This is Columbia Advanced Chiropractic’s blog site, ‘Body at Work.’ A special thanks to Tammy Hepps for helping to get the blog going. Topics will vary and we would love to have your feedback regarding what you would like to see discussed. Please keep in mind that you are an integral part of the blog experience and the more information we cover, the more you can learn about your health and how to maximize it. We hope you enjoy Body at Work and help make it the best health blog in Columbia / Ellicott City, Howard County, Maryland, and everywhere else, for that matter! The old newsletters from ‘The Spinal Column’ are now here on the blog and you can read/comment as you wish.
Please feel free to send us comments on this page about what topics you would like to see discussed in future blog discussions. Although we will try to get your comments posted as quickly as possible, please allow up to 48 hours to do so.
Last year, Howard County Public Schools banned the use of flip flops. Apparently, the was an increased incidence of lower extremity injuries and the school system figured that by reducing flip flops, that the injury potential would be reduced…So, does this make sense or not?
Well, simply put, yes, it makes sense!
When you put on a thong/flip flop, you have to hold onto it with your big toe and second toe. This is something you don’t see with any other footwear products and for good reason…it’s not a natural thing to do. When you have to grip the thong, you are immediately changing your gait. This is a bad thing. This goes along with not having any strap or support around your ankle. The normal gait cycle involves heel strike with the lateral posterior portion of your calcaneus. The calcaneus bone is made for impact so we should use it for this. With flip flops, because you don’t tend to heel strike, you end up ‘flopping’ around and more or less hitting the ground with your mid-foot. The mid-foot is not made for impact…you can take a look at the bones of the feet to understand why this is. Read More »
I have been asked a lot recently about disc problems and other factors that cause low back pain. Although there are many causes, the most common one is due to mechanical causes. This means pain due to joint problems and subsequent soft tissue (muscle and ligament) compensation. Although research has shown that the disc is not always the cause of low back pain, disc problems are often times the greatest concern a patient has when experiencing low back pain.
The topic of disc problems is lengthy and it is possible only to briefly touch on this topic.
To begin, it is a good idea to understand what spinal discs are. Read More »
The first Body at Work blog topic is one that will hopefully pique your interest. Many of us go to the gym to exercise, and this is a good thing. However, all too many of us perform exercises that are dangerous. The reasons for this are plentiful, but what can we do to ensure that we know what we are doing? Also, if we use a fitness professional, are we sure that the individual’s training is at a high level? For this blog, I’ll go over one common gym movement that creates significant damage to your body, over time. Read More »
Low back pain affects 80% of our population at one time or another. There are many reasons why people suffer from low back pain and luckily, there are conservative means to help people with such pain. When someone suffers from low back pain and dysfunction, my job as a sports chiropractor is two-fold.
First, I have to get the person out of pain. Joint, ligament, disc, and muscle pain is generally caused by aberrant spinal mechanics. This means that the joints are not working right due to a physical cause (such as an accident or bad posture), chemical cause, mental cause, or any combination of the aforementioned. Although many people think that disc injuries are the primary cause of pain in the low back, it has been shown in the literature that this is not always the case. Many times, low back pain can be due to joint dysfunction (facet and disc) and the subsequent ligamentous and muscular compensation. Regardless of the cause of the pain, the job of the sports chiropractor is to restore normal mechanics to help reduce the pain in the area in question. Read More »
All too often, when I’m in the gym, I see people doing sit-ups, leg lifts, and back extensions. The reason people do these exercises is to train their abdominal muscles and their low back muscles. People figure that if they sit all day long, they have to go to the gym to strengthen their low backs and train their stomach muscles. Although half of this is true (the stomach muscles should be worked on), the truth is that these exercises actually create low back problems and are doing nothing to help you! Allow me to explain.
