If you’ve ever twisted an ankle stepping off a curb, then you know that it’s not only painful but keeps you chair (or bedridden) for awhile.
If you’ve had a gout flare-up, it can be difficult to walk. Or if you simply haven’t been getting exercise, you may find yourself stiff and in pain.
Mobility is related to our ability to do everyday tasks like cut the grass, reach a glass on a shelf or carry laundry up the stairs. Most of us don’t think of it until we don’t have it.
Scientific studies fromThe Mayo Clinic have found a direct link between spinal health issues and other health concerns when the body isn’t getting the physical movement that it needs.
Staying active is more than improving your fitness level – It’s about keeping your joints active – keeping them flexible and mobile. This may not sound like too important of a health goal, but making sure your body is mobile and flexible is actually quite important because it means you can do all the things you want to do in your life.
Here are 7 Simple Tips To Improve Your Mobility
Tip #1: Use Warm-Up & Cool Down Stretches To Improve Mobility & Flexibility
(YouTube is your friend to find exercises that work for you)
Tip #2: Use Exercises That Help Improve Knee and Ankle Strength & Mobility
(Walking is a simple yet very effective way to do this)
Start with just 5-10 minutes a day if you’re really out of shape. A walk around the block only takes a few minutes but can clear your head and remind you of the world right around you. This benefits your mental health as well as physical.
Tip #3: Eat A Healthy Diet & Reduce Excess Weight
You know this is important. Extra weight puts stress on your joints and this can lead to injury. Even if you’re only a few pounds overweight, imagine you’re carrying around a watermelon or two.
Tip #4: Eat Foods that Fight Inflammation
(this means less white flour and more veggies)
Soon, the Doylestown Farmer’s Market will reopen with spring peas and asparagus and other in-season produce. Or, visit the grocery store of your choice and stock up. If you’re short on time and energy, buy frozen veggies for quick and healthy stir fry.
Salmon is also good anti-inflammatory food.
Tip #5: Involve Your Family For Accountability
Use an app like Pacer to track your activity levels, you will be amazed how addicting it will become when you see how many steps a day you take.
Tip #6: Use Supplements That Help What Ails You
(So many experts in our community can help you with this including Dr. Jeff)
Tip #7: Enroll in a Fitness Class – Karate, Yoga, Swimming, Tennis, Golf
Make movement a regular part of your life. You know the expression, “move it or lose it.” It’s true.
Mobility is essential for health and happiness. When we no longer can extend an arm, stand up straight or maintain balance or be agile, we run risks of falls and injuries.
Unfortunately, mobility continues to decrease as you age. So if you’re in your 40s, 50s, or older and have begun to wake up with aches and pains for no reason at all, starting a routine to improve your mobility is important.
Routine chiropractic adjustments can help you stay mobile and/or increase your mobility by keeping your spine flexible. If you’re in the Doylestown, Pa. area, we’d love to help you stay healthy and mobile with regular chiropractic care.
The most significant factor in improving mobility is your mindset. If you keep committed and motivated to a healthy active lifestyle you’ll be able to manage your mobility levels. Keep motivated and commit to a better quality of life!
Several years ago, I twisted my ankle. I was wearing boots with a small heel, walking down a Philadelphia sidewalk, and boom! A patch of the uneven pavement caused my foot/ankle to roll.
While painful, I still hobbled the dozen or so blocks back to my car. Later, it swelled up the size of a small melon and I applied the RICE method (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation) for several days.
While reading up on healing joint pain, I came across chiropractic for joint pain. Now, if you’re like a lot of people, you associate chiropractors with back pain. Yet, chiropractic care is designed to reduce pain throughout your body by readjusting the spine. The spine, of course, is attached to everything else via bones, nerves, ligaments, and tendons.
For example, if you have shoulder pain, then a chiropractic adjustment can free up a pinched nerve or other problem. It can even help run of the mill neck pain from sleeping “wrong.”
In fact, chiropractic care can help all your joints and improve your overall range of mobility which is great. Of course, it’s effectiveness – and if it’s the right method — depends on what’s causing your joint pain.
Can Chiropractic for Joint Pain Help You?
Causes of joint pain vary from an acute injury like my twisted ankle to arthritis. Chiropractic care can help many of them.
Let’s take the common condition of arthritis for example. As you probably know, arthritis is the breakdown of cartilage in the joints. This decay of the body’s natural “cushion” means the bones rub together with less padding than before and it’s painful.
