Overtraining as a Syndrome

Listen to your body! In all aspects of life, your body’s internal monitor can be an ally or foe in your quest for health. It is always a good metric for athletic endeavor: getting in tune with your limits is important.

Your body will send sublte warning signals when you are approaching the brink of overtraining, and you should definitely know when you have overdone it. But overtraining is a syndrome: it goes against our nature to stop working out just because our body feels strained. After all, how are you supposed to build more muscle or endurance if you can’t keep going?

But at a certain point, more work stops equaling more reward. Injury and sickness accrue when you keep pushing past these warning signs.

Here are sure signs that you’ve overdone it in the gym:

  • Chronic fatigue
  • Depression
  • Underperformance
  • Aches and pains
  • Feeling drained after a usually productive workout
  • Personality and mood changes
  • Loss of concentration

Many of these symptoms can be traced back to nervous system imbalances, which may be aggravated by too much physical stress and not enough rest. So take a day or week, if need be, off weights. Switch to light cardiovascular exercise and give your body a chance to catch up. Rest and ingest healthful ingredients and plenty of hydration and before you know it you will be back in the gym performing at an even higher level.

At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we specialize in helping people get in tune with their bodies to maximize their health. Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.A.C. 

Overtraining

At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want to encourage athletes of all disciplines to train smarter if they are going to train harder. The science and study of strength training has evolved immensely as more and more money is pumped into professional sports, creating a windfall of information for those of us who are happy to play at our own level. We can help you identify exercises and habits that may be actually working against your attempts to build muscle and endurance.

At our office in Park Slope, we want athletes to be aware of the pitfall of overtraining: when muscles are not given enough time or nutrition to rebuild after vigorous exercise.

Overtraining is a great way to injure yourself and it is entirely avoidable. With the proper attention to hydration, nutrition and rest, you will enter the gym refreshed and inspired rather than tired and ragged. This will in turn, allow you to get the most out of your exercise. For many people, a simple conversation is all it takes to catalyze an entire program of health and efficient muscle building.

Rather than fearing injury, we want you to be confident that your biomechanics are in solid order when you perform your first deadlift, which is incidentally, when performed properly, quite a good exercise for lower back strengthening. We monitor, identify and correct muscular imbalances that could be setting you up for a muscle tear if you push yourself too hard.

Call our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Karen A. Thomas, D.C. L.Ac. 

Muscle Building

Make the most out of every muscle building movement by ensuring the health of your spine and nervous system.

Muscle building begins when motor neurons send a signal to a muscle telling it to contract. The easier your brain can activate the muscle contraction, the quicker you will build muscle. This means that ensuring the nerve pathways are clear of interference is a key to muscle building. Therefore, subluxations are extremely counterproductive for a person attempting to gain muscle. Chiropractic adjustment corrects these misalignments, ensuring that your brain can activate the muscles without interference.

Overtraining is also counterproductive: weight lifting for too many reps, or at too high a weight can cause joint sprain, muscle spasm and tissue damage. If you have pushed the envelope too far, we offer rehabilitation modalities that will speed blood flow to the injured area, helping it to heal quicker with oxygen and other nutrients.

Chiropractic care provides the assistance athletes need to excel. At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want you to get the most out of every lift while contributing to an overall body of health.

Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 today. Together, we can institute a combination of strengthening, stretching, eating and chiropractic to ensure your overall health.

Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.

Improving Athletic Performance

Athletes regularly demand their bodies perform above and beyond the standard call of duty. The difference between a split second on either side of your personal best can often be determined by the tiniest intangible: in this world of fine margins, chiropractic gives you the edge every time.

Simply regulating the nervous system is the most tangible benefit we have to offer: if spinal nerves are pressurized due to subluxation, the brain and body suffer communication breakdown, a condition which can affect all of your anatomical systems, including the ones most often used in athletic endeavor: the respiratory, cardiovascular and muscular systems. Here are some ways that we boost athletic performance from our office at Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture:

  • Increase lung capacity and breathe more efficiently. We offer advice on proper breathing techniques to make sure you are getting the most out of every breath. If subluxation is impinging on nerves that power the breathing muscles, we correct this situation to be sure you can breathe effectively. 
  • Enhance muscle tone by improving blood flow with trigger point therapy and massage. 
  • Build muscle more efficiently: when the body is misaligned, muscles contract and release over a shorter or longer meridian, meaning you may not be getting the most out of every lift or muscle building movement.

Another huge benefit of chiropractic is keeping the body flexible and resistant to injury. When you kick a ball, swing a club, or slam-dunk a basketball, muscles are strained; the level that they can be strained without incurring damage is an important factor in determining your success and enjoyment of sport.

