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...

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...

Let’s first look at the anatomy of the neck in order to better understand the structures of the cervical spine that can generate pain.  Starting at the back of the spine, the facet joints allow us to move our neck and head in all directions, and each facet joint is surrounded by a joint capsule that is rich with nerve endings and when swollen, can generate pain both locally and radiating.  One study of volunteers with existing neck pain looked at the various pathways that pain travels when investigators injected each individual facet joint capsule with normal saline solution. Interestingly, the subjects felt pain in parts of the body other than just the neck. For example, injecting the C6 facet joint capsule consistently reproduced radiating pain down the arm into the thumb side of the forearm and hand, similar to when a disk herniates and a nerve root is pinched. The primary difference was that a deep aching pain occurred in this area, as opposed to a more ...

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...

We all know what it’s like to have neck pain—whether it’s after a long drive, pinching the phone between the head and shoulder, star-gazing, or from talking to someone who is seated off to the side. There are many causes of neck pain, but the question of the month is, how do chiropractic adjustments help neck pain? Let’s take a look! Chiropractic, when broken down into its fundamental Greek derivatives, means “hand” (cheir) and “action” (praxis). The technique most often associated with chiropractic is spinal manipulation where a “high velocity, low amplitude” thrust  is applied to specific vertebrae in the spine, which does several things:  1) It restores mobility in an area with restricted movement;  2) It stimulates the sensory “neuroreceptors” in joint capsules, which has a muscle relaxing reflex effect;  3) It can affect surrounding neurological structures in certain parts of the spine such as the parasympathetic (cranial & sacral ...