Hastings Chiropractic is excited to announce that we now offer an unprecedented new therapy that is revolutionizing modern healthcare. SoftWave shockwave therapy, also called “TRT,” uses harmless supersonic sound waves to effectively treat hundreds of health conditions many of which have been untreatable by any other method.
TRT is a very effective FDA approved shockwave therapy that uses harmless supersonic sound waves to stimulate a scientifically proven cellular healing response in injured tissues. ESWT or (Extracorporeal ShockWaveTherapy) produces sound waves with a very specific waveform initiating a strong cellular healing response. The sudden change in pressure caused by the shockwaves triggers the cells to respond as it would to trauma, although, there is no trauma created by the sound waves. This increases your healing time by up to 20x. The sound waves are pulsed into the body, directly where your the healing is required, using a hand-held device. This results in the opening of existing blood vessels and the growth of new ones as well. Up to a 300% increase! SoftWave additionally stimulates cellular tissue repair resulting in improved function. Numerous studies show the release of growth factors, anti-inflammatory agents, and an improved blood supply in response to SoftWave. This new technology has proven to be groundbreaking in sports medicine, pain management, wound care, and even many urological conditions! This technology is the absolute perfect adjunct to Chiropractic and any other type of physical medicine. If you think you have a condition that might benefit from TRT please contact Dr. Hastings to find out if you are a candidate for TRT today!
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The microbiome is considered, by many, to be the largest organ in the human body. In fact, it makes up 53% of you. This large body of living organisms that live in and on your body control most of your body's functions. Your microbiome lives in a symbiotic state with your genetic human cells fighting harmful organisms that cause disease. Your body has roughly 20 trillion human cells. Your microbiome has 200 trillion cells. Interestingly, all humans share 99.9% of the exact same human cells where conversely no human has more that 10% in common with someone else's microbiome.
Science is now linking every disease known to the deficiency and breakdown in this vast body of living organisms. The leading researchers are saying that in the relatively near future medicine will be obsolete. There are no diseases caused by a lack of medication so, it makes sense that we will treat the cause rather than the symptom at some point. Because of this, a huge body of research and effort has brought our awareness to the value and use of probiotics. Probiotics are dietary supplements that contain many of these organisms. Different probiotics supply different groupings of these beneficial organisms that support different parts of your microbiome. Probiotics have been used for centuries in foods like sauerkraut, kimchee, live culture yogurt, etc. Your microbiome can become injured when you are exposed to many everyday things such as chlorinated water, food containing antibiotics such as commercially raised dairy products, meat, and eggs. The most damaging though are antibiotics. We agree that if you have an infection you may have to use these medications. However, if enough insult happens to your microbiome you can develop diseases that may lead to premature death. Another source of damage to your microbiome is processed food. Many food items in commercial grocery stores are processed foods primarily composed of hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup. Highly processed food ingredients are often detrimental to micro cellular biology and are linked to chronic inflammation, as well as numerous serious diseases such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pain. Many people don’t realize that many of these organisms are transitory, coming into the body, serving a purpose then leaving. Moreover, many people are taking probiotics and not understanding that they themselves need special foods to thrive and protect you. Probiotics need prebiotics to survive and flourish. Prebiotic are foods like ginger, curry, rosemary, garlic, cherries, onions, and basil. Any symptoms of inflammation, indigestion, heart burn, fatigue, stress, memory problems, mood problems, cramping, diarrhea, weight problems, and lack of energy are all very strong indicators that your microbiome is unhealthy. Strengthening and supporting your microbiome should be a daily practice. Without a healthy microbiome your body falls rapidly into disease. Most medications that treat the symptoms you suffer further damage your microbiome. Imagine a life of no symptoms, perfect health, well balanced emotions, energetic lean body, wonderful sleep. Research is telling us that with a balanced healthy microbiome this is an attainable reality. This article is just a glimpse into the fascinating world living inside you. It’s purpose is to inspire you to learn about your microbiome and how to take care of it. If you take care of your microbiome it will take care of you. If you haven’t read the article on inflammation I encourage you to read that as well. Inflammation and the microbiome are integrally related. If you have problems with your microbiome, you will certainly have signs of inflammation. Over one hundred million Americans suffer from chronic pain. If you're reading this article, chances are you're suffering from some level of chronic inflammation. It’s serious business, a condition which is both debilitating and depressing--literally. Take heart--you’re not alone and don't have to continue suffering--it's something that you can address by making better lifestyle choices.
