Should I Use Heat or Ice for Pain?

Did you get hurt during your workout? It’s time to grab the heating pad… or the ice pack… or both—who even knows! There’s a lot of confusion when it comes to using heat or cold to help treat common exercise injuries like strains, sprains, pulled muscles, shin splits, knee injuries and tenderness. Let’s put an end to it once and for all! Here’s your temperature care breakdown, so you know when it’s time to sing a song of fire or one of ice.

Ice, Ice, Baby

As a general rule, always choose ice for injuries and inflammation. Cold restricts blood flow and reduces inflammation and swelling. Whenever there’s bleeding in underlying tissue—think sprains, strains or bruising—ice treatment is the way to go. You can use cold therapy in two ways: immediate or rehabilitation.

Immediate treatment: helps prevent the injured area from becoming stiff by reducing tissue fluid.

Rehabilitation: aims to restore normal function to an affected area by reducing pain and spasms, which in turn allows for better movement.

If you have bad circulation, then cold therapy probably isn’t for you. If you apply ice for too long (or directly!) then skin, tissue or nerve damage becomes a possibility. Folks with cardiovascular disease should always consult with their doctor before using cold therapy.

Turn Up the Heat

Usually, heat is the best method for relaxing—whereas ice restricts blood vessels, heat opens them, increasing blood flow to an affected area. This is perfect for most aches and pains, and it’s also really great for repairing damaged tissue since increased blood flow stimulates healing. Minor stiffness and tension can usually be relieved with about 15-20 minutes of heat therapy.

Do not feel the burn! When using heat therapy, you want to keep a nice, even warmth. If you have swelling or bruising, heat isn’t the right call. Never use it near open wounds, and for people with heart disease or hypertension, always ask your doctor before using this treatment.

The Ultimate Treatment

When it comes to injuries caused by physical activity, cold and heat are super beneficial, but they’re not long-term solutions. A healthy musculoskeletal system is critical to overall health and healing, affecting how the entire body functions. Regular adjustments of the spine help return the body to a normal state, reducing tension and pain by utilizing the body’s natural healing process. Choosing chiropractic as the first line of defense once injured decreases the likelihood of surgery and further injury!

How To: 3 Breathing Techniques to Help Relieve Stress

The way you’re breathing says a lot about how you feel. If your breathing is shallow, you may be angry. If it’s extremely heavy, you may be worn out from a hike or other strenuous activity. And when you experience shortness of breath, it may be that you’re anxious, which should be addressed right away, before it accelerates from concern to panic.

The good news is that you can regain control with something as familiar as your breathing. An online fact sheet from the American College of Cardiology advises you to interrupt the buildup of anxiety in order to avoid more serious reactions and, ultimately, damage to your health. For starters, the article instructs you to lie down, if possible, or at least be seated and relax your shoulders.

Then you may want to try some of these suggested breathing techniques designed to reduce stress:

Diaphragmatic Breathing

While lying on your back, place one hand on your chest and the other hand on your belly. Breathe in, pushing up on your belly, paying attention to the rise of your belly hand. Then, as you exhale, feel the hand on your belly sink as the air leaves the lower lungs. With experience, you can learn to do diaphragmatic breathing from a standing position.

Pursed Lip Breathing

Place your arms in front of you on top of a table or desk and lean forward. Keeping your lips pursed and fairly closed, breathe in through your nose for approximately 4 seconds, and exhale out your mouth for 6 to 8 seconds.

Alternate Nostril Breathing

Placing a finger over one side of your nose, close one nostril and begin by breathing out, then in the same nostril. After each breath cycle, which is one exhale followed by one inhale, switch sides. Perform 5 to 9 rounds of this exercise, always inhaling through the same nostril you just exhaled through.

Air it Out in Advance

You don’t have to wait until anxiety gets the best of you to reap the benefits of relaxation techniques. Deep breathing is effective as a daily practice, regardless of your circumstances. When you make it part of your routine, you’re more likely to return to a calm inner place when you encounter discord with the boss or a family member, or find yourself caught in a traffic jam.

An article in Harvard Health points out the benefits of breathing techniques to inhibit natural reactions such as the “fight or flight” response that occurs when everyday problems such as money issues or getting cut off on the freeway are unavoidable. Individuals who don’t foster a calm surrogate for stress may be, instead, fostering illness. High blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart disease, is one of the detrimental results of a life filled with anxiety.

“The stress response also suppresses the immune system, increasing susceptibility to colds and other illnesses,” the article says.

Practice the techniques 10-20 minutes per day, Harvard experts suggest. Your goal is deeper, calmer rhythms directing your focus. And it exceeds the need to just reduce physical responses to negative emotions. Breathing exercises also can serve to feed your soul, made plain by an attitude poised by acceptance and calm -- not overreaction and hostility.

