STRESSED OUT?

STRESS

Here’s a simple check of your anxiety level: try to lower your shoulders. If you could – if your shoulders were tense – your body is in defense physiology. You are ready to defend yourself against attack. But you aren’t in danger – you are supposedly relaxed while reading this article. Keeping your shoulders raised is just one clue that you are not relaxed – you are “stressed out.” Other stress clues include sensations of a “knot” in your stomach or your heart pounding, feeling tense or nervous most of the time, habitual foot-bouncing or finger-tapping, teeth- grinding, jaw-clenching, or coming “unglued” easily. Unless you are in a crisis situation, you should be reasonably relaxed.


Raised shoulders mean tight muscles that are constantly poised for defense. The fuse on your disease-producing time bomb is getting shorter.


How Stress Affects your Body
We depend on defense responses to high-stress events to get ourselves geared up to survive critical situations. Quick defensive responses help protect us from accidents and injury. If man couldn’t adapt quickly to threatening situations, none of us would have survived this long. Responses to stress are normal, natural, and necessary; but constant defensiveness is not appropriate or healthy.


When you are under any kind of stress – life-threatening or just irritating – your body is stimulated. Organs and glands change gears and speed up or slow down activity as needed. Body functions, or physiology, prepare for defense. Your adrenal glands are activated, and increased amounts of energy are ready to be used. Blood pressure goes up, digestion slows, muscles tense, and your overall physiology prepares to help you survive. This all happens in a split second. This process is known as fight or flight.


Stress from an emergency is over in a short time. However, stress from anxiety, worry or anger keeps your body in defense physiology 24 hours a day whether you are awake or asleep. Anxiety affects every cell of your body. Your adrenal glands work overtime. Sooner or later, they become exhausted and your body must rely on other glands to handle the stress responses. In time, these glands lose their ability to function properly. Eventually, your body becomes exhausted and normal, repairing and healing processes are put on “hold.” 


You are a candidate for pain or disease
Anxiety and worry are more devastating to your body than the emergency type of stress that comes with a frightening brush with a potential physical disaster. Anxiety goes on and on with little relief. As physiological exhaustion sets in, the internal processes that keep your body going can’t operate efficiently to repair day-to-day wear and tear. Pain develops, and the “welcome” mat is out for disease. Pain, indigestion, headaches, allergies, and other symptoms can oftentimes be seen as the effects of long-term anxiety.


Defense Physiology – Good News and Bad News
An active response to emergencies can save your life. In a life threatening situation, you usually feel your heart pound and race, and you may be aware that your muscles are more tense than usual. However, you aren’t aware that the blood supply increases to muscles that you may need to use to run or fight. You don’t notice that some of your organ functions (like digestion and assimilation of food) slow down. You don’t need to waste energy processing food if you’re about to be hit by a car or attacked by a snarling dog.


The same physiological adaptations for defense are made in response to less physically dangerous situations – an unexpected summons by your boss, an important examination, or disturbing family problems. You’re not in danger of being injured or killed, however, you are anxious. In our “civilized” world, we generally can’t respond to anxiety-producing situations by physically “fighting back” or “running away.” We try to hide our defensive instincts – we store them for future reference.


Yet even something as simple as getting tied up in traffic can spark a defense response. The energy needed to run or fight is generated but there is no outlet for that energy. Frustrations take their toll because the body stays in a constant state of emergency. It can’t return to its normal, natural state.


Relieve Habitual Tenseness
We never “forget” anything, including how we have responded to stressful situations in the past. For example, if you are nervous when speaking to a group, you probably experience the same feelings of nervousness and fear each time you get up to speak. During similar stress of public speaking in the past, patterns of the physiological responses were stored in your subconscious mind. These stored patterns stay available in your subconscious mind to be used again and again.


Each time you encounter a situation similar to the one that “set” the pattern, your body reacts in the same way it did when the pattern was imprinted.