It’s not realistic to expect to resolve chronic inflammation overnight, but what I share in this article can not just be life saving but life invigorating as well. It’s a fact. We now know that inflammation is typically the most common variable in the presentation of degenerative and chronic disease. What’s more, a convincing body of current scientific research has linked chronic inflammation to a host of painful diseases. The problems associated with inflammation are so widespread they’re changing the way medical professionals look at the diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Although many factors contribute to stress, a common denominator is inflammation. When inflammation becomes chronic, the immune system starts attacking normal cells, and so the process that ordinarily heals becomes destructive. This destructive physiological response by the immune system to prolonged inflammatory stress causes pathological cellular changes in human tissues that are linked to a variety of diseases. Here’s a short list of the diseases that we now know are now associated with chronic inflammation:
As we age our risk of chronic inflammation increases, especially when combined with obesity, high sugar intake or high intake of saturated fats. Common signs of chronic inflammation are ongoing pain in the body and joints, allergies or asthma, high blood pressure, increased body weight, unhealthy blood sugar levels, chronic constipation or diarrhea, persistent fatigue or lethargy and skin problems--all these symptoms indicate underlying disease. So where do you start? How can you eliminate chronic inflammation? First recognize that there’s no magic bullet. Because the presentation of symptoms is unique to every individual, you and your health practitioner need to assess your physical, psychological, and social make up, considering factors such as lifestyle, habits, body composition, diet, and genetics. For many, it will mean a concentrated effort in several areas. If in doubt, there now are blood tests that can confirm a chronic inflammation diagnosis. Diet is a good place to start because it’s a common link in most issues connected with chronic inflammation. It may take you months, even years to resolve ongoing stress problems but you can make better food choices daily starting right now--it’s one area you can easily improve. The foods we choose to eat--or not to eat--can significantly influence inflammatory responses that have become chronic.
Develop the habit of reading labels when shopping for food. Many food items in commercial grocery stores are processed foods primarily composed of hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup. Highly processed food ingredients are often detrimental to cellular biology and are linked to chronic inflammation, as well as numerous serious diseases such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pain. Medications can be part of the problem too. Do you regularly use medications like ibuprofen, aspirin, or prescription anti-inflammatory meds? Treating chronic symptoms with over the counter medications can have more negative side effects than benefits because you’re treating symptoms without understanding the root causes of your health issues. If you regularly use these medications to treat the pain associated with inflammatory disease, it’s time to look for a better solution. But when all’s said and done, dietary adjustments may not be enough. If you’re over worked, over-weight or you’ve got a drinking or drug problem, you’ll need to address these issues as well. So here’s the bottom line: if you really want to feel better and reduce the chronic inflammation that underlies many if not most of your health concerns:
Be well! Note: the information presented in this article is the product of my own years of research, and hundreds of interviews with fellow health-care practitioners and patients. I have spent the better part of twenty-five years studying the science of human movement, starting in high school, when I studied and practiced wrestling, cross-country, surfing, skateboarding, football, and track and field, with a specific focus on pole vaulting. After high school, I began formal training in the martial arts and gymnastics. During this time I struggled through the arduous task of learning to integrate the art of relaxation with strenuous physical activity. All true athletes must be relaxed when they perform movement in order to master that movement. After many years, I was finally flexible enough and had cross-trained enough to learn how to relax at high levels of output, regardless of the task. With time, I began to appreciate individual movements rather than specific activities, which was a breakthrough in my understanding of athletics. It’s the mastery of pure, completely-relaxed body movements that give one the ability to correctly apply oneself to any physical task.