You can further minimize the effects of stressors with practices such as yoga, meditation, acupuncture and chiropractic care. Taking a holistic, multi-pronged approach to your health is an effective means to address the complex nature of anxiety without the need for medication.

Just as stress and anxiety are forces of nature, the best way to handle them is with the natural tools you can access from regular visits to your chiropractor. When you apply the expert advice you get from your practitioner and practice regular breathing exercises, you avert the health risks resulting from long-term anxiety and you stand to improve your attitude by airing out a growing level of negative emotion.

If you haven’t taken early steps to make relaxation a part of your life, you can hope for fast-acting results that includes accepting things as they come. But don’t hold your breath.

3 Quick and Easy Exercises to Help You Avoid Low Back Pain

Did you know that low back pain is one of the most common reasons for missed work?

Luckily, there are three quick and easy core strengthening exercises you can do to avoid that debilitating low back pain.

Forward Knee Plank: The knee plank helps strengthen your low back. It also helps build foundational strength for more complex plank exercises that are found in the forward plank.

Bird Dog: Despite the strange name, this exercise works by engaging your posterior chain. Strengthening this muscle group can help improve your posture and may also help alleviate pain in both the upper and lower back.

Forward Plank: The last core exercise is a more complex version of the forward knee plank. The forward plank helps strengthen the main support muscle for your lower back.

Remember to perform all these exercises as advised by your chiropractor.

How to Avoid the Painful Side Effects of Gift Giving

The holiday season is a popular time to buy the latest technology for loved ones, but if you have a new phone or the latest video game system wrapped beneath your tree, you may also be giving pain along with it.

Text neck, a condition in which the continual use of technology causes neck pain and discomfort, can cause serious health risks. It happens most often when you bend over to read text message, browse the internet or gaze at video game screens and controllers. And with the large amount of technology and gadgets gifted over the holiday season, cases of text neck will be rampant.
The severity of text neck symptoms will vary from person to person, but tend to be more prominent with an increased level of activity on the phone or device used.

These symptoms may include:

• Soreness
• Stiffness
• Pain to the shoulders, neck and upper back
• A slight curving of the spine
• Increased headaches

There are solutions for this type of pain. Of course, curbing technology use might be the most obvious one, but if you can’t pry the controller from your child’s hands this winter break, there are other options, as well:

Lift Your Device

Try lifting your device to eye level. You might feel silly at first, but you’ll be protecting the health of your neck and spine for the long term. If you don’t want to lift the device, then leave the device low, but avoid bending your neck and look only with your eyes. Another option is to rest your neck while using your device. Use a headrest, a pillow, or even a wall to hold your head up instead of holding it bent for hours at a time.

Limit Your Time

This is a harder one, but giving yourself and your family members time limits for device use will ease neck pain. Try to only use your phone when you have somewhere to rest your head at the same time.

Chiropractic Care

Since text neck often causes actual misalignment of the spine, chiropractic care can help. A chiropractor can use spinal manipulation to properly align the spine and keep it healthier and pain free. And at Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc., we treat children, as well as adults, so aligning the spine of the child who is never without his phone is no problem.

To get some help and care from a chiropractor, walk into Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc. any time. Walk-in appointments and affordable pricing make it possible for everyone to get the care they need to protect their neck and back this holiday season and in the year ahead. A chiropractor at Franklin Chiropractic & Accident Clinics, Inc. may be able to align your spine and put your neck in better shape so that you can enjoy your technology now and for years into the future.

Chronic Stress Can Kill You; Why You Need Chiropractic

Chronic stress is a common component to the daily life of most people in the American society. Low-grade chronic stress is a contributing element to all major diseases and current undesirable health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, depression, and others.

How does chronic stress affect one’s nervous system and, importantly, can regular chiropractic care help mitigate the effects?

Autonomic Nervous System

The autonomic portion of your nervous system is continuously active and controls just what it sounds like it would, the automatic functions of the body. It’s comprised of the parasympathetic nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, and the enteric nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system deals with the resting and repair activities such as tears, salivation, food digestion and elimination.

The sympathetic nervous system deals with the opposite -- fight, flight, or freeze response. This system shunts the body’s functions away from resting and digesting and into protective functions.

Chronic Stress Response

When the body is under chronic low-grade stress, the sympathetic nervous system remains active at a steady rate that is higher than normal yet not as high as if your life was in danger at this exact moment. Some causes of low-grade stress are working long hours for extended periods of time, family and life demands, less than optimal sleep -- whether in length or quality, bad posture, low water consumption, poor food choices, and more.