Let’s suppose that one day in school when you were very young, you were called on to recite. You weren’t sure of what you were supposed to say, but you mumbled a reply anyway. Some of the other students made fun of you. You were highly embarrassed. Embarrassment is a very strong emotion. We go to great lengths to avoid it. However, a single, small incident such as being very embarrassed can firmly fix in your subconscious the relationship between speaking before a group and the threat of embarrassment. For years after, whenever you try to speak to a group, your body responds to the “threat” by following the prescribed pattern of physiological defense.


If you react with intense feeling when the memory of an event or person in your past is stimulated, the reaction patterns to that event or person have become a part of your physiology. Tense muscles, shallow or deep breathing, continual flow of adrenaline, and other adapted functions can become the standard for the way your body functions.


Updating Defense Patterns
In order for your body to function normally again, gentle adjustments help you to function at your optimum and to update outmoded patterns that have been keeping your body in defense physiology.
It isn’t necessary for you or your doctor to know the circumstances that brought about a particular defensive habit pattern. It is the response pattern – not the event – that causes physical problems. You can never “forget” events of your past. The patterns of response to these events can be updated so that your body can function naturally again.


We can find the storage area of inappropriate subconscious response patterns by observing where tension is stored in your body. By adjusting your subluxations and monitoring these areas of tension we can signal your body that a new relaxed response pattern is now appropriate. With the new relaxation patterns in place, your body will function without defensive adaptations.


With response patterns updated to reflect more relaxed muscle tone and free of defense physiology your innate wisdom is better able to balance your body’s operation systems to allow them to function in harmony. In this office we are concerned with your whole being – not just muscles, joints, and organs. When you keep your nervous system functioning at its optimum, your body is better able to withstand the effects of everyday stress and resist disease.


Stress can come from physical trauma, mental anguish, emotional upsets, and chemicals and poisons. We all experience stressful situations throughout our lives. There is no cure for stress – we need stress. But stress RESPONSES don’t have to dominate your life. We can help you develop more appropriate physiological response patterns to past experiences. Relaxed, defense-free response patterns to non-threatening day-to-day events mean a healthier, more disease-free, pain-free life.


Take the simple shoulder-lowering “stress test” described at the beginning of this article throughout the day. You may be surprised at how helpful it is to realize that you are physiologically defensive. When you begin to relax, you reduce muscle tenseness.

TOP PRIORITY

----TOP PRIORITY----

Priority is defined as “that which takes precedence” . . . “that which is more important”. We handle our lives on a priority basis in doing those things which seem most important to us at the time. The word priority takes on a more significant meaning to those patients/practice members who are sincerely interested in regaining their health. People go to a doctor because they hurt somewhere, or some function of the body is not normal. Whatever the initial problem, it may or may not be in priority. If the area of pain happens to be in priority, you will feel great after the first treatment/adjustment and be convinced that your doctor has worked a miracle.


There is a decided difference in “not hurting” and “regaining health”. The elimination of pain is more easily accomplished but a return to health can be a long and hard fought struggle. The end result of the return to health, however, far outweighs the mere subsiding of pain. If you are choosing the return to health, you must understand that the body will heal itself on a priority basis. Your body’s healing energy will be directed to repairing the most serious problem that you have. To actually get well, the body must be allowed the time and the opportunity to repair everything that needs repair. The body will do this on a very definite priority schedule.


If you think about this, it is quite reasonable. Everything that the body does is reasonable, logical, even though at times we are inclined to feel that it might not be. Intense pain seems totally wrong, and yet it is the perfectly logical process for the body to warn that something is wrong. Pain and other symptoms will change as the priority of the body changes. All function and repair is according to priority. We run our lives on priority. You might like to go fishing, but you realize that you have to go to work to make money to pay bills. Going to work will take priority over going fishing. Each day we make innumerable decisions and judgements, and we act according to what we decide is priority.


