As we move into warmer weather and start our spring cleaning projects whether inside the house or in our yards, we want to ensure that we minimize our risk of injuries.  Two of the main injury potentials we want to watch for are our overuse injuries and bending and twisting injuries.

When we come out of the winter months, where we have been a little more sedentary, we want to slowly increase our activities and should avoid an all day clean up and should start with just a few hours at a time.  After even a couple of weeks of reduced activity and movement we lose some of our strength and endurance so if we have several months of reduced activity, it becomes important not to think we can resume our activities at the same level.  My recommendation is to start with a couple of hours of activity followed by at least a 30-minute break to see how your body feels.  If you start to feel a lot of muscle stiffness, give your body more time to recover because you will not be able to recruit as many muscles to your task and you may increase your likelihood of injury.  This is your overuse injury where you have pushed your body too hard and strained your muscles.  

WE APPRECIATE all of our Patients! That's why we're hosting our annual special day in honor of our current patients! In addition to general appreciation, a portion of all proceeds will be donated to these two nonprofit organizations:

• Loma Vista Farms
• National Public Radio (NPR)

Slots will fill up fast - be sure to make your appointment soon!

Please call us if you want your $20 adjustment and/or $20 targeted massage (15 minutes) with one of our certified massage therapists. ​

​UPDATE: All slots are now full for Saturday but please stop by and let us say thanks for being a patient!!

Have you ever met a health nut? Are you a health nut? You know who i’m talking about. It’s the type of person who eats super healthy and exercises just for the sake of eating super clean and exercising. 

They aren’t doing it because of health problems. They aren’t overweight, they aren’t in pain. They aren’t training for an upcoming event. They just exercise and eat healthy because they want to be healthy and be at their best.

When it comes to the pains we feel with overuse or bad technique one of the best at home therapies is turning out to be heat as opposed to ice.  Now if heat makes it feel worse switch over to ice instead.  When heating the affected area, we recommend focusing the heat on the muscles more than the joints, typically heating for 20-30 minutes at a time.  The big rule to follow while heating is don’t burn yourself.  Other options instead of sitting with a heating pad can include topical heating products as well as the various patches that are on the market.  When using topicals avoid using the products shortly after taking a shower as the skin pores are open and the intensity of the creams can be amplified.  If needing to use ice instead of heat typically use the ice for 10-15 minutes or until the area numb.  You can often do this 3-4 times a day if needed.
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With the rise in popularity of Pickleball we are also seeing an increase in Pickleball related injuries.  The most common injuries we are seeing are ankle injuries and shoulder injuries.  With this we wanted to talk about ways to rehab after your Pickleball injury and we also want to address ways to try and prevent injuries (hint: often the exercises and stretches we do for rehab are good at helping to prevent injury as well).

In this post we will be focusing on the ankle injury of which the most common is the inversion ankle sprain.  This is the classic “I twisted/rolled my ankle”.  Most people will experience a certain amount of swelling with the injury, and we often find it feels better when we ice it and elevate it to try and reduce the swelling.  From a chiropractic standpoint we often find that there are some misalignments/fixations that take place and by adjusting these points we can often speed up the recovery time.  The main fixations we find are of the fibula (the small bone on the outside of the lower leg) as well as some of the ankle bones (calcaneus, talus, and navicular in particular).  On top of this there also can be injuries to the tendons (attach muscle to bone) and/or the ligaments (attach bone to bone).  The injuries that occur to the tendons and ligaments often do well with bracing/taping in the short term to help increase stability and reduce the likelihood of re-spraining the ankle while the injury is still fresh.