However, studies like this one show chiropractic care can help patients suffering from certain types of arthritis.
It can also help acute injuries like my twisted ankle.
The reason chiropractic care reduces joint pain is that it can help reduce painful inflammation. It also releases muscle tension and improves your range of motion.
How does chiropractic treatment reduce inflammation? Because it improves your body’s communication with itself. A spinal adjustment can readjust the nerves in your body and help release soothing chemicals through your body.
It reduces muscle tension because when your chiropractor adjusts your spine, then any pressure that’s built up in your muscles is released. The effect is like a big breath of oxygen to your muscles. Chiropractors can also work with adjusting specific joints if needed.
While chiropractic care can’t help every condition, it can help many of them including relieving joint pain. We start with a medical evaluation that includes an Xray. Then, if we decide that you’re a good candidate for chiropractic care, we’ll create a treatment plan to help you feel better faster.
If you’re in or near Doylestown, Pa., call or stop by, we’re right across from CB West High School.
Have you thought about your mobility? When chiropractors and other health professionals talk about mobility, it’s usually in relation to your range of motion. So, can you comfortably turn your head, rotate your hands, shoulders, feet, bend your knees and elbows, etc. ?
If not, did you know you may be able to improve mobility with chiropractic care?
There are a lot of reasons for mobility issues. Injury, gout, and joints breaking down are some common causes.
Hippocrates, “the father of medicine” is credited with saying, “look well to the spine for the cause of disease?” And you may have heard the expression, “the spine is your lifeline.” It’s because keeping your spine flexible and healthy is essential to your well-being.
Spinal flexibility impacts every part of your body. Whether you can bend and touch your toes, easily stand from a chair, or even look over your shoulder. It’s all related.
And if you have restrictions, then the rest of your body overcompensates. For example, if your hips are tight, your knees may overcompensate. Or, if your shoulders are tight, then you may find your back is over-arching. Ultimately, these can lead to back and shoulder pain.
To keep your spine healthy and improve your mobility, it’s worth seeing a chiropractor.
4 Ways to Improve Mobility with Chiropractic Care
Chiropractors have over 150 techniques to reduce pain and improve mobility. Including techniques that have nothing to do with cracking your spine. For example:
1- Electrotherapy – Are you familiar with the at-home TENS machine that you can attach to yourself? If so, you know they send out small electric pulses to stimulate your nerves and muscles. At McQuaite Chiropractic, we use a professional version to provide pain relief and improve your mobility.
2- Cold/Heat Therapy – Heat encourages blood flow. Improved blood flow brings nutrients to the painful area so it can heal. Ice restricts the blood flow. Both can be helpful for your joints. For example, if you’re having mobility problems due to arthritis, then heat can reduce stiffness so you can move easier. Ice reduces inflammation.
3-Spinal Decompression – You may have seen people get strapped on tables and turned upside down. While it can look like a medieval torture device, it’s actually very helpful for taking the pressure off your spine. Additionally, there are other ways to do spinal decompression besides inversion therapy. For example, you can lie down, fully clothed on our special decompression table and the sensors will administer electromagnetic pulses throughout your body.
4- Ultrasound – More than imaging technology, an ultrasound also produces sound waves that have a massaging effect. This can reduce swelling and stiffness.
Massage therapy is also good for mobility because it relaxes the muscles.
Of course, everyone’s body is different. When it comes to improving your mobility, your age, health, and condition play important roles. When you see a medical professional, we’ll assess your overall health and medical history before recommending a treatment plan. After all, if your mobility problems are related to a pinched nerve, then that’s a different treatment than arthritis-related mobility problems.
If you’re in Doylestown, Pa. and are having mobility issues, come in and see if we can improve mobility through chiropractic care and get you feeling your best again! We take most insurances.
It’s easy to take our bodies for granted. You can walk, bend over, sit and stand, and maybe even run and dance. But one wrong step can change everything. Twist your ankle stepping off a curb and you may find yourself traveling through the airport in a wheelchair because you can’t walk.
As you get older, many people find they have more aches and pains than before. Often, it’s joint related and if left unchecked, can seriously hamper your activities.
There are a few ways you can maintain your joint health though, no matter your age.
How to Protect Your Joint Health
1- Maintain a healthy weight – There are so many health benefits to maintaining a healthy weight and joint health is a big one. Take your knees for instance. Every extra 10 pounds on your body is like another 20 pounds on your knee joints. That takes it’s toll after a while.
