Posts by Karen
Improving Athletic Performance by Maximizing Mobility
How mechanical back pain affects athletes in Park Slope
Mechanical back pain makes us less mobile. All of your joints are designed for movement- it is essential to their maintenance and their mobility is all the more important for athletes. The most common mechanical back pain that affects athletes is caused by joint dysfunction; spinal joitns that move out of alignment and becmoe restricted in their range of motion. This could make moving the region sore, and contribute to other impairments:
- Lost range of motion
- Reduced strength, endurance and speed
- Back pain, whether local or radiating
And the problems can compound to leave you with more serious spinal conditions including herniated discs, degenerative disc disease and sciatica. Don’t let range of motion Hold you back from achieving maximum performance- read on to find out our plan for helping athletes overcome mechanical back pain in Park Slope.
Helping athletes overcome mechanical back pain in our community
Overcoming mechanical back pain starts with a proper diagnosis. At our office in Park Slope, we provide every athlete with a full physical examination that pinpoints the source of the pain and dysfunction. From here, we create a dynamic plan that seeks to reduce pain and maximize mobility. A properly-aligned spine imparts the following benefits on athletes:
- Body balance: even development of the musculature in the spine.
- Muscular coordination
- Improved endurance and strength
- Better circulation
- Less back pain
Using natural modalities such as chiropractic adjustment, we restore alignment to the spine and restore mobility to joints which are restricted. Deep tissue therapy, acupuncture and heat are all used to facilitate healing and improve ciruclation in the restricted region. Our goal is to get you back to full health and maximum mobility as fast as possible. If you are interested in starting this process, give our office in Brooklyn a call to schedule an appointment today.
Chiropractic and Acupuncture for Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is down to the brain
When you have been experiencing pain for more than 6 months without cessation, you know that your condition is deeper than the acute effects of an injury. Most doctors agree that chronic pain has a neuropathic element; much of the pain is perceived through a misfiring nervous system. When nerves in the spine are impeded or otherwise not functioning correctly, they begin to act abnormally. This neuropathic element is at the heart of chronic pain, contributing to conditions such as:
- Muscle spasms
- Headaches
- Repetitive use injuries
- Neck pain
Chronic pain is a distress signal: chiropractic and acupuncture respond
Chronic pain is your body telling you that something is wrong and it’s time to act. And while medication and surgery have their places in the treatment spectrum, they often fall short because they fail to address the root cause of your chronic pain. Acupuncture and chiropractic take a different approach: both modalities release endorphins, your body’s natural painkillers, during treatment.
- Chiropractic focuses on reducing tension within the body. By restoring your spine’s alignment, we restore balance to overworked and underworked muscles, thereby reducing muscle tension and contraction. Chiropractic adjustment further alleviates impingement from spinal nerves, decreasing the sensitivity of your nerves
- Acupuncture is another great modality for releasing tension and restoring balance to the body. Indeed, many acupoints align with key motor points in the body, meaning that a well-inserted needle can have an immediate stimulatory and pain-relieving effect.
A holistic plan for treating chronic pain in Park Slope
At Community Chiropractic and Acupuncture of Park Slope, our job is to stimulate your body’s natural ability to heal. Let us provide you with the modalities that matter to kick start your body’s healing process. If you are interested in finding out more about how we treat chronic pain, give our office in Brooklyn a call to schedule an appointment today.
Returning You to your Best: Rehabilitating Sports Injuries in Park Slope
Chiropractic and acupuncture for sports injuries in Park Slope
These two therapies offer a holistic approach to healing that seeks to facilitate the body’s natural healing capacities. Given the appropriate mix of rest and rehabilitation, we can return sports injuries to a state of stability, allowing you to focus on reintroducing execise into your life. Our modalities have been proven to treat the following sports injuries:
- Back pain
- Joint dysfunction
- Sciatica
- Neck pain
- Tennis elbow
- Groin and thigh sprains
Moving forward from sports injuries in Park Slope
From here, we work alongside you to ensure your spine is properly aligned as we reestablish a full range of motion to the site of injury. By maintaining spinal alignment going forward, we improve performance and function both in the body and brain. This is a crucial factor in preventing reinjury. If you are interested in implementing a more dynamic approach to rehabilitating your sports injury, give our office in Park Slope a call to schedule an appointment today.
Acupuncture for the Modern Athlete: How Blood Flow Affects Performance
Improving blood flow to improve your athletic performance
During workout
Better blood flow, in which sufficient oxygen reaches your muscles, allows you to effect a longer and more beneficial workout. As you move, your heart rate rises and your heart pumps blood to all the parts of your body which are necessary to keep you moving at this higher level. Your metabolic rate then increases, meaning that your body needs more energy to keep going without feeling fatigued; it acquires this energy by producing ATP, an energy molecule whose two main inputs are glucose and oxygen. A healthy circulatory system ensures that oxygen is getting where it needs to be in your body during workout.
Post workout
In the period immediately following your workout, you should be intaking protein and nutrients that will help your muscles rebuild from the micro-traumas that they incur during exercise. Better blood flow means that these nutrients will reach your muscles in the right quantities to facilitate effective regrowth.
