Posts Tagged ‘health’
Exercise and Chiropractic
Perhaps in response to what has been deemed an obesity epidemic, America has become serious about getting fit. There is more information and misinformation than ever in regards to what makes you fitter or happier.
At Park Slope Chiropractic, we use exercise to help patients manage back pain and boost their well-being. Cardiovascular and strength building exercises synergize with chiropractic care to relieve pain, repair injury and make your body more resilient moving forward.
For patients suffering from low-back pain, we utilize flexion and extension stretches and exercises that help lengthen restrictive muscles and restore flexibility to stiff regions. Core muscles are very important to support the lower back: pelvic stabilizing muscles, adductors (tendons that connect thigh to pubic bone) and the abdominals are all muscles that we promote for strengthening. We also want you to be aware of your thoracic vertebrae (encompassing shoulders and chest) and their role in movement. Learning to use the thoracic region properly can relieve much of the burden of movement from the lumbar region.
Aerobic exercise is another great supplement to chiropractic care: leaving the couch behind and going for a brisk walk has innumerable benefits including keeping muscles toned and promoting circulation.
Call our office in Park Slope at (718) 398-3100 to schedule an appointment and find out how you can start using your body’s full mechanical advantage.
Dr. Karen Thomas, D.C., L.Ac.
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.
Exercise for Well-Being
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
Vitamins and how to find them
Support your spine through vitamin consciousness! We can show you how at Community Chiropractic and Acupuncture in Park Slope. I want you to know what vitamins do for you and what foods to look for in your search for health. An important part of vitamin intake is making sure that the food you purchase is of a high quality. Many processed, non-organic foods are stripped of the essential nutrients they would otherwise contain. With that being said, here is an alphabetical list of vitamins and how they contribute to back health, followed by what foods contain them.
| Vitamin | Food Source |
| A: Immune system support, tissue repair |
Dairy, orange fruits and green vegetables Look for: sweet potatoes and carrots, kale and apricots |
| B12: Bone marrow support |
Red meat, dairy, fish and eggs Look for: fortified cereals (bran products), fortified milk, shellfish and beef liver |
| C: Collagen production (helps repair herniated discs and repair tissue). Great for the healing and repair of a worn spine. |
Fruit and vegetable Look for: citrus, tomato, broccoli, green/red peppers |
| D: Calcium absorption. Keep bones strong and fight osteoporosis! |
Look for:Fish oil, sunlight, mushrooms, egg yolks, and fortified milk |
| K: Calcium complement | Look for: Leafy greens, cauliflower, cabbage. Eggs and meat, particularly fish also carry vitamin K in smaller amounts. |
Having a healthy complement of all these vitamins is essential to back care, whether you are seeking to repair a damaged spine or prevent injury. There are a world of other benefits to be reaped from having vitamins in the proper proportions. If you are looking for someone in Park Slope to talk to about adding vitamins into your diet, we can help. Contact us at (718) 398-3100 or come and see us at our office in Brooklyn today.
Karen A. Thomas D.C., L.Ac.