San Diego Chiropractic Blog

Have you ever noticed how tight your neck, upper back and shoulders are after a long day of sitting at the computer?

There are a number of factors that contribute to this tightness. Simply the stress of deadlines, an overbearing boss or an annoying co-worker can make your shoulders rise up and your head push forward. And this stress is the result of just the emotional stress of work. When you add the real physical strains of a poorly designed work station on top of the emotional stresses that already exist you have a perfect recipe for a repetitive stress injury.

A large part of designing an ergonomically friendly workstation revolves around limiting the “reach” for items that are frequently accessed.

The distance that you have to reach for any object in your workspace can have major implications on your health. In general, workers should have the items that they use on a regular basis through the day such as the mouse and keyboard for computer users or the telephone for a receptionist or a sales person, positioned close to their bodies so as to avoid awkward or overreaching.

As a general rule, the best positioning for your keyboard and mouse allows you to operate them while your shoulders hang straight down at your sides and elbows are slightly extended. This position reduces the stress of overreaching and allows for completion of your tasks with less muscular effort.

There are many ergonomic apparatus that allow for proper placement of your computer input devices. Pull out keyboard trays, split keyboards, mouse platforms and even foot controls help reduce the ongoing stresses of computer input.

Even with these devices, it takes awareness to maintain an ergonomically friendly work environment.

For a nice selection of high quality ergonomic office products you can visit www.comfortkeyboard.com.

Your’s In Good Health

Dr. Jones

www.JonesPainRelief.com

Have you been to a chiropractor lately? Have you ever been to a chiropractor?

Regardless of your answer to these questions, do you know what a chiropractor does?

I have been a practicing chiropractor in San Diego for the last 16 years. Helping people with neck pain, back pain, sciatica and headaches with chiropractic care is rewarding. As a profession, chiropractors only provide care to somewhere around 10% of our population. I have always wondered why this number is so low since patient satisfaction with chiropractic treatment is so much higher than it is with traditional medical care and that most independent research indicates that chiropractic care is more effective than western medicine for back pain.

Chiropractic care is an excellent , conservative treatment for many types of back injuries including those caused by auto accidents and various work injuries. That being the case, I have always thought that more people don’t seek out chiropractic care for their back and neck injuries because they don’t know what to expect with a chiropractic visit.

In this post, I am going to tell you exactly what procedures that our new patients go through at the time of their first visit.

Once a new patient comes to our office they are asked to fill out a brief informational health history that covers both past and current problems. After they are done with this form, I review the history to acquaint myself with current and past complaints that are relevant to the reason for the appointment.

With the history form reviewed, I take the patient to one of my exam / treatment rooms where I ask the patient to tell me more about their pain. During this time I also ask additional questions to help me get a good understanding of the patients’ concerns.

After I am satisfied with my understanding of the patients’ concerns and they have nothing else to add to the history, I perform an examination on the involved areas that includes range of motion tests, necessary orthopedic tests and neurological tests. Usually the information that I obtain from these tests is sufficient to allow me to make a decision regarding treatment.

If treatment is indicated, care usually involves therapy to relax the muscles followed by chiropractic adjustments to relieve the pain / dysfunction of the involved joints. Since many of our new patients have never been to a chiropractor before, I always ask the patients to help me keep all of our procedures within their “comfort zone”. I have always thought that this is very important since so many Americans are unfamiliar with manual type therapies.

The number of chiropractic visits varies person to person depending on the severity of the injury and each persons response to care.

Your’s In Good Health

Dr. Jones

www.JonesPainRelief.com