Happiness Along this journey, I began to notice people were always describing their activities as a primary source of their pleasure. After many hours pondering this, I began to realize that it wasn't necessarily the specific activity itself that brought pleasure, rather it was movement. We are after all, kinetic beings, designed to move. The more we move, the less time we have to focus on things that distract us from our purpose. Mind, body and soul People pay a lot of lip service to the concept of “mind, body, and soul”. There is an ancient Eastern philosophy whose basic premise is that if we put equal amounts of energy into each of these three aspects, we’ll become enlightened, happy beings. As a Chiropractor, I listen to a lot of people, and I find that people frequently focus on their problems. Usually the people with the most problems are those that are the most sedentary. In fact, I have realized that I know absolutely no happy people that are sedentary. This enforces the notion that human movement is integral to to the maturation of one’s sense of well-being. All One Thing Having been a trainer for over twenty years, I’ve begun to see a common correlation in all physical training: that one is always looking to perfect the human body in motion while being as relaxed as possible. I have begun telling patients, and people that I train, that all “training” is the same thing. I’ve found this concept mentally freeing, because it allows anyone to train for a multitude of activities without feeling like there isn’t time enough for all of them. When you train for one movement, say running, in effect you are also training for other movements, like martial arts, biking, or surfing, because, in all of them, you are working on the fundamental principal of correct human movement. Now, I look at my entire life as training for movement, including the practice of Chiropractic. Spirituality and movement in nature One night I was in church listening to our pastor speaking to a common problem with our culture: that people put forth most of their time and energy toward the acquisition of material things. Reverend Renee said, “God gave us everything we need to be happy; we can’t improve upon this”. He explained that the natural beauty seen in forests, trees, or the ocean, is what brings us a true sense of pleasure and well-being. The greater point can be made that, when we move our bodies in a natural environment, we come the closest to our genetic purpose. Phylogenetically speaking, we are hunter-gatherers; for tens of thousands of years, we covered significant distances walking, running and climbing to gather food and carry it back to our highly dependent young. So, today, when we move in nature, at some root level, we are accomplishing our genetic purpose, which brings us pleasure. Patients commonly ask how Chiropractic care works, and what makes the “cracking” sound during manipulation. The answers to both questions are complicated, because the mechanisms of musculoskeletal dysfunction and disease are themselves complicated; many factors must be considered in any particular case study. The science of spinal and joint manipulation can be explained in several steps, none too difficult to understand; but the benefits of manipulation must be seen in the broad context of these steps to truly understand how it works.
When a joint is properly manipulated, it is placed into the physiologically beneficial range of motion, at the taut limits of the ligaments that hold the joint in position. When this is done correctly, the joint is stressed into the direction that is most restores correct motion in that particular region. The doctor first applies an appropriate pre-stress to the joint. At this point, the patient naturally has apprehension (tenses up); when the doctor senses an ebb in this apprehension, he or she applies an instantaneous thrust into the joint plane to make the beneficial correction. The patient’s willingness to let go of their apprehension and allow the doctor to perform the technique is necessary for a speedy and successful recovery from the chief complaint. Therefore, joint manipulation is not something the doctor does to the patient; rather, it is something that the doctor and patient do together. At the instant of the corrective thrust, the joint undergoes a radical physiologic shift by creating a rapid lessening of pressure in the joint space, activating a protective mechanism in the joint, and creating the popping or cracking sound that is audible upon manipulation. Your joints have a viscous substance called synovial fluid which acts as a lubricant and a source of nourishment to the cartilage that lines the joint surfaces. When the joint is stressed correctly, this fluid accommodates the change in joint volume by instantly releasing dissolved gases, resulting in the sound waves that we hear. During the twenty minutes or so that it takes for the gas to dissolve back into synovial fluid, the dysfunctional joint is stretched into the correct position. This is one of the first mechanisms of manipulation that is beneficial to you; in fact, there is really no other way to deal with lost range of motion at a ligamentous level in the joint, since during conventional stretching programs, the larger overlying musculature will come to tension sooner. The next beneficial mechanism is the one that provides the