San Diego Chiropractic Blog

Have you ever slept on your arm and had it fall asleep? Imagine if it just felt like that all the time.

A few months ago I had a young lady come to my San Diego Chiropractic office with these complaints. In addition to numbness and tingling, she had neck pain, shoulder pain, arm pain, wrist pain and hand pain. She also complained of weakness in her left hand, which was resulting in clumsiness and was affecting her work as an executive secretary.

These complaints are seen with regular frequency in my office. The process is a familiar one and common with many musculoskeletal conditions that involve the nervous system.

Usually, postural stresses such as leaning over a desk or computer will eventually irritate a specific joint in the spine. The irritation of the joint causes inflammation of the muscles and ligaments that surround that joint. This inflammation will cause compression of the local nerves resulting in pain and muscle spasm. If the nerve compression persists, numbness, tingling and weakness of the related muscles will follow.

This patient was displaying signs and symptoms of long-term nerve root compression that involved her left arm and hand.

We treated her with chiropractic manipulations that were delivered with the specific goal of eliminating the nerve root compression. She was also treated with ice packs, hot packs, electrical muscle stimulation and ultrasound in order to address the soft tissue inflammation. In addition to in office care she was given a set of stretches and exercises for at home therapy and advised to use ice packs daily for twenty minutes per session.

It took approximately eight weeks of active care, which is three treatment visits per week, to relieve 90% of her pain and 90% of her left arm weakness. The rest of her symptoms will resolve with at home therapy and chiropractic care delivered on an as needed basis for flair-ups that will occur in the future.

This is just one example of the many different types of cases that resolve with chiropractic care in my office.

Your’s In Good Health

Dr. Jones

San Diego Chiropractic Care
Chiropractor San Diego Blog

I believe we all want to be healthy. The question is, however, what is health? And, how do we “get” healthy?

In my San Diego chiropractic office, I always try to encourage health beyond the obvious treatment for neck pain, back pain and headaches that represent the bulk of my patients concerns. Most of my patients at least entertain the idea of making lifestyle changes for the sake of better health. Some want nothing to do with it. In their mindset, being out of pain is good enough for them.

I always explain to my patients that in the absence of some catastrophic injury, most cases of neck pain and back pain begin as a slight irritation that we are totally unaware of. With time and additional stresses, these slight irritations can become magnified to the point where they become symptomatic.

Our diets act the same way. A few poor meal choices won’t destroy your health by themselves, but frequent poor meal choices over longer periods of time can have a significant negative impact on your health. You only have to look at a McDonalds or Burger King drive-through to see the long lines of people making poor food choices. These people who make frequent poor food choices (fast foods in this example) probably won’t suffer anything more than a little indigestion as a result of each meal. However, the accumulation of the effects of all of these poor food choices will do damage down the road.

Unfortunately, this all becomes more apparent as we age. We pay for our poor eating habits as we age for a couple of reasons. First of all, poor eating choices become habitual. Like any bad habit, changing poor eating habits is difficult. Secondly, with normal aging, our metabolism slows making our poor eating habits more detrimental than they were when we were younger and more active.

Regaining your health takes work on several fronts. Some of these things you can accomplish yourself and other things you need help with.

Patients that come to my San Diego chiropractic office for treatment for their neck pain or back pain often find this task one of the easy parts of getting healthy. In order to get help with pain, all the patients have to do is come to the office for their treatment.

Part of restoring health is complicated with the bad habits that result in unhealthy diets, smoking, drinking and the like. Overcoming bad habits takes an exceptionally motivated person. Focus and you can overcome them and have a healthier body to show for it.

Your’s In Good Health

Dr. Jones

Your

Chiropractor in San Diego