2- Stretch – According to researchers at Harvard University, it helps to move and stretch every 15 minutes. That helps keep the oxygen flowing through your body which carries nutrients and helps lubricate the joints. Stretching regularly also improves range of motion. If you can incorporate a regular yoga class appropriate for your abilities, that’s also beneficial.
3- Create an ergonomic workstation – If you’re like most of us, you spend more time in front of screens that away from them. Not only is sitting for long periods unhealthy, but bending over a screen causes pain in the upper back, shoulders, and neck. Then there’s carpal tunnel pain a lot of people develop due to a lot of typing.
If you keep your screen at eye-level, that will help. If you have a laptop, you can raise it on a special laptop stand or even a stack of books and use an external mouse and keyboard. If you’re using a separate monitor, it’s easy to raise that on a shelf or books.
4- Get a massage – Therapeutic massage goes beyond just feeling good. It also helps reduce toxins and stimulate the blood flow throughout your body. A regular massage has many of the same benefits of stretching such as releasing tight muscles and improving range of motion.
5- Chiropractic care – Chiropractic care works well with massage to protect your joints and offer pain relief. The massage relaxes the muscles and the chiropractic adjustment re-aligns your spine which in turn, helps your whole body. In some cases, we don’t do a traditional adjustment but rely on other techniques like ultrasound and a TENS machine to help your joints and reduce pain.
6- Don’t overuse – If you have arthritis or consistent pain in certain joints, evaluate how you can make lifestyle changes to limit certain actions. For example, if it’s painful for you to chop vegetables, try to buy them pre-chopped.
Overall, there are many ways you can protect your joints. Hopefully, you can implement some or all of these suggestions before you’re in a lot of pain. If you’re in or near Doylestown, Pa. and would like to talk with a chiropractor about protecting your joints, we offer a free consultation.
When was your last massage? For many, it’s been awhile. Once thought of as a indulgence, the medical community now recognizes the benefits of massage therapy. You may know it reduces stress and relieves pain. But did you know massage therapy also releases feel-good endorphins?
Endorphins are naturally occurring chemicals in the body that promote relaxation. Endorphins also lower your blood pressure and improve oxygen flow. As you may know, better oxygen flow reduces inflammation and helps flush away toxins.
According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, “Massage therapy is used to help manage a health condition or enhance wellness. It involves manipulating the soft tissues of the body. Massage has been practiced in most cultures, both Eastern and Western, throughout human history, and was one of the earliest tools that people used to try to relieve pain.”
Medical professionals of all types recommend massage therapy. Studies show it’s helpful for everything from tension headaches to chronic pain like fibromyalgia. It’s even helpful for diabetics.
Here at Mcquaite Chiropractic, we recommend massage therapy as a complementary therapy to your chiropractic treatments. The reason why is because while a chiropractic adjustment realigns your spine; massage relaxes your muscles. They’re each good on their own. But together, they’re like peanut butter and jelly. They both reduce inflammation, reduce pain, and improve your flexibility. It’s a good holistic approach to your body’s overall wellness.
Other Benefits of Massage Therapy
Anxiety Reduction
Lying still for an hour (or even half hour) forces you to slow down. This is good for your mental state. Plus, safe human touch fulfills a deep human need for human contact. Studies have shown that people feel less stressed and happier after massage.
Pain Reduction
Massage therapy improves blood circulation and reduces inflammation. You instinctively rub sore muscles for relief, a massage therapist does it better. Plus, this natural pain relief means you may skip pain medication including opioids.
Helps Control Blood Sugar in Diabetics
It can help control blood sugar by helping your body better absorb insulin. It also helps reduce toxins.
Improved Digestive System
Better circulation helps the blood carry oxygen and nutrients throughout your body and flush out toxins. This stimulates your lymph nodes, your digestive system, and even your immune system.
As you can see, there are many benefits of massage therapy. There are also many different types of massage. Some of them include deep tissue, Swedish, myofascial, and sports. If you’re wondering which is the best massage for you, it depends on why you’re getting the massage and your personal preference. Your chiropractor can make recommendations for you.
When you combine massage therapy with chiropractic care, you’ll feel better in between treatments. If you live in or near Doylestown, Pa. and you’d like to experience natural pain relief with chiropractic and massage therapy, stop in or call for your free consultation.