Chiropractic Care

Chiropractic adjustments affect the whole communication of the nervous system. Different areas of the spine correlate directly with specific stimulation or deregulation of different areas of the nervous system. For instance, if a patient’s nervous system is highly overactive and has been for a great period of time, the doctor of chiropractic can focus on adjusting areas of the spine that stimulate joint motion and nervous system function in segments in which the nerves are specifically associated with parasympathetic functioning such as upper cervical joints (upper neck) and the lowest lumbar and sacral regions (low back). In doing this, the thought process is to assure optimal nervous system communication and flow in the areas that ultimately promote rest and digesting function. In supporting proper joint movement and optimal nervous system function of those areas, the idea is that it will promote the calming elements of the nervous system and take pressure off of the overactive sympathetic component.

One of the most frequent comments patients say after getting adjusted is “I simply feel better and have a greater sense of ease.” I contend that when the nervous system is rebooted through the quick impulse of the adjustment, the tension of the muscle fibers is released and reset, and the joints experience a restoration of motion; this is enough to create some space for folks to feel and enjoy the decrease in the chronic stress load.

Add regular chiropractic adjustments to one’s healthcare routine and this is enough to create a major shift in one’s health and life. Come on in and see the doctors at The Joint Chiropractic and let us help you help yourself in decreasing stress this year in your life!

Chiropractic and Chronic Sinusitis

Can chiropractic help you if you suffer from chronic sinusitis? Some folks who experience chronic sinusitis do experience great relief when getting regular chiropractic adjustments. So how does it work? There are a number of ways chiropractic care can help.

First and foremost, regular chiropractic adjustments improve spinal motion and health. The better the spine moves, the better opportunity your nervous system has to function optimally and without interference. The nervous system is the foundation of your health. It’s the system through which the brain communicates with your body and its systems, and vice versa. The nervous system running optimally gives you the best chance of overcoming sinusitis.

Regular chiropractic adjustments help support the flow of the lymphatic system. The lymph system carries waste throughout the body and allows it to dispense the waste appropriately. When the lymph system is not flowing optimally, waste can back up; if the waste system is backed up, it is reasonable to infer that maintaining an optimal state of health will be harder. We are exposed to germs consistently in life, so it is imperative that our body can efficiently rid itself of waste.

Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to boost the immune system. The immune system is your defense line keeping sickness and health crises at bay. It’s imperative that this system be in tip-top shape in order to keep you healthy and also hold off possible irritants within cavities from being chronic issues.

There are also manual techniques over the actual sinus cavities that chiropractors can perform that patients often find helpful in loosening fluid congestion and assisting in clearer breathing or pressure release in the head. The adjustment itself tackles a variety of symptoms and may improve the body’s overall ability to ward off infections prior to occurring.

If you suffer from chronic sinusitis or know someone who does, consider seeing the doctors at The Joint Chiropractic. They may be able to help you help yourself naturally decrease some of the symptoms.

Ways to Slow Down, De-Stress and Actually Enjoy the Holidays

Stress can be a big part of the holidays—and it doesn’t have to be. While we know chiropractic can help you feel less stressed, we also love to share other ideas that’ll help you enjoy each day of your life more. See if you can weave any of these ideas into these next couple of weeks of the holiday season. 
 

Re-Organize Your Priorities

We often get lost in a laundry list of things we think we need to do, but in reality, we just simply don’t need to do most of it. Take a look at your list of holiday commitments and to dos and cut back. Focus on the things you really love and leave it at that.

Take a Break from Social Media

While we’d hate to see you go, sometimes a break can really slow life down. If you notice that you’re reaching for your phone and tapping that blue icon every time you have a moment of down time, it’s probably time for a social vacation. You’ll find you’re more present and relaxed. And you’ll stop comparing yourself to the Joneses. Come back after the holidays!

Cut Back on Excess Gifts and Slow Down Gift Giving

It can be easy in our culture to go overboard on gifts, especially for the kids—and then what happens? There’s a flurry of wrapping paper and it’s all over before you’ve even had a moment to take it all in. Take a step back from making sure there are “enough” gifts under the tree and focus on enjoying the act of giving and receiving. When you and your family are exchanging gifts, slow it down by having each person open one gift at a time. Take breaks for a walk, snack or even a favorite holiday movie; then come back to open more.

Head Outside

“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” This Norwegian saying couldn’t be more true! The cold alone shouldn’t prevent you from getting outside! We know that spending time outdoors and getting some physical activity can have a profound effect on stress. Bundle up and head out for a walk first thing in the morning—or in the evenings when many homes will have their holiday lights aglow.

Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness means that you’re in a state of active and open attention to the present moment. Gosh, we all could use more this during the holidays, right? Often in the hustle and bustle, we don’t take time to actually enjoy all the wonderful moments. A few simple things you can try: Eat slowly and savor the flavors; shop slowly and carefully; put down the phone and just take in the environment around you; listen—really listen—when a loved one is speaking to you; sit back and think about everything you have to be grateful for.