Patient Stories

I had a headache every day for 2 years! I felt like I could not function. Medical doctors would not take me seriously. My neck has had problems for who-knows-how-long. It would just ache. I was very irritable.

I trudged through the day-to-day things I had to do but forgot about being happy and doing the fun things in life and enjoying life. I had just about given up.

I had seen several other chiropractors. They tried to help. I saw medical doctors – Ya right! No help there! I saw homeopathic doctors and an acupuncturist. These helped a bit. Dr. Steve has been the best!!

Within day Dr. Steve gave me a few hours to a couple days of relief from my headaches. It wasn’t long before I felt good enough to tackle life again. I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was smiling and happy once again for the first time in a very long time.

The first office visit when Dr. Steve genuinely believed in me and what I was telling him along with the X-rays he took and how he explained it really helped the most. I felt he really gave his all the helping me live a better life.

I really feel that Dr. Steve truly pulled me out from that rock I was stuck under. He truly is a great chiropractor who cares and really knows the entire body.

– Allyne J. Canton, GA

Mable Brown

I have had a burning sensation in my feet that was excruciating. I had been this way about five years getting progressively worse each year. Anything touching the top of my feet was sheer agony. I was hobbling around the house staying off my feet as much as possible. I couldn’t stand to wear shoes. If I went somewhere I wore house shoes.

Most nights I didn’t sleep well.

I was basically told the only help was drugs. I had been on Lyrica for three years with the doctors constantly increasing the dosage, but it got to where the medicine wasn’t helping one little bit. I had reached the point in my life that if my feet were going to hurt as bad as they were (and were continually getting worse) my life wasn’t going to be very good.

I noticed improvement after my first treatment and have continued to improve. I have gone from two times a week to once a week and now to one time every 2 weeks. I have much more movement. I can do all my housework as well as outside work (gardening, flowers, helping get up hay). I can even wear shoes again.

I am thankful that my feet are continuing to improve every week and that my quality of life has improved.

– Mable B. Jasper, GA

Click here to read other testimonials.

Dr. Steve’s Three Rules of stretching

I go over stretches and strengthening exercises with every patient, but I have to give my “spiel” to someone before introducing them to stretches so that they don’t injure themselves. Even for people who actively stretch, most people don’t know these three simple rules of stretching.

Rule 1

Warm up.

This seems like a really easy idea but most people don’t warm up before they exercise strenuously, let alone before they stretch. If you think about it, a dry sponge can be ripped in half but a wet sponge is much more able to bend and twist. In the same way, a muscle engorged with blood will respond much more effectively during stretching than a “dry” muscle.  A good warm-up would be 10 minutes of moderate walking on the treadmill, a hot shower/bath, or even doing some light housework. Just doing something to get the blood out into the muscles will do. Your warm-up exercise should not be anything too strenuous.

Rule 2

Go slowly.

Time moves so fast….except for when you’re stretching.  And then, it slows to a crawl. I think that’s why most people don’t have the patience to stretch.

Even people who do take the time to stretch only give themselves about 10 to 15 seconds per stretch….sometimes not even that!! But whenever you go to stretch – especially a muscle group that’s very tight – you should keep in mind that muscles will initially “guard” against the stretch, meaning that the muscle will contract slightly in order to protect itself. In order to achieve a good stretch and eventually gain more flexibility a stretch has to be held long enough for this “stretch reflex” to go away, so you should hold a stretch somewhere between 45 to 90 seconds. And if you stretch the muscle a second time within the next 5 to 10 minutes, the time it takes for the stretch reflex to go away will be more in the neighborhood of 30 to 45 seconds.

So get a watch or position yourself near a clock where you can count the seconds while you’re stretching, or you will likely think you’ve held the stretch longer than you actually have.

Rule 3

Breathe deeply.

