The Seven Pillars of Health

If you’re like the average American, you probably already failed your New Year’s Resolution. If one of your goals was to be more “healthy,” it might not even be your fault that you’ve already failed; this is because we don’t have an accurate description of “health.” How is it measured? What goes into being "healthy?"

December Movement Newsletter

We are in the end of fall season and winter starting soon which means the weather gets colder and makes for prime napping. This gets us on this month’s topic: sleep. As many of you have seen, when you fill out intake paperwork with us there are questions on sleep. We know that a main question that may pop in your head can be: “how can sleep relate to my pain and overall health?” We want to answer that as well as give you a few tips we like to use to help address sleep issues you may be having.

A Complicated Condition

One of the most debilitating complaints we will see in our office is headaches. This can either be from the intensity, duration, or both. The location can also be variable from person to person, with correlating jaw or neck pain not uncommon. We usually see a combination of these complaints as compounding factors that overlap each other, with each one needing to be addressed to help the patient best.

"Knowledge is, by far, the most powerful tool to treat and cure pain. More powerful than any pill." - Dr. David Butler, author of "Explain Pain".

About half of the running population is thought to be injured at some point in one year. These “are defined as any damage or disorder that causes significant change or even cessation of ones normal running routine.”(1) So why is this so common? Although there will never be any solution to completely prevent pain, we can try to limit the likelihood and even the severity of the running pain with the following tips. (Additionally, this may focus on our demographic of runners, but some of the same concepts can apply across all spectrums of athletics).

What Is Mechanical Diagnosis & Therapy (McKenzie Method)? 

An internationally researched system of assessment and rehab for spinal and extremity musculoskeletal pain. Clinicians that have training in the Mechanical Diagnosis & Therapy (MDT) system are able to assess, classify, manage, and properly refer out when indicated for all complaints of the musculoskeletal system. This means that if a pain complaint is coming from the spine, extremity joints, muscles or tendons, then a MDT evaluation is appropriate. A clinician with MDT training will be able to identify what management strategy is best and outline a predicted recovery plan. All using movement and patient education as a guide toward self management.

The Ankle and Plantar Fasciitis

Limited Ankle Dorsiflexion (foot going toward shin) is shown to be a low to moderate risk for developing plantar fasciitis. Why? Our body is incredibly smart and even when it is lacking joint range of motion in the ankle it will still accomplish the task at hand like running, squatting, lunging by compensating and increasing strain up and down the chain. This commonly means increased demand and force placed upon the plantar fascia over time.

Treatment and rehab for plantar fasciitis can involve everything from foot, ankle, hip, and core based on your individual presentation. We will start from the bottom and move on up in an succeeding blog.

Many times, pain in the bottom of the foot or heel can be pushed into a blanket diagnosis of “you have plantar fasciitis”. But is it plantar fasciitis? Could it be another condition like tibialis posterior tendonitis, stress fracture in the heel, radiating pain from the low back? While getting a blanket diagnosis of plantar fasciitis based on zero exam with some basic rehab and soft tissue techniques thrown at it may work, there is a good chance it probably will not. You must know what you are aiming at. And in the same boat, what is causing the plantar fasciitis? Just because there is pain and inflammation in the plantar fascia does not mean that the CAUSE of the pain is coming from that area as well. In fact, it rarely does. This is why seeking out help from sports chiropractor or physical therapist is important to get a proper diagnosis and most importantly find out the main cause of the pain.  

The Rehab Teeter Totter

Understanding Pain

When patients present with pain, we can usually put each patient in one of two categories: they weren’t doing enough activity, or they were doing too much. Let’s give you two examples. The most obvious is in the springtime, when the weather is nicer, people will take up running; but this is after not running for months because of the season and weather. When the person tries to run the same amount of miles, or as fast as they did prior to their hiatus, is when they get in trouble. This is a simple case of "too much, too soon": the amount of excessive load on the tissues causes strain and will send a signal to the brain for help because something is wrong.

Stress loading is use of active traction and compression exercises to produce stress in the extremity with minimal motion of the painful joints. Stress loading follows the basics of exercise physiology: Your body adapts in response to demands placed on it. Your response to pain has been changed, so now any stimulus is interpreted as a painful stimulus. Stressful exercise is needed to override what has become "abnormally normal" for that area. An overload is required to achieve a training effect and to break the pain cycle that you and your body are experiencing. This means you need to do something to overload your neural, vascular, sensorimotor, and musculoskeletal systems to break the existing pain patterns your body is feeling.

WHAT IS OVERUSE PAIN?

Overuse pain is one of the most common forms of musculoskeletal pain. Muscles and joints of the body do not receive proper blood flow or oxygen. The lack of oxygen allows acid and chemicals to build up in the muscles and joints, causing local tissue irritation and pain.

I am always asked “When should I come see you” or “When should I see a chiropractor”. These questions are not always clearly outlined by the chiropractic profession. If you ask 5 different chiropractors and you’ll probably get 5 different answers. For this blog, let us tackle “When should I see a chiropractor” based on my symptoms.

PAIN GUIDELINES

⁣STOP LIGHT SYSTEM TO PAIN 

RED LIGHT:   ⁣

YELLOW LIGHT:

GREEN LIGHT: ⁣

HOW ICT MUSCLE & JOINT CAN HELP YOUR PAIN

References: "A World of Hurt: A Guide to Classifying Pain" 

There are a lot of misconceptions and confusion that come with rehab and recovering from an injury. Some common questions we have pop up or know people are wondering are: why am I having to do exercises at home? Can’t you just “fix” me with your treatments at your office?  Why I am doing these low-grade rehab exercises at the beginning? Why am I continuing to come and progress with exercises if I am out of pain? These are just to name a few, and we will try to answer each as best we can.

There are two things behind this idea. One that everyone should be treated with the same presence, time, listening, care and attention to detail as an athlete is in today’s culture of rehab. Two that care should be dictated toward getting the patient back to moving better and finding or encouraging a movement practice they love. Just like when we are doing a “return to play” strategy with an injured athlete. 

Did you know the originator of the R.I.C.E (rest, ice, compression, elevation) protocol has since redacted his stance on such for recovery of tissue/s? This was created in 1971, by Dr. Mirkin, as a standard for addressing acute injuries and has since been utilized for decades for recovery and pain management. Unfortunately, this outdated protocol is still used by athletes, in sports medicine facilities, chiropractic, physical therapy and medical clinics as a means to address injured tissue. 

The Novel Coronavirus has changed the game for many across all industries. It is both frustrating (for more reasons than anyone can possible outline) and exciting. We often find adversity to be negative, but it also gives us an opportunity for re-evaluating desires and goals. When we started ICT Muscle and Joint Clinic here in Wichita, we knew we wanted to become more than a standard chiropractic clinic. We wanted to offer chiropractic adjustments, soft-tissue treatments, and physical therapy type services all under one roof, within one visit, to produce superior results. However, we have not shared more than this. We want more. With the addition of our Westside location run by Dr. Sam Reals, we set out to create a hybrid office between chiropractic care and a gym atmosphere. 

"Maintenance care” is a moniker used in the chiropractic profession to get patients to be proactive about their health and bodies by scheduling visits in advance even though they are not currently in pain. The thought in doing so would be to mitigate the likelihood of future injuries/presenting in pain by addressing issues prior to them getting to that point.