Occasionally we might make a mistake in establishing our priorities, but the innate intelligence within the body does not make mistakes. This infinite wisdom that created you from two cells and guided your development and growth never makes a mistake in priority. It always chooses wisely and decisively. If your painful shoulder is not responding as quickly as you (and your doctor) would like it to, you can be assured that your body is directing the healing force to some part of your body that needs the attention more at that particular time. Some other area of your body is in higher priority. Tomorrow or the next day, an entirely different part of your body may be in the top priority.


This happens because your body rebuilds itself as a total unit and not piece by piece. That is, it would be foolish for your body to completely rebuild and repair your kidneys if your heart were to last only two more days. It will, for example, improve your kidneys perhaps 5%, then change priority and work on your heart. When the heart is improved to the point at which it is no longer the worst thing wrong with you, then our body’s wisdom will direct its attention to another organ or part of your body. It is a little like remodeling your kitchen. The carpenters reach a certain point and then the plumbers take over. When they have done just so much, the electricians have a job to do. It should all be well planned and coordinated and all finished at the same time.


Your body’s energy must be balanced and flowing to allow your body the chance to accurately select its top priority, and to do the proper job of making repairs. Rebuilding and repair is done by your body when you sleep. Just how well it is done depends on how well your body’s energy is balanced and flowing. During our waking hours, the body is concerned with activity, balance, and all the thousands of little evaluations and reflexes that allow us to stand, walk, eat, and all the other things we do. There just is not energy available at this time for repair. If you are busy riding a bicycle, you do not have time to trim your fingernails.


The body requires a lot of energy just standing upright. In fact, this job of standing is actually fighting against the effects of gravity which is always a priority situation. When you lie down, the “righting reflex” should be automatically turned off, and in a balanced body, it will be. If your energy is out of balance because you are subluxated, your body’s communication will be faulty, and some of the postural muscles may still be engaged. This is evidenced in those people who cannot relax when they lie down.
Let us put it another way. When the body is upright, the conscious mind is in action. We function in relationship to the information we derive from our senses – what we see, hear, smell, etc. Our innate intelligence, or that intelligence that built us, is busy with the maintenance of our bodies . . . the housekeeping chores.


When we lie down, the conscious mind should be shut off and innate intelligence should take over complete control of the body. Only then can this intelligence do the repair and rebuilding. The person who is subluxated and whose body is out of balance energy-wise and whose body is therefore not communicating properly is unable to “turn off” the conscious mind. It is still active, thus interfering with the Innate repair of the body. Repair is an Innate or sub-conscious function, not a function of the conscious mind.
When the conscious mind remains active during sleep, we sleep poorly and awaken just as tired as when we went to bed.


Medications of any kind will alter the priority of the body by fooling the body’s intelligence. An aspirin may mask the pain of a headache, but this is accomplished only at the expense of interrupting the body’s normal communication. If the fire alarm is disconnected, pushing the buzzer will accomplish nothing. The fire is certainly in priority, but if communication system is not intact, no one will find out about the fire and nothing will be done about it.


The body’s use of priority is seldom a totally one-sided situation. More often it is perhaps 75% and 25%. For example, a patient comes into our office with a severe sciatic pain. Her scans reveal imbalance at the level of the spine that innervates the heart. Her exam and history confirms there is serious heart trouble. The sciatic condition is actually a minor problem when compared to the condition of the heart (major). That which is causing pain is not necessarily that which is the most serious to survival.


We begin adjusting this practice member and gradually the sciatic pain diminishes and at the same time cardiac function also improves. During the course of care, the symptoms of leg pain can diminish and then recur several times while the body’s wisdom alternates repair between the major and the lesser condition.


A re-check of the spine and the scans show an improvement in the lumbar spine and pelvis structure related to the lessened sciatic pain, but it may also show a marked decrease in the imbalance at the area that innervates the heart. The body wisely places the most serious condition in priority, but evidently the major problem needs only a portion of the available energy and the rest can be directed to helping the lesser problem.