It may not seem like stretching is that big a deal, but for those people who don’t stretch that often and are wound super tight, asking their muscles to stretch places a huge metabolic demand on the muscle. That muscle seeks out fuel to meet that metabolic demand, and the most readily available, plentiful and immediate fuel you can give it is oxygen. Breathing deeply will help pump oxygen to the muscle, making the stretch more effective and promoting relaxation.

That’s it. 3 simple strategies for stretching, no matter the muscle or area you are stretching.

1)      Warm up

2)      Go slow

3)      Breathe deep

Watching your back,

Dr. Steve

Back To School: Backpacks

Are your kids wearing backpacks that are too heavy?

Researchers use MRI’s to detect the effects of heavy backpacks on children’s spines —

Brought to you from Integrity Chiropractic in Canton, GA

Well…for our kids, the summer is almost over. Cherokee County schools are back in session Monday, August 2nd, 2010. Forsyth County schools are back in session Monday August 9, 2010. Fulton County schools are back in session Monday August 16, 2010. That means it’s time to talk about BACKPACK SAFETY once again. In other words, your child may be wearing a backpack that is too heavy.

Why is this important?

A new article in the esteemed journal Spine from January of this year once again reveals that heavy backpacks have an adverse impact on the spines of young children. I know, I know…Shocker, right?!?

According to the study’s authors “this is the first upright MRI study to document reduced disc height and greater lumbar asymmetry for common backpack loads in children.”

In plain English, this means that as backpacks got heavier, the intervertebral discs that cushion your spine got more and more compressed and spines got crooked.

Dr. Timothy Neuschwander of University of California, San Diego, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to study the spines of eight children who were an average of 11 years old. They scanned the children first with an empty backpack, then with increasing weights of 9, 18, and 26 pounds. These weights represented approximately 10%, 20%, and 30% of the children’s body weight.

Heavier weights caused intervertebral discs compression and decreased disc height. Heavier loads were also associated with increased sideways curvature (scoliosis) of the lumbar spine, either to the right or the left. Half of the children had a significant spinal curve of at least ten degrees. Most of the children had to adjust their posture to bear the 26-lb backpack load.

I’ve mentioned this before to numerous patients throughout the years, but here it is again. Chiropractors consider a scoliosis of 16 degrees or more to be the point at which the nervous system becomes affected. And because the pelvis and lower back form the foundation for the rest of the spine, a scoliosis in the lower back can lead to structural problems in the mid back and neck that can cause pain and dysfunction in those areas too.

Not surprisingly, the study also found that as backpack weight increased, so did the amount of pain reported by the children.

Although the children were wearing the backpack straps over both shoulders when the MRI scans were performed, the researchers note that spinal curvature could be even greater than ten degrees if the backpack was carried over one shoulder. So parents please, force your kids to look uncool by making them wear their backpacks correctly over BOTH shoulders.

Dr. Neuschwander and his colleagues sum up, “Low back pain in children may be worsened by discogenic or postural changes,” and goes on to add “This could have long-term implications, as children with back pain are at increased risk of having back pain as adults.”

Again, I’ve said this before, but the cause of someone’s symptoms usually begin long before the actual symptoms begin to appear. And as kids’ backpacks get heavier and heavier, more and more of our children will begin to experience lower back pain sooner and sooner in life.

A good rule of thumb is to limit the weight of a backpack to 20 percent of your child’s body weight, so if your child weighs 50 pounds, then his/her backpack should be no more than 10 pounds.

Watching your back,

Dr. Steve Goninan
Integrity Chiropractic
11582 Cumming Highway
Canton, GA 30115
678-400-0202
www.IntegrityChiropractor.net

References:

Spine – January 1, 2010;35:83-88.

P.S. The $37 new patient special will be ending soon on August 9th, 2010. So if you want to refer someone in for the new patient special, which includes an initial examination and X-rays (with no obligation for future care), then get them in by August 9th, 2010.

P.S.S. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, look us up.

Is chiropractic safe for kids? Click here to find out.