Athletes should make good blood flow a priority
At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture in Park Slope, we use acupuncture to help improve blood flow in athletes, helping them get the most out of their activities. Acupuncture stimulates circulation by dilating blood vessels and decreasing muscular stress. If you are interested in using acupuncture to effect improvements in your athletic performance, give our office in Brooklyn a call to schedule an appointment today.
Acupuncture for Depression and Anxiety
Alternatives to prescription medication for depression and anxiety
Studies are showing that regular acupuncture treatments are effective for treating depression and anxiety; as a further consideration, acupuncture is considered safe and does not have a long list of side effects. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine, acupuncture works by correcting blockages in the body’s energy pathways. Along the way it releases natural painkilling chemicals in the brain and rebalances the central nervous system. Studies have shown that acupuncture is comparable with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for treating depression and anxiety. Acupuncture is further effective as part of a plan for reducing dependency on prescription drugs such as benzodiazepines. As part of a holistic healthcare method that combines CBT, control over diet, and therapeutic exercise, acupuncture can contribute to the calming, sedative effect that people come to crave with your medication.
Treating depression and anxiety with acupuncture
Your body has a unique balance and acupuncture focuses on identifying the malefactors that are disrupting this equilibirum. At Community Chiropractic & Acupuncture, we are interested in providing our patients with the most up-to-date natural treatments for stress, anxiety and depression. If you are interested in managing your depression or anxiety with non-prescription methods, give our office in Park Slope a call to start the conversation today.
Acupuncture for the Modern Athlete: Using Acupuncture to Boost Immunity
Acupuncture’s effect on immunity
Acupuncture boosts the body’s immune response by increasing circulation and fighting off inflammation. From the Traditiona Chinese Medicine perspective, acupuncture regulates the body’s energy pathways. In Western Medicine, this effect is experienced as improving blood flow throughout the body. Furthermore, acupuncture has powerful anti-inflammatory capacities. Because inflammation is now thought to be the base of so many diseases, the anti-inflammatory effect of acupuncture is seen as an effective aid for the body’s immune response in battling off illness when energy reserves are low.
What slow’s an athlete down more than illness?
During any interval of training, acupuncture is recognized as an effective aid for improving immunity and resistance to illness. Receiving treatments in the hours following intense exercise increases circulation, oxygen and nutrient flow and allows your body to rest and recuperate effectively for the training ahead. If you are interested in using acupuncture to improve athletic performance, give our office in Park Slope a call to schedule an appointment today.
Acupuncture for the Modern Athlete: Dry Needling for Trigger Point Pain
Using acupuncture needles to deactivate trigger points
Once a trigger point is located, we use thin needles to release them. This has been found to be one of the most effective ways of treating trigger point related pain and dysfunction. By deactivating the trigger point, we restore normal function to the muscle and reduce referred pain in other parts of the body. Athletes benefit from dry needle trigger point therapy in the following ways:
- Pain relief
- Restoring normal muscle function
- Improving circulation
- Improving range of motion
If you are interested in using acupuncture for trigger point pain, give our office in Park Slope a call to schedule an appointment today.
Acupuncture for the Modern Athlete: Motor Point Needling
How motor point needling works
Acupuncture points, found along the body’s energy meridians, often coincide with crucial points in the musculoskeletal network known as motor points. Motor points are the specific locations at which nerves enter the muscle. Gently inserting an acupuncture needle essentially resets a contracted muscle at the point of its nerve attachment, allowing for relaxation of the muscle, improved joint function and less pain. This is a perfect example of how an ancient form of medicine is brought forward into the 21st century to great effect.
Acupuncture for improving athletic performance
Motor point needling is just one of the ways we are helping athletes treat their bodies using effective, holistic modalities. If you are interested in using acupuncture to improve your athletic performance in a natural manner, give our office in Brooklyn a call to schedule an appointment today.
How to Go About: Looking Confident and Feeling Your Best
How we can make this position the new norm
It begins with awareness- now that you know what it feels like to have your postural muscles engaged and holding you upright, we want to work to make this your new normal. At our office in Park Slope, we work with you to help you establish good postural health. This means:
- Providing spinal adjustment to realign the spine, improving range of motion and reducing pain.
- Focusing on stretching and elongating overly-tight postural muscles which are suffering from overuse in poor posture.
- Focus on strengething under-used phasic muscles to lend support and stability to the core.
If you are interested in changing your postural health for the better, give our office in Brooklyn a call to schedule an appointment today.
An Argument Against Painkillers in the Gym Bag
Painkillers hamper athletic performance
They do so in the following ways:
- Interfering with hypertrophy
- Preventing protein synthesis
- Inhibit nutrient absorption
NSAIDs do have a role in injury recovery because they can help mitigate the pain and inflammation that prevents effective recovery from acute injuries. However, if you are using NSAIDs simply to treat aches and pains post-workout, painkillers actually prevent the efficient recovery of muscle and connective tissue. Instead, many health professionals and sports-health specialists advise a more dynamic approach to recovery: the tested and true methods of rest, good diet and therapeutic stretching and exercise. You can go one step further by using chiropractic to augment your body’s natural healing response.
Chiropractic is a smart response for injury rehabiliation
We focus on aligning the spine, mobilizing joints and preventing scar tissue adhesion in order to maintain optimal range of motion. If you are interested in using our services to promote healthy recovery from injury or simply prevent injury in the first place, give our office a call to schedule an appointment today.