Cocoa Beach Chiropractic Orthopedist

During its 100-year history in America, chiropractic has gained steady acceptance for easing a wide array of physical ailments. The American Chiropractic Association describes chiropractic as a form of health care that focuses on musculoskeletal and nervous systems disorders and numerous studies support their assessment.  Chiropractic is common in sports medicine and many trainers will encourage it before, during, and after any physical performance. Let’s take a look at a few examples of how chiropractic has benefited the sports world. 1. Solid Body Maintenance in Professional Football It’s no secret that professional football is a beast of a game and injuries are frequent. Even if football players avoid serious injury, it’s a sure bet that stiffness and soreness are just par for the course. In a 2002 survey, thirty-one percent of football teams in the National Football League reported having a chiropractor on staff. Athletes reported using chiropractic care...

A wide variety of popular occupations for women can cause back problems. Below are the top 5 jobs that cause back pain in careers that tend to have more female workers… Nursing:  Nurses, orderlies, and attendants strain their lower backs as they bend over patients, transfer patients between beds, and assist with procedures. Modern paperwork requirements add a new element of upper back strain as nurses hunch over paperwork and computer keyboards. No wonder nurses have more back injuries than any other occupation! Maids / Housekeepers:  Maids and Housekeepers frequently spend hours bent over their work, picking things up, scrubbing things down, and carrying cleaning materials from room to room. Repetitive motion, reaching, bending, and twisting all add up to serious spinal strain potential. Restaurant workers:  Cooks, waitresses, hostesses, dishwashers, and bus staff all experience back pain. Standing on your feet all day, dealing with heavy loads of dish...

Our feet are the most abused parts of our bodies, absorbing forces generated simply by our body weight and gravity as well as more intense actions like sports and exercise.  In order to take care of your feet, you need to support them! Your feet are the foundation of your body. When your feet don’t get proper support from your footwear, simple activities like walking and running can cause stress and fatigue to your muscles and joints.  This results in pain and poor performance.  Other conditions such as low back pain, neck pain, hip pain and knee pain can all be a result of unsupported feet. To keep your feet and body balanced, custom orthotics may be recommended.  Although there are many over-the-counter options, they may not be the best option for your feet, as they are mass-produced and typically address only one of the arches in your feet.  There are actually three arches in each of our feet, and everyone’s feet are different.  This means one ortho...

Can receiving spinal adjustments make a person healthier? If so, how would you measure it? Treating patients with chronic, long-term disabling back pain is truly a challenge. A commonly utilized medical approach to treating these patients (after the initial less invasive course of treatment has failed) is the use of opioid pain relievers (OPR). Opioid pain relievers are commonly used when treating patients who experience long-term pain. This group of medications includes oxycodone, methadone, hydrocodone, and others. Guidelines published on the treatment of chronic low back pain are clear: ALL other less dangerous approaches should be used first (and for obvious reasons). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that in 2007, nearly 100 people died DAILY from drug overdoses in the United States, with most caused by prescription medications. This is three times more than the rate calculated in 1991! Also, there was a 98.4% increase in Emergency Room (ER...

Poor posture in children has become an epidemic.  While you may be familiar with the causes of poor posture – heavy backpacks and slouching over an iPhone or video game to name a few – the long term effects of poor posture can be devastating.  If gone unchecked and untreated, poor posture that starts in childhood can grow into a lifetime of aches and pains. Here are 3 reasons to check your child’s posture early: 1. Spinal Curvature  – as the body succumbs to improper posture, the natural “S” curve of the spine begins to change shape.  These veterbral misalignments are called  subluxations (1)  and can cause blood vessel constriction (which cuts off nutrient and oxygen supply to muscles) and nerve restrictions. 2. Neck & Back Strain  – a spine out of alignment puts extra  stress and strain (2)  on the muscles supporting it.  Over time, this leads to neck and back strain and – as the body begins to overcompensat...

One of the structures that is frequently blamed for hip pain is called the labrum—the rubbery tissue that surrounds the socket helping to stabilize the hip joint. This tissue often wears and tears with age, but it can also be torn as a result of a trauma or sports-related injury. The clinical significance of a labral tear of the hip is controversial, as these can be found in people who don’t have any pain at all. We know from studies of the intervertebral disks located in the lower back that disk herniation is often found in pain-free subjects—between 20-50% of the normal population. In other words, the presence of abnormalities on an MRI is often poorly associated with patient symptoms, and the presence of a labral tear of the hip appears to be quite similar.  For instance, in a study of 45 volunteers (average age 38, range: 15–66 years old; 60% males) with no history of hip pain, symptoms, injury, or prior surgery, MRIs reviewed by three board-certified radiologists ...

This article discusses how anger and emotional expression may affect your  back pain . For years, many medical doctors thought back pain was more of an issue in the brain than the spine. Research has shown this to be the case in many who are disabled from work. But mechanical sprain injuries of the spine are also critical to body function and how much pain you may experience. You just cannot separate the brain from the body and expect to tackle a difficult problem like low back pain. Researchers at Duke University looked at this complex problem by measuring the amount of emotional expression, anger, and back pain in a group of 61 persons with chronic low back pain. The results were quite interesting. Patients who reported greater conflict regarding expressing emotions may be experiencing higher pain and anger. Have you ever considered that how you express your emotions could affect how much the back hurts? Do you hold on to angry thoughts and feelings? Ignoring these iss...