Archive for the ‘Health And Fitness’ category

Soft Tissue Injuries Explained

March 12th, 2011
Rob Tendick asked:




Soft tissue injury; we all have probably heard this term used before by a doctor or an athlete or a coach, but what exactly is an injury to the soft tissue? Well, the term soft tissue is referring the tendons, ligaments, and of course muscles throughout your body. The injury part is usually due to chronic stress placed on a joint, or overuse, but can also be due to a single blow.

Whether your soft tissue injury is the result of overuse or a one-time blow that caused the injury, the result is still the same; pain, swelling, redness, and instability are the most common symptoms. A doctor will assess your injury and grade it based on the severity of the injury. From there, the rehabilitation protocol is fairly standard. Let’s take a look at some of the most common soft tissue injuries and ways to prevent such damage.

If you don’t think soft tissue injuries are common, ask yourself how often you hear your friends or family talk about issues such as: tennis elbow, an ankle sprain, strained back muscles, or even a contusion. Yes it’s true, everyday people suffer from soft tissue injuries just like athletes do. There are all kinds of injuries that fall under the category of soft tissue.

These common injuries are classified into a few different types, each having unique characteristics. The sprain or strain is likely the most recognized soft tissue injury. The term sprain refers to a stretched or even torn ligament. Many people use the terms sprain and strain interchangeably, but the truth is they are not the exact same injury. A strain is similar to a sprain in that it is a stretching and tearing of soft tissue, but a strain specifically refers to tendons and muscles instead of ligaments.

You may have heard of an overuse injury before, and by putting repeated stress on a muscle, tendon, or even ligament will cause injury over time. Repetitive stress causes micro-tears to the tissue and over a period of time will sum up to a greater tear. This usually results in swelling and pain, and if not treated immediately, can result in a large tear or even stress fracture. A stress fracture to a bone is a great example of an overuse injury.

The last three types of soft tissue injuries that are commonly diagnosed are contusions, tendonitis, and bursitis. A contusion is quite simply a fancy word for a bruise. This injury is often the result of a single blow to soft tissue. The area will become discolored due to broken blood vessels, and will usually be tender to the touch and could even limit range of motion. Tendonitis is more of an overuse injury. A common form of tendonitis is tennis elbow, which is inflammation of tendons in the elbow due to overuse on the tennis court. You may have heard the term bursitis before, and it is simply an inflamed bursa, or sac, that helps relieve friction in your joints.

Now that we know exactly what a soft tissue injury is, how can they be prevented? Well, there are a number of ways to reduce the risk of injury, but sometimes in sports an injury is inevitable. The most important thing you can do is to warm up and cool down before and after workouts, respectively, and make sure your routine includes lots of stretching. In fact, stretching regularly will help keep your muscles and joints limber and less prone to injury. Another very important thing to do is to always use proper form. Bad form undoubtedly places extra stress on our body, which can lead to injury. Lastly, fatigue can also cause injury and at the very least increases our risk.

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Headaches – Time to See a Chiropractor?

January 13th, 2011
Philip V. Cordova D.C. asked:




Headaches are one of the most common ailments that chiropractors encounter in their practices. Fortunately, they are also one that chiropractors have been able to treat with a great deal of success. Depending on the type of headache a patient would be suffering from, the chiropractor would evaluate the patient, through their own individual techniques, to endeavor to find the root of the problem to determine the best treatment for their patient. Some of the different types of headaches are:

Tension headaches: One of the most common and recurring types of headaches.

Migraine headaches: 25-30 million people suffer from migraines… these headaches can be extremely pain-staking!

Cluster headaches: One of the most uncommon, suffered by a select few.

Unlike medical physicians, chiropractors use a holistic approach for their patients rather than the use of prescription medications, which cause an array of side-effects. Prescription medications are usually aimed at covering the symptoms rather than resolving the problem. Medical physicians also tend to offer surgeries as an option, which are often not the best avenue for a patient to take. Chiropractors go straight to the root of the problem.

Chiropractors offer treatments such as spinal manipulation, which has been proven to give their patients much improvement with tension headaches that stem from the neck. Many CEH (Cervicogenic headache) and tension headache sufferers have had remarkable success with chiropractic treatments, interestingly more so after a series of treatments than during the treatment process.

One other point to make is with our nutrition. For many ailments, nutrition can play a vital role in our healing, even with headaches. The main-stream medical professionals who downplay our nutritional needs have a great deal to learn when it comes to the assets of nutritional supplementation. Most chiropractors use supplementation to further the treatment of their patients for a long-lasting and enduring treatment that has had wonderful results for headache sufferers and the many other ailments that they treat.

All in all, if you suffer from headaches, finding the right chiropractor could be the best thing you’ve done. You will have some amazing results and you will wish you had made the appointment long ago.

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Migraines and Chocolate

January 12th, 2011
Joy Healey asked:




Chocolate is considered a common migraine trigger; the connection between this guilty pleasure and the excruciating pain of migraine headaches was investigated during a large study, the results of which were published in the Lancet(1).

Chocolate is one of the few foods which has been investigated in double blind controlled studies, to determine how much of a trigger it really is – unlike many other food products, which have merely been included as part of larger studies using a wide range of possibilities.

These double blind, focused studies, apparently left ambiguity on the subject. A 1974 study undertaken at the London Hospital apparently concluded that whilst chocolate may be a trigger, it wasn’t a significant one(2). This was a full five years prior to the Lancet study, which ranked chocolate near the top of the list along with other triggers, considered predominantly to cause migraines.

Another study done in 1997 also used a double blind protocol and placebo to try and pinpoint chocolate as an aggressive migraine trigger – again with inconclusive results. The study, carried out at the University of Pittsburgh, Pain Evaluation and Treatment Institute, concluded there was no difference between patients given chocolate and others given the carob placebo in either occurrence or severity of migraines(3).

Of course, one must take into account the overwhelming amount of anecdotal and testimonial evidence from hundreds of thousands of migraine sufferers who report chocolate as a trigger. Many of these claim that removing it from their diet caused instant cessation – whereas accidental or careless reintroduction caused just as immediate recurrence of symptoms.

There does exist an unpublished study, on which correspondence exists, involving a trial with 20 patients who, believing chocolate to be a migraine trigger, were subsequently challenged with either chocolate or a placebo. The 8 receiving the placebo had no incidence of migraine – five out of the 12 who received chocolate did have a typical migraine attack. The small number of people in the test group meant that the subsequent results were not completely conclusive.

As is so often the case with food intolerances, what one person can eat without an ill-effects, can create an unpleasant or even harmful reaction in another. Consider the simple peanut – a killer for some, a harmless snack for another.

Obviously scientific studies are interesting and essential, but however much we crave it, chocolate is something we can live without. The most effective method to discover if it’s a trigger food for the individual, is to cut it out from their diet for a few weeks. If your migraines are bad enough, it’s a simple sacrifice to make.

(1) Grant ECG; Food, Allergies and Migraine; Lancet, May 5 1979;966-969

(2) A. M. Moffett, M. Swash, and D. F. Scott – Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1974 April

(3) Marcus DA, Scharff L, Turk D, Gourley LM – Cephalalgia 1997 Dec; 17(8):855-62

(4) CM Gibb, V Glover, M Sandler, Bernhard Baron Memorial Research Laboratories

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