Prana Chiropractic's Wellness Corner

Why Spinal Problems Often Return Chiropractic skeptics often pooh-pooh the idea of periodic chiropractic checkups after symptoms subside with the classic, “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it” line. This justification often results in a relapse into the original problem for countless patients. How come? Because biomechanical changes along the spine affecting nerves and muscles don’t heal like a cut, infection or some other self-resolving health condition. Addressing Long Lasting Problems By the time spinal problems produce obvious symptoms, the problem has been there for some time—maybe even decades. Yet the symptom didn’t emerge until “last week, when I bent down to pick up the paper.” Thankfully, a chiropractic care plan may produce symptomatic improvement in a matter of months, sometimes weeks. The patient is delighted, but we haven’t completed the retraining of the underlying muscles and soft tissues necessary for lasting spinal changes. That’s w...

Anyone that exercises regularly is certainly familiar with the muscle and joint soreness that accompanies tough workouts, particularly a day or two afterwards.    So what’s going on here in the body that causes the onset of sore and stiff muscles?    The simplest answer is tissue inflammation.    By better understanding inflammation and learning ways to control the symptoms can lead to faster recovery times, fitness gains, and most importantly avoiding injuries.    To get started, let’s look at what inflammation actually is, in simple terms.    It is an immune system response to damage that’s occurred to the tissues.    Exercise causes damage to the tissues by causing microscopic tears to the muscle fibers.    As a result of this damage, inflammation occurs around the site of the tears….which is actually the body’s way of repairing the damage.    In turn, once the tears have healed the muscles become s...

High Fructose Corn Syrup is a widely used sweetener that is a cheap alternative to table sugar.    It was developed in the 1970’s and began being used in the food industry across the board in the practically everything from crackers to soda by the 1980's.    If you have watched television in the last couple of years, you may have noticed commercials claiming that there is no difference between High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) or what they call in the ads as “corn sugar” and cane sugar.    The reason for these advertisements stems from the surge of research and literature exposing many of dangers associated with the use of HFCS.    There is absolutely no truth to the advertisement's claims that the body does not know the difference between the two types of sugars.    While it is true that using any sugar in excess is detrimental to health (so in this way, I suppose there is one similarity) HFCS presents many unique dangers to consumer...