Call our office in Brooklyn at(718) 398-3100.

Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C

Exercise for Well-Being

well being and fitness

At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want to get you moving. Movement benefits all aspects of your life, from physical and mental performance to happiness and peace of mind.

For the insatiable athlete, we seek to optimize your mechanical advantage. As you attempt to specialize your body and discipline your muscles, we provide you with chiropractic care that keeps you flexible and free of injury. Our treatment is effective at quickening recovery times and strengthening the body to prevent recurrent injury.

For the incurable couch potato, we begin gently with advice on posture and simple stretches that maintain the balance of your muscles and prevent them from stagnating. Stretches and breathing techniques can be practiced from the comfort of the couch, although we would love to see you trade the TV for a hike on the trail.

For those of us who are incidentally in the middle, we want to ensure your body’s prime state of health so that daily tasks are not burdensome. Exercise strengthens your body and influences your state of mind. Here are the core benefits of exercise:

  • Enhance balance and coordination
  • Improve breathing
  • Increase flexibility
  • Increase strength and endurance
  • Make you more resilient to injury during all phases of physical activity.

Through communication, chiropractic care and consistent application of healthy principles, we can effect positive changes in your life. Do not underestimate the power of a simple stretch or an evening walk: keep your body limber by calling our office in Brooklyn at (718) 398-3100 today.


Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac

Eating to Alleviate Allergies

Brooklyn is alight with airborne allergens. If your airways are inflamed, nose running and raw, you may be looking for any little trick to manage your allergies. Consider the simplest trick of all: nutrition. Augment acupuncture and chiropractic treatment of your allergies by eating the right ingredients to stay above the weather during this beautiful season. High quality, high-power ingredients provide your body with two key ways of fighting allergies: preventing and lowering inflammation, and regulating the immune system.

Here are some great ways to get started:

Vitamin C comes in at the top of the list, for its role in helping antibody production and antihistamine action. Be sure to eat plenty of citrus fruits, bell peppers and leafy greens. Maximize Vitamin C’s effect by consuming the minerals Sulfur and Selenium, by eating nuts, fish and seeds.

Eat fish. Omega-3 fatty acids, found in high concentrations, particularly in salmon and halibut, as well as nut oils, are strong, natural anti-inflammatories.

Consume Calcium and Magnesium, complementary alkaline minerals. Calcium reduces histamine production. When magnesium levels are low, allergies are high.

Cut down on sugar: even little doses can suppress your immune system, an effect that can last for up to 5 hours, leaving you at the mercy of high allergy season.

At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we want to be your first line of defense against allergies. Call our office at (718) 398-3100 to find out how our services and expertise can help you reduce symptoms and your dependence on allergy medication.

Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac. 

Acupuncture for Allergies

Spring has sprung a heap of symptoms upon you: sneezing, runny noses, itchy eyes and skin, and headaches abound: the changing colors, warming weather and pretty sounds will not fool the poor allergy sufferer. Spending money on antihistamines brings temporary relief, but the symptoms are always waiting around the next corner. Allergies are a cruel trick: a hypersensitive immune system’s good intentions (to keep your body clear of harmful substances) backfire, taking emergency action to flush out the allergens. This inflammatory response is what leaves you sniffling. Allergies are also fickle: what affects one person does not affect the other, and some people’s bodies are more susceptible to the high allergy season. What treatments you choose and how you allocate your money are the main ways you can impact your allergy suffering.

For allergy season defense in Brooklyn, look to our practice at Community Chiropractic and Acupuncture. We do not interfere with your standard treatments: if you are finding success with antihistamines, more power to you. We offer parallel services that rely on natural methods to compliment these treatments. With acupuncture, there is often a sharp response to treatment: many patients experience relief immediately, and often times people can reduce their dependence on allergy medications, whose long-lasting effects are yet to be determined.

Acupuncture addresses allergies by needling along meridians that, according to Traditional Chinese Medicine, can help ease the severity allergy symptoms. These meridians correspond with the functioning of the spleen, kidney and large intestine. TCM also diagnoses a deficiency in lung functioning when chronic allergies are present. We combine needling with nutritional advice: limiting your intake of dairy and sugar is particularly important. We use chiropractic adjustment to ensure that all systems of the body are working harmoniously.

I have years of expertise and success providing allergy relief through acupuncture. If your symptoms evade standard medications and allergy shots, do not despair! Call our office in Park Slope at  (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment and find out how we can temper your allergy symptoms, allowing you to enjoy the sweet smells of spring.

Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C. L.Ac.