one welcome to the life that limits family well the show so they were talking about injuries that you may be left with i see people in the office all the time with a variety of injuries that bring them through the door but oftentimes they the injuries that they present with are from something else altogether most recently i just met a woman who had got a concussion card or hit her hit her hard in the head resulted in chronic headaches so the effects of the initial injury the concussion itself while they're slowly going away were being treated she was evaluated to ensure that there was no internal bleed the head in the brain were ok the problem that she was having though was chronic headaches so sometimes after an event where the initial injury heals we're left with some other second or third level problem that you may not even put together that they're related headaches is a real or a common one whether it's a car wreck or a fall or even a sports injury we have to be careful of headaches sometimes though you can't just automatically rule out some other possible issue sometimes there can be problems in the head itself high blood pressure and cause headaches it can be a tumor or a space occupying lesion so we go through a lot of steps before we just call it a headache but there's always a cause and there are i think a lot of people walking around with headaches on a regular basis that think that's normal and they aren't headaches at any frequency are not normal whether a woman says i only get that with my cycle or you have somebody who's going through a stressful event may think you know i'm getting i'm getting a headache but it's just because i'm under stress the body is not designed to be in a headache mode all the time or really with any frequency if there's if there's a headache present and there's still an issue and one of the things that we like to look at such as being a chiropractor is the neck eighty percent of all headaches are caused by neck problems whether that's a neck injury that could be old from maybe a whiplash accident or a fall all the way down to specifically  are always looking at the body remember a subway station your bones don't actually pop out we don't pop them back what happens is you get a very small misalignment because the body can no longer doubt the stress that small misalignment which is what a subway station is causes you to have to compensate now and so you have other tissues doing the job of that particular tissue that is no longer functioning properly so you get muscle spasm which is easily felt and that can be the cause of headache you get changes in blood for blood flow that local tissue which we would  term swelling you can also get just an inability to move completely and that's a loss of range of motion which is one of the third things we'll be talking about so with that headache we look closely and we determine is it a problem in the spine as i said eighty percent of all headaches are caused by neck problems so even if it's a stressful event if you go into that stress mode and that part of the spine is not functioning properly it's almost like hitting that weak area and people commonly say oh that's my weak spot or that's where i hold stress here we don't really want you have a weak spot you don't have to have a weak spot  if you find it that area triggers very quickly and very easily then you have a subway station most likely because longstanding civilization causes that particular part of the body to fire more easily or have a lower threshold and there's a lower threshold  basically when stress hits that area at the threshold is lower then what you're getting is you're getting a faster likelihood for that particular tissue to turn on so background noise which really should affect you  or activities that you've done a thousand times that normally don't have an impact on you now too so your threshold for stress has come down and as it comes down takes less and less to set it off so commonly i hear you know i've done that a hundred times or you know i always i would affect me this time it's just that that that injury that's there now is more likely to to be set off or those little receptor is in there are more likely to fire causing that muscle spasm so a headache is a real common issue one of the other issues with headache just because just since we're on this topic is the hydration and i talk hydration all day long to every single person i see it's absolutely critical textbook hydration is half your body weight now says every day so i'm two hundred  pounds that means i'm shooting for about one hundred ounces of water a day if you're getting the amount of water in that you need you'll see a lot of things go away from cramping to spasms inability to focus or concentrate and headaches is f in the list too so as we consider some of these injuries that you may be left with i want you to think about you know what has happened in the past was it a fall down the steps was there in fact a car wreck is there something going on that you're maybe not putting those two events together because they seem so far apart from onset to origin to your second problem also sometimes people are being told you're left with that you know we have a medication for that and we can help trying control that through this med but the fact of the matter is very often there's something that can be done when you hear there's nothing we can do that true there's nothing left they can do and since some situations where medical management that his ex has extended itself or there's nothing left for them to approach that with that may be the case but it doesn't mean that it's not somebody else whether you're talking about therapy or biofeedback or chiropractic there's a lot of different options out there sometimes just plain massage you could have just a soft tissue injury there at that point and a lot of times people discuss this saying you know i've got a knot