Oftentimes you will experience a pendulum swing – your neck may feel better than ever but your low back is awful. The next day the pendulum may swing and your neck may feel awful and your low back may feel great. The pendulum swings from left to right and from up to down.


In reality, to really get well, you must keep your body free of subluxations, follow a good nutritional program, maintain a positive mental outlook, and have patience in allowing sufficient time for your body to heal itself. Make sure that you are doing nothing to stimulate or to inhibit your body. The beautiful intelligence within your body, that built your body, can then follow its own priority schedule. Keep me informed of changes in how you feel, but be happy with the ups and the downs, as these represent priority changes and indicate that you are truly on the road back to good health.

CARRY IT CORRECTLY

Carry it Correctly

Well, it’s time to head back to school! For many kids, one of the most exciting things about this time of year is all the new clothes and gear. One very important item that deserves extra attention is your child’s backpack. You want to be sure that they have a good one, that it’s packed properly and that they are wearing it correctly. An improperly worn backpack can promote poor posture and set the stage for long-term damage to their developing spines.

The most spine-friendly backpacks have two thickly-padded straps and a waist buckle, all of which should be used! When the pack is slung over only one shoulder it misaligns the spine and changes overall posture. Also, you’ll want to be sure that the heaviest items are packed closest to the body to avoid extra strain. Another good general rule is that the pack should weigh no more than 15% of your child’s body weight. Most backpacks are packed far too heavy. This often causes the child to lean forward, which results in increased stress on the back and neck. Try to encourage your child to stop by his/her locker between classes instead of carrying everything at once, and see if extra copies of textbooks are available so they don’t have to be lugged back and forth from school.

You can do a quick check of your child’s posture at home. First, stand behind your child and have your child close his/her eyes. See if ears, shoulders and hips are level. If not, there may be an underlying spinal curvature. Also check the side view: the ears, shoulders, hips and knees should all be in line with one another. Then do this same quick check with the child wearing the backpack to be sure that his or her posture is still good. If you have any questions about backpack safety, feel free to ask Dr. Brandon at The Joint Mount Pleasant.

Shoulder Pain and the Thoracic Spine

Shoulder Pain and the Thoracic Spine

If it looks like many health conditions have a link to proper spine mechanics and positioning, your perception is correct. The spine has a normal position that best resists gravity and allows for optimum joint and nerve function. In the case of the shoulder, hyperkyphosis of the thoracic spine is the link to shoulder impingement. Hyperkyphosis is the commonly seen posture in our nation’s elderly; slouched, hunched over, shrinking.

Impingement develops when the space between the coracoacromial arch and the head of the humerus narrows. According to researchers, individuals with a shoulder impingement have statistically less thoracic mobility and a more kyphotic thoracic spinal posture than individuals with healthy shoulders. Specifically, three findings are observed with shoulder impingements. First, as stated above, is hyperkyphosis of the thoracic spine. Second, we see decreased thoracic spine intersegmental mobility. Third, we see a tightening of the pectoralis minor musculature causing the scapula to tilt forward.

Here’s the solution: Structural assessment of your thoracic spine for hyperkyphosis and hypomobility, and flexibility assessment of the pectoralis musculature. Here at The Joint Mount Pleasant our focus remains structural. Structure affects function and as you can see in this instance, bad thoracic spine structure leads to bad shoulder joint function.


References:

Crawford, H. Jull, G. The influence of thoracic posture and movement on range of arm elevation. Physiotherapy Theory and Practice, 1993;9:143-148.

Greenfield, B. Catlin, P. Coats, P. et al. Posture in patients with shoulder overuse injuries and healthy individuals. Journal of Orthopedic Sports Physical Therapy, 1995;5:287-295.

Kibler, B. The role of the scapula in athletic shoulder function. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1998;26:325-337.