First things first. The stomach muscles do not attach to the thighs. They primarily attach from the bottom of your rib cage to the bottom of your pelvis and pubic bone. This means that when you bend your body forward past 30 degrees (sit-up) or raise your knees to your chest (leg lift), there is no abdominal muscle contraction that is actively occurring. You are, however, working your hip flexor muscles. If you recall from one of our previous discussions (see archive for lower cross fix pattern), the hip flexor musculature tends to be facilitated, or too tight. In addition, the psoas muscle, which is the most powerful of the hip flexors, originates on the anterior discs in your lower thoracic and part of your lumbar spine. This means that too much shortening of this muscle can directly influence spinal biomechanics in a very bad way. The more we train these muscles, the greater the likelihood of low back injury. This is certainly something that we want to avoid! People think that they’re training the stomach muscles because they feel the ‘burn’ in the stomach region. This is because the psoas muscle, which is about the diameter of your forearm, pushes out against the abdominal wall, thus making you feel like you’re training your abdominal region. Read More »
Being that the warmer weather is now here, many of us are working outside in the garden planting flowers, fruits, and vegetables, and doing a fair amount of weeding. Although this seems to be a rather innocuous activity, each Spring and early Summer I get a large amount of patients who present to my office due to gardening injuries. Many of these injuries are quite common and quite painful. I honestly never realized how dangerous gardening really is until I moved to Columbia, MD. Let’s take a look at a couple of the activities that are performed while gardening and evaluate some ways to help reduce the likelihood of injury. Read More »
On March 6, 2008, Dr. Manison was happy to welcome Darrell Tanelian, MD, Ph.D., one of the foremost specialists in molecular biology and nutrition, to a lecture at Linden Hall in Ellicott City, Md.
Many of Dr. Manison’s patients were treated to a 1.5 hour presentation and 1.5 hour question/answer session regarding the Molecular Fitness Lifestyle™. Dr. Tanelian, a board certified anesthesiologist/pain management specialist and Ph.D. in Neuroscience (electrophysiology and biophysics) has published over 30 medical papers and has developed a revolutionary lifestyle system. The theory behind the system is that disease processes are caused by metabolic acidosis; therefore, maintaining the body in an alkaline state will help ensure optimal health. Based upon over 7000 medical studies that he has reviewed and cataloged, Dr. Tanelian’s system of total health incorporates six parts: a) enhanced nutrition, b) essential supplements to support specific cellular function, c) exercise, d) self-monitoring, e) education, and f) community participation as it relates to working with your healthcare provider to help achieve personal health gains. Read More »
My last article dealt with the topic of chiropractic and pregnancy. I hope it was helpful to many of you expecting moms! This article will address many of the musculoskeletal conditions that mom (and dad, for that matter) likely will have to deal with following the birth of baby!
This topic is also probably very familiar to most people out there (at least if you deal with small children.and most people at some time in their life will!). I am currently treating a lot of new and ‘kinda’ new mothers who have mid and low back pain from carrying around their infant and/or toddler(s) and moving the children from place to place. Although an infant (we’ll say less than 1 year of age) is not too heavy, with time, the little critters begin to feel quite heavy! It is not hard to understand how carrying and transporting a small child can definitely create quite a strain on one’s back, shoulders, neck, hips, etc.
The funny thing about an infant is that the weight is like ‘dead weight.’ What I mean by this is that if the child could only cling to your shoulder, shirt, neck, etc.the child would help to support its own weight and it wouldn’t seem so darn heavy! However, this is obviously not the case. In terms of transport, infants are like cute sacks of potatoes! (Sorry new moms!) But it is true. Lifting, holding, and placing infants and little kids are quite physically demanding! I would like to discuss two activities that subject your body to a great risk of injury when caring for an infant or small child, and some basic suggestions that will help you properly perform these activities. Read More »
I would like to touch on the topic of chiropractic and pregnancy because I currently have a lot of pregnant patients. Although I learned all about the changes in the body associated with pregnancy while in graduate school, I never realized the effort it takes to be pregnant. I think that most men take this for granted! There are so many chemical changes in the body that most people seem to forget about the accompanying physical changes that take place too. As the fetus grows, the amount of stress placed on the joints, muscles, and ligaments is quite impressive. It’s no wonder that it’s difficult for women to stay comfortable during pregnancy! In fact, pregnant women tend to complain of many aches and pains. Most of these discomforts are felt in the low back, mid-back, and feet. Read More »