they're not really knots not would be you did work out in the garden too long you relax for a day or so you get a hot shower somewhere up shoulders and you're totally fine most of the time when you have a true soft tissue injury you develop a trigger point trigger points are very different because trigger points have a nerve component to them a trigger point is something that is that is an issue where the soft tissues been damaged the body knows this it's weakened in that area and now the body sends pain receptors into that particular tissue in other words you actually build nerve fibers into that damaged area kind of like an early warning system and those pain fibers will set off really easily that that lower threshold that we were talking about a second ago if that happens then what we generally end up having is tissue that's weaker sless elastic it's more prone to reinjury and those pain fibers are really going to fill that tissue and so you're going to have a tendency to experience a lot more discomfort as areas that can be dealt with when you're subject and you get adjusted you break those down and that's really scar tissue break that down if it is purely soft tissue that somebody says it's skilled in soft tissue work with epi my fashion release or different types of massage can address that so if you've had an injury and you're finding that there is in fact a second issue that maybe isn't completely cleared or you've been told there's nothing can be done will manage that with medication consider options there may be an underlying problem there that's continued on probably about three maybe four months ago we did a show on concussion and one of the things we talked about was a concussion symptoms look exactly like whiplash symptoms and very often when you have a concussion because the blow is so fast and so hard and usually it is not angle it affects the neck as well as the head so we go we get the head checked out again doing the t and evaluate make sure there's no bleeds or any other lesions but forget to evaluate the neck or the rest of the spine the head attached to the body via the neck so you got to consider that and make sure you're addressing those pieces as well the second issue on here is weakness if we're if we're showing signs of weakness then and i'm talking about in a in a particular muscle not the body as a whole although fatigue or lack of energy absolutely can be one of the second issues that doesn't completely clear but if i see somebody who says yeah you know i'm moving my arm as far as i used to but i just can't lift it the way or lift weights the way i used to or i can't throw a ball like i used to if there's weakness in a particular muscle group the thing you want to be aware of is the fact that muscles are all slaves to nerves there's no muscle in your body that turns itself on and there's no muscle in the by the term self off of its own accord so muscles are always slaves to nerves and if you're seeing a change in muscle tissue then you need to know that neurologically something's going on there's been some type of change with the nerve the feeds that particular muscle it can be very local like if it's in your shoulder the problem could be right there and sometimes the nerves can be irritated out in the local tissue or very often it's in the spine and again as a chiropractor this is where we're evaluating for subject sation that small misalignment that affects that nerve so that nerve loses the ability to send its signal completely it also decreases blood flow to that area that nerve begins to break down so if it does wherever that nerve goes it's going to be there's going to be a change weakness is a real common symptom a real common indicator if we have a weakness in more than one muscle or muscle group then we have to consider a bigger area of the spine that may have been affected or consider the muscle itself may have been damaged in both cases we need to get in there and do the hands on work just like we talked about a second ago with my official release of the soft tissue work we want to make sure blood supply is adequate when you do have scar tissue or any type of injury like that you also affect blood flow all of your muscles all of your bones all of your organs are all suspended connected or wrapped in a soft fibrous tissue called connective tissue or fashion that fashion can get wrinkled up so if you think of a nice smooth tissue paper that's a fashion should look it faster runs from the top of your head always on the tips of your toes and it's runs in uninterrupted layers the reason for that is i keeps the body somewhat compartmentalise and that makes the spread of infection much more difficult so it's a natural innate whaler means that we have of dealing with infection or other problems but that fashion can become damaged when we have physical injury such as this and if we're seeing weakness or change in that muscle it's one of the things we have to consider getting in there and working on that faster components important because running between that fashion is the nerve is the blood vessel and our ability to convey not just signals of blood but essential nutrients for that tissue to heal so i want to look at the spine first want to make sure all your connections are there like they're supposed to be in all the nerves that are open in firing properly then we want to look locally into the tissue and make sure it's receiving what it needs as well because you c fine upstream and by the time you get downstream there's an actual problem there were all that information all those nutrients all the blood flows being hung up somewhere and that's when we see cramping or like i said weakness and you can even see that muscle change in size so if we compare the right to the left  we see a change on one side where we have a normal sized muscle the other side is a half inch or quarter inch or even an inch sometimes difference we know