How Chiropractic Care Can Help Tension Headaches

Tension headaches are the most common type of primary headaches.  The tension-related pain can exude from the back, neck, eyes, or other muscle groups in the body.  As these types of headaches can be episodic or chronic, and as tension headaches affect approximately 30% of the population, tension headaches can be a troublesome condition for one to have.  However it is important to weigh the benefits of chiropractic care in the discussion of tension headaches, which can help alleviate the condition.

Tension headaches have a varying set of symptoms and timeframe.  The pain experienced can be anywhere from mild to moderately intense.  The pain is normally characterized as a dully, aching head pain which can produce sensations of tightness or pressure on the forehead, sides, or back of the head.  Also, a tension headache can last anywhere from 15 minutes to one week.  If the headaches persist for 15 days in a month for at least three months, they are considered chronic tension headaches.

Tension headaches should not go untreated if they persist.  These types of headaches can become chronic if episodic headaches persist.  Those seeking to obtain relief should consider professional help if these headaches persist and if the body does not respond to home treatments.  

Often chiropractic care can alleviate these pains and provide a quicker and more cost-efficient way of treatment.  Also, mainstream medicine often resorts to expensive drugs and treatments which may not be warranted.  Often these treatments and tests should be considered if a more serious condition is present, which cause tension headaches.

Chiropractic care can be an effective way in treating tension headaches.  Tension headaches can most often be caused by muscular tension and contraction involving the muscles of the shoulders, neck, and head.  Whether as a result of emotion or physical stress, the muscular tension which results from the cause can create steady tension headaches.  Also, changes in posture and movement as a response to these forms of stress can additionally impact the onset of tension headaches.  These factors are key in how chiropractic care can alleviate tension headaches.

Chiropractic care providers are able to combat the muscular tension which often causes tension headaches.  Chiropractic adjustments and other therapies, such as trigger point therapy and massage, are able to break the cyclical nature of muscle tension-related pain.  By realigning the skeleton and releasing muscular tension these physical stressors are reduced so that further pain is not caused and the condition itself is targeted for treatment.  As muscles relax and as nerve irritation is reduced, patients may often find relief with just a few treatments.

Tension headaches can become a cyclical and debilitating condition.  They can also impede the daily functions and overall quality of life for sufferers.  However, sufferers should consider chiropractic care in order to combat the underlying symptoms of tension headaches.

Shouldering Too Heavy a Load

Day after day, year after year, children trot off to school carrying a significant burden with them: their backpack. Backpack weight is a major health issue, and it's only getting worse. Here's what you can do about it.

Do you know what's in your child's backpack, how much it weighs, or how that weight is affecting their neck, shoulders, back and spine? You need to know, because studies suggest far too many children are carrying far too heavy loads to and from school, and with serious consequences.

For example, a 2003 study in “Spine” found a significant relationship between the incidence of lower back pain among schoolchildren (ages 12-18) and both the weight of their backpacks and the amount of time the backpacks were used. Some backpacks were inordinately heavy; 18.9 percent of the students surveyed carried backpacks that weighed more than “20 percent” of the student's body weight when full.

In another study, published in the same journal a year earlier, four of five children said their backpacks were heavy, and two-thirds said they felt fatigue when carrying theirs. The study also showed that lifetime prevalence of low back pain was related to the amount of time children carried backpacks on their shoulders.

Not very good news, is it? So, what can you do as a parent to help your children in this regard? Here are a few simple suggestions courtesy of The Joint Chiropractic in Mount Pleasant:
*Make sure your child's backpack weighs no more than 10 percent of their body weight.
*Also ensure that it doesn't hang more than 4 inches below their waistline.
*Urge your child to wear both shoulder straps.
*The straps should be adjustable so the backpack can be easily fitted to your child's body.
*Look for a backpack with a lumbar support or pad and make sure pad fits or rides in curve of low back. Some backpacks have a waist belt that can be used also to minimize stress.