immediate and noticeable relief following manipulation. Your body has a system of joint monitoring known as proprioception; it’s one of the ways your body knows where it is in space. If you close your eyes and touch your fingertip to your nose, you finger finds it way through proprioception. This system is comprised of what is known as mechano-receptors; they monitor movement and relay that information to your brain. These receptors are abundant in the musculo-tendionous regions of your body, such as where the muscles are attached to the bones. One of these receptors in known as the Golgi Tendon Organ; it monitors the rate of change of length of a muscle. If the Golgi Tendon Organ senses an excessively rapid change in length, it will trip a reflex in your spinal cord, to cause instantaneous relaxation in the muscle overlying that particular joint or region of your body. When your body has a musculoskeletal injury, muscle spasms occur around the area in an attempt to protect it. However, they can actually cause further injury to your joints, not to mention being a source of great suffering to you. If these spasms continue, they may even become self propagating; they are then known as focal dystonias. These focal dystonias will continue until outside measures are taken to bring them back under the normal control of your body. When manipulation is directed correctly to areas plagued by spasms, the relaxation mechanism of the Golgi Tendon Organ instantly breaks these focal dystonias, and patients will see a noticeable reduction in pain. The specific nature of the complaint and the factors causing the underlying problem dictate the treatment regime and the number of times the treatments must be performed; so, the doctor needs to find the causes of the problem and treat the cause as much as the symptoms. Chiropractic care generally helps people reduce pain in three ways. First is the severity of the pain; this is a measure of how much the pain hurts on a scale out of 1-10, with 10 being the worst pain you’ve ever experienced. The second is the frequency of the pain; this is how often you experience pain. This can be classified into seldom (25% of the time or less), intermittent, (25% – 50% of the time), frequent (50-75% of the time), and finally constant (75% – 100% of the time, including sleeping). Lastly there is the duration of the pain; this is how long the pain persists. If you are in active treatment for your complaint, Chiropractic care should reduce all these variables. Patients’ injuries can generally be classified as acute or chronic. Acute injury patients are otherwise pain-free individuals that have very recently incurred some form of pain related to the muculoskeletal system, and will rapidly return to normal with a minimum of correct Chiropractic treatments (usually one to five treatments). Their body has not had sufficient time to undergo permanent changes from ongoing neglected musculoskeletal stress. Chronic pain sufferers, by contrast, are disabled by degenerative conditions that have lead to long-term complaints that will not completely resolve. However, they can make acceptable improvement with correct care. Patients with degenerative arthritis are a prime example of this group. In these patients, changes in the joints’ internal structures do not allow for the proper functioning of the joint, and cause activation of stress responses forming frequent and continued muscle spasms. If left unattended, this cycle of muscle spasm will become more frequent to the point where pain is felt all the time. There are many systems of health care to deal with these patients, and often combinations of several health care systems are necessary to bring the patient to the highest level of functioning with the lowest level of pain. Chiropractic care uses joint manipulation in combination with exercise therapy to bring the joints to a more normal level of functionality, thus reducing the nature of suffering to an acceptable level. In these cases, it is necessary to perform several weeks to several months of proper care to retrain the muscles overlying the dysfunctional joints to return to normal service. The length of treatment depends on the seriousness of the individual pain complaint. The doctor monitors for appropriate improvement, and determines when the patient is reaching maximum medical improvement. Patients that are active participants in their treatment plans and comply with the specific recommendations by their doctor can anticipate subjective improvements of between 60% – 100% of their pain complaint. Once the initial treatment regime has delivered its maximum level of relief, the doctor notifies the patient that further improvement is not likely, and explains the need for attenuation of treatment and the need for supportive care. Supportive care is manipulation and therapy delivered intermittently to maintain the initial level of improvement, and will vary from patient to patient depending on the severity and the specific nature of the complaint. Its frequency is determined by the frequency at which the patients slip back to the symptomatic phase. |
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Hastings Chiropractic Center is ranked as a top Chiropractic in Aptos California Verified by Yocale.com An Aptos Chiropractic winner of the 2015 Patients' Choice Awards. Verified by Opencare.com |