something's going on you want to get on it pretty quickly decreased range of motion here we're talking about a joint and it could be any joint the body we could be talking about in jordan extremity you could be talking about joints of the spine you could be talking about the spine as a whole because each of those single segments function together one with the next to create normal movement so that you can bend forward or sideways or backwards so that you can twist or turn  up or down and if we've got a decrease in range of motion other words you can't go as far as you used to then there's an issue there because you don't get decreased range of motion for nothing if there's a decreases either an old injury or if you've had a surgery that's a different story there could've been a fusion or some kind of rod placed in the spine if we're talking about that that would absolutely chris range of motion there's nothing we can change about that but if you haven't had one of those events and we're seeing a change in range of motion and something's going on so whether it's an extremity or the spine we want to be very aware that decreased range motion the reason for that is this two things happen whenever you move those joints one you feed the brain information so the brain requires vast amounts of information to be able to tell the body what to do in fact in nervous system is eighty percent sensory meaning eight out of every ten fibers is designed to tell your brain what's happening in your environment only two are designed to do anything about what's happening so it's much more important you know what's going on then you're able to do something about that so if we see a change in that range of motion then what we know is that joint is no longer feeding the brain appropriate information this may not sound like a big deal but if you're an athlete it's a really big deal it slows down your reaction times and decreases your ability to play that sport especially let's say you happen to be a hitter and there's a change in the low back there's no way for you to follow through in your swing if you're playing baseball completely drive the power that you're looking to and really be able to have normal bat mechanics or swing mechanics if that low back is hung up a little bit or subjects it is in one of its range of motion and every joint in your body has six not just one so you go up and down left and right there's actually two rotational components to that as well so we need those joints to move properly in order to feed the brains of the brain knows what to do and how to respond but also if the joint isn't moving properly or there's a change in range of motion then that also means the joint isn't being fed joints only get fed if they move so there's a blood supply to every tissue in your body but joints do it in a very specific way so when that joint actually moves you compress it and when the joint compresses you force nutrients into the ends of those bones or cartilage and when it releases then you let out the waste products and that compression and release compression release because that's going to get the nutrients it's necessary for and also to stabilize it as well as get rid of those waste products which is really crucial if you're not getting rid of waste products and this is more often the cause of pain discomfort decreases in range of motion headaches than anything else then they tend to build up in the area waste products are most easily understood is that lactic acid that burn that you get whenever you exercise it's not the only waste product but it's a very common one that most people can identify with if that waste product builds up in the tissue and it's in the muscle in the joint what it does that starts to occupy space and it starts to push out and as it does push out it pushes against those blood vessels and nerve roots as a nervous get pushed on they lose the ability to get the nutrients they want and they start to break down that's when you get that pain signal begin to fire so lots of times people rub something this icy hot ben gay is still used biofreeze is this is the bengay of today or the icy hot of today and they'll work that into the joint the working it in part is good because you're doing the manual movement into that tissue that you need that's actually really effective the other things not so effective just because they're topical they penetrate a little bit but they're really not getting all the way down into the tissue where the injury may be and if you truly do have an injury the topical treatments are going to do anything that's why you're reply reply and at that point you just treating the symptoms so we want to know if there's really something going on there because you continue to reapply a topical treatment to give you a partial relief and let that go that's when it's going to start breaking down again partly because the brain isn't getting information needs it doesn't tell the joint and secondly because the nutrients themselves in that joint are not reaching their their target tissue which in this case would be the cartilage of the bone so if that breakdown happens you begin to develop arthritis because that's when we come very very inflamed that inflammation is a natural response when you have inflammation he actually increased blood flow to that particular joint by about ten times so that increase in blood flow brings your immune system there to clean up any debris let's say sprain your ankle and you see that bruising that occurs it's the immune system that comes out and begins to chew that up and get rid of those via products that's why you see those color changes in the bruise and you can watch that bruise go from a very deep color which is that initial state of injury where the blood is is new and it's sitting in that soft tissue to the greens and yellows and  lighter colored blues that process is the immune system coming in and chewing out those