistic and non-invasive approach in treating whiplash. If you have been experiencing a whiplash injury for a long time already, then it is time that you seek help with your chiropractor.

Originally posted Feb 08, 2010 by Dr.Heath Gallentine of Lexington Family Chiropractic, at Articlesbase.

Here is a related article on this website that might also be helpful:
*Have You Been Hurt in an Auto Accident? Here’s What to do Next!