Posts Tagged ‘back pain’
Losing Weight for your Back’s Sake
When it comes to leading a life with less back-pain, losing weight is one of the most lasting ways you can effect improvement. I say lasting because nothing about weight loss is immediate: the process of shedding excess poundage is gradual and it requires a commitment to nutrition, exercise and lifestyle modification. At Holmes Chiropractic, we know that the best way to achieve any health goal is teamwork and to this end, we offer you our services as both moral support, teammate and coach.
How we help:
- Chiropractic adjustment ensures that spinal imbalance is not holding you back. Keeping the nervous system regulated goes a long way toward weight loss, and you will feel more flexible and motivated to get moving if your body is in a state of balance.
- Nutrition…let’s take this slow. While there is no need to completely overhaul your diet, there may be a need to do simple things like drinking more water or replacing processed fats and sugars with healthy ones.
- Reducing stress…releasing tension and boosting your mental well-being makes you more likely and able to take the initiative of losing weight.
- When it comes to exercise, every body is different. This means that depending on your overall condition, including considerations for pain and beginning weight, we tailor a specific set of exercises that will ease you back into the world of activity.
Yes, weight loss is, by nature, a gradual process: it surely helps to have someone there to keep you accountable every step of the way. Give our office in Houston a call and find out how we can start making the small changes that will lead to a new you.
Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.
Fitness and Chiropractic
For health nuts and couch surfers alike, the body will thank you for any level of exercise that you choose to input into your health and wellness plan. As we grow older, our body’s need more movement and more targeted exercise to strengthen parts of the body which are vulnerable to injury and degradation. For people suffering from back pain on a regular basis, or those rehabilitating specific injuries, exercise can be used in a purposeful and targeted way to create improvements at a faster pace than if no exercise was undertaken.
At Holmes Chiropractic, we teach stretching and exercise to help people rehab injuries, manage back pain and improve their overall quality of life.
For low back pain, a lot of emphasis is placed upon increasing core strength: the abdominals, trunk muscles, erector spinae, and other groups of muscles that make your body more resistant to common types of back injuries. But not all conditions will necessarily respond to a strengthening of the core; this is why it is important to get an assessment by a professional to find out which parts of the back and body need to be targeted with specific exercise.
Learning about body mechanics, especially those of the back, can help you greatly reduce your risk of injury. As with all back injuries and pain, we start small and scale up: the level and intensity of exercise you undertake should be directly tempered by the amount of pain you feel.
For help on instituting a more individualized work out plan to heal your back fast, give our office in Houston a call at (713) 862-2440.
Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.
Posture while…Sleeping?
What is your personal sleep posture? Spread eagle, stomach down? Fetal position? Do you move a lot when you sleep, or stay still as a rock? Few people can answer these questions with total clarity because by nature, sleep is an unconscious activity. But some sleep positions are superior to others, and we do have the power to influence how we fall asleep. We generally choose whatever feels most comfortable, which is fine for those of us who sleep on our sides or back, but sleeping on the stomach can be incredibly damaging to the spine. Here are some postural considerations while sleeping:
The primary goal for any sleepers should be to keep their spine as close to natural alignment as possible.
The stomach-down position should therefore be avoided, but if you must sleep this way, use a pillow underneath the stomach to avoid letting the curve of your back collapse into the bed. Furthermore, the position that the stomach sleeper’s head usually takes during sleep puts a lot of pressure on the muscles of the neck and the shoulders.
Sleeping on your back is one of the best positions, but it can put pressure on the lower back. You can defeat this condition by putting a pillow under the knees that gently lifts them and alleviates pressure from the lower spine. Make sure you are using a pillow that keeps your head straight in relation to the spine.
When sleeping on the side, bend your knees in a loose approximation of the fetal position to avoid pressure accumulating to the lower back. As with the sleeping on your back, pillow usage is crucial: you don’t want a pillow that encourages the neck to angle up or down to aggressively.
Changing the way you sleep is a challenging proposition: it requires peeling back years of repetitive behavior and a lot of patience, but the upside is tremendous. We would like to see people waking up refreshed and pain free. At Holmes Chiropractic, we have the knowledge to help you institute changes that will lead to a restful night’s sleep.
Call our office in Houston at (713) 862-2440
Driving Posture
Does your car seat offer you any support? If not, what steps are you taking to maintain a healthy resting position while commuting? These may sound like tough questions when you commute for only thirty minutes a day, but the minutes add up, especially for your spine. Car seats are rarely engineered to encourage a neutral resting position, so the onus is often upon us to ensure that our backs remain upright rather than slouched in our seats.
Here are some postural tips:
1. Avoid leaning to one side: this is more common than you might think. Drivers often find themselves leaning on the center console which introduces a slight but significant imbalance to the back. Over hours and hours, this imbalance can compound to cause pain.
2. Hips straight, face straight. Keep your chin level and your head balanced over your spine to prevent the weight of the head from causing excess pressure to the cervical vertebrae.
3. As time creeps on, don’t let your shoulders tense. This is something that happens no matter what the activity. Be cognizant of muscles in the neck and shoulders tightening, because this is symptomatic of the entire back. If you need to, pull over and stretch. It may sound silly, but it can save you from being stiff at the end of the drive.
4. Hands at 9 and 3
If you commute to make your living, driving posture should be high on your list of health priorities. At Holmes Chiropractic, we help people see the problem areas in their lifestyle and how it is contributing to their back pain. For an assessment that takes into account your particular back pain and how it relates to your lifestyle, call our office at (713) 862-2440.
Dr. Randall Holmes, D.C.