pieces and breaking it down and getting rid of it and that's where you that's where you know you're healing but again just like we started the conversation if that bruise goes away but you have a rehab the ankle the only thing you have is no more birds it doesn't necessarily mean that if she's healthy then you could be left with weakness decrease range of motion or even pain so we really want to be aware of that if you can't bend your head all the way down to your chest there's a decreased range of motion in your neck if you can't look all the way up at the ceiling especially without this comfort that's our last piece is that pain piece if you can't do it without pain then there's an issue in the also want to be looking at that in terms of left and right rotation as well as side bending you should be able to go through each of those and those are six ranges and the whole body is capable of this well that's touching your toes leaning back or moving side to side if we're getting pain and pain is the last indicator you get it's always the very last symptom you get it's the most rudimentary symptom it's the most basic way that the body seeks to get your attention and it's definitely a last resort so that pain indicator is your body's way of going hey something's going on you haven't addressed it yet and we need to do something about it so what i tell patients that i see is pain probably the something you're going to get first one that's going to go away it doesn't mean you're well because what happens to a lot of people is that pain decreases and they think they're well and they go out and do all the things they were doing before before they really have stability in that particular tissue so if the muscle really was damaged or the the nerve is injured and you go out and go become active again you're going to reenter that tissue which is exactly why i'm not really in favor of over the pounds over the counter pain relievers or really the standard three that you get most often at the hospital or  also rebuilds tissue so if you decrease that inflammatory response and you're on anti inflammatories all the time you're actually speeding up your process of degeneration because you're not getting what you need to the tissue and you're not feeling the problem it's there which means just containing to stay active and that's why that pain reliever comes in as well if you can't feel the pain that your body's way of saying don't do that then you're going to continue to see that activity which may continue to break that tissue down and as far as the pain reliever the muscle relax if you did sprain your ankle you would hold the foot in a certain position it would swell the muscles would tighten and that protects that joint from further injury it doesn't mean you know do anything past that or we want that spasm to stay forever but it does mean that your body is doing everything it's supposed to to get you into the best position possible to heal that particular tissue so if you take that muscle relaxer which also takes some of that pain away then you're decreasing the body's ability to its job which means you're going to take longer to heal or you're going to continue to be active on a joint that's not ready to support you we're just as incapable of doing that particular job at this time so pain is a really good indicator and we need to pay attention to it in terms of what can we do what can't we do one of my favorite quotes i was in an imaging center years ago and they had a pamphlet laying there from the american heart association and what it said was that forty seven percent of all people who have a heart attack and die have no symptoms so almost all half of the people that are out there have heart attacks for the very first time do not have pain in the chest do not have shortness of breath do not have pain into the arm or jaw they just fall over dead so if that's the case of forty seven percent of people having a heart heart attack then you know heart disease is in those people yesterday and the week before and the month before the year before so as we continue to treat symptoms we may be missing underlying causes that are really there that we need to know about and you could have no symptoms so checking these things out following up with any of these things are going on and just get a regular check up absolutely crucial your process of maintaining health you know i think it's interesting that you have just as many spinal segments as you do teeth thirty two of each before this nonsense actually fused as you get older so you go to the dentist on a regular basis to get your teeth evaluate and check to make sure there's no cavities or damage and if you lost a tooth it wouldn't be great but you could get a new one or they could do a bridge or if you lost all of your teeth even you could do dentures that wouldn't compromise your ability to even digest but if you lose the spinal segment because he's missed some of these indicators that are here or there is breakdown or cavity formation which is really arthritis we're talking about the spine and that fuses then you lose that function of the nervous system and the only difference between a nervous system that's seriously damaged let's say from a very serious auto accident or a bad fall where we see paralysis and the sub look sation the only difference between the two is that the subject sation the symptoms occur over time you get the same breakdown of the nervous tissue you get the same degenerative change they just take a lot longer to show up so if we're in the process of treating symptoms or ignoring symptoms which is most commonly the case we're sometimes we're told we just have to live with that or that's our thought process then you're heading down that road to significant spinal change also people are in pain chronic pain  for a long period of time have shrinkage of the brain so it's really crucial that we're addressing these not just with our pain relievers the finding out what's going on your body will give you indicators always you just need to learn to read them if you catch him early there's a lot that can be done  wait then you decrease the options that you may have as far as how much healing can occur if you catch it really soon and half on my path to my office is pediatric and people say to me all the time when you see kids for you know do they have back pain headaches and some of them do actually ten percent of all ten year olds we talked about this before have degenerative arthritis in their spine from too heavy backpack support posture or even on the sports of their playing sore throat is not a disease of of the older population it can occur with anybody especially if there's a subway station present playing on every day arthritis but we checked those kids often in early because if they're supplicated and we catch it early it's a couple adjustments they're right back on their feet and it's no big deal if we wait or if you do the the i'll be ok and read the dirt on their their injury like what i see most of the parents doing in little league sports get back out there most of time they are ok but we got to check them if there is an injury there we let it go you stack on top of that more sports injuries maybe a car wreck a couple of falls maybe on the ice or just just out playing kids fall a time just as when they're learning to walk add on to that the stress that goes on and by the time they're twenty or twenty five and i see these people in the office when we take films there sometimes significant a generation which should never be we should never be seeing in that population it's completely correctable and it's totally preventable if you catch it early so just like you think of the dentist as a preventative option to maintain healthy teeth and remember from eating healthy teeth you maintain a healthy body because your teeth and your gums are the beginning of your whole digestive system so it's really crucial so is your spine that same process if the spine itself the because it controls and coordinates all of the  you're also working in that prevented of model and if we check these kids they do fantastic they also know that people on a regular chiropractor care have healthier immune systems they respond faster and you can actually take the blood and see the difference pre and post adjustment we know that they focus better we know that there's far less injury especially in athletes and we also know that those kids or even the adults who are under regular care tend to have just a better outlook a better perspective in life there was a study done not that long ago were over seventeen thousand people were evaluated and they filled out a questionnaire at the end to really indicate the differences they've seen in their life from health to the psychological not just physical health where the number one things they indicated was just a better outlook on life and part of that i real simple it's that pain piece if you're not in chronic pain your ability to be focused to be happy to enjoy life to engage in more activities is obviously going to be there so being able to do that and have that healthy nervous system is crucial so if you have any of these or or you've seen any of these in a family member even if it's a child make sure you're getting them checked the difference between us as a pediatric chiropractor and maybe your pediatrician most medical doctors are not trained about evaluate for car excuse me for substation it's not for their training  in school i learned all about the heart i can name the all the pieces i can tell you where it goes and what the k g means but i'm not the person to do heart surgery so while we all know what the body parts are and how they work it doesn't mean we're all schooled the same so if you think something like that's happened or your child has had a bad fall or somebody has been in a wreck and they've got some kind of second or third level injured it's still there that they've either been told you've got to live with that or they're taking medicine for consider and evaluation to rule out any of these issues in the nervous system very often that's what's going on and even if that problem's been around for years it's still often correctable if it isn't correct we can absolutely decrease the effect that it's having on the body and if we can get them moving again get that outlook improved and they can begin to to get active again reengage in life  sometimes thirty percent which doesn't sound like a lot to most of us is all the difference in the world to some people just to finish up with the one last little piece i saw a woman who was in this very boat her big deal was when to be able to keep her grandkids and she had really significant low back issues she'd had them for a long time she had an injury much earlier on in life and after about six eight weeks of chiropractor care she was able to start to function again her range of motion was improving her pain was decreasing and all those limiting factors that had been there before were starting to decrease and in fact she was able to reach her goal of playing with their grandkids getting down on the floor not just picking them up but interacting with them again so what might not seem like a lot to some people a little thirty percent improvement or thirty degree change in a range of motion is huge and if we can affect somebody like that then i think we've done a lot if you have any questions feel free to call us or e mail any of the topics that we've gone over i've gotten some requests from people i've run into so if you want to see a particular topic covered or different information give me a holler i'll be happy to go over it and thanks for your time have a great summer and as this weather improves and you get out there just remember take the necessary steps to hydrate protect yourself and your reevaluated ha