Tag Archives: Pain

Case of the Month July 2014

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Car Accident

Have you ever been in a fender bender? Ever notice how sore you are afterwards?

I have a patient that we will call Pat. Pat was involved in an auto accident recently where she was driving, stopped for traffic and a car hit her from behind going close to 40 MPH.

After the accident Pat reported loss of hearing, headaches, vision problems, neck pain, shoulder pain and arm pain. Needless to say Pat was not feeling good and went to the hospital to get everything checked out. Once cleared from there Pat came to see me in the hopes that I would be able to help her.

I discovered that her neck and midback were completely stuck and swollen, not uncommon after a bad auto accident. Her range of motion was limited to almost zero in every range with extreme pain in every direction.

I got to work by adjusting Pat’s thoracic and cervical spine. After the adjustments, I had Pat do range of motion exercises, posture specific stretching and iced both areas. Within one week, Pat was reporting that she was feeling much better. What I was the most excited about was the 50% improvement in range of motion. 50% in one week! (Yes I know, but for me it is the little things.)

As the weeks went by Pat reported that she was moving and feeling better than she had in a long time, even before the accident. The coolest part of all of this was her focus level.

Prior to the accident Pat told me she had a hard time focusing on tasks for any period of time.

Within 3 weeks Pat felt she was getting more done at work in a shorter period of time. Talk about the brain body connection! When you remove the interference from the body, the brain knows what to do!

 

Glucosamine

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Have you been taking Glucosamine for chronic low back pain?  A recent study has shown that this may not help when compared to a sugar pill, better known as a placebo.

I had no idea that more than 25% of people with chronic low back pain had tried Glucosamine at one point.

The article does mention some things that may help one with low back pain.  One of them is cognitive therapy…hmmm I wonder what they mean by that?  Are they trying to say the brain may contribute to chronic pain?

This is something that chiropractors have been preaching for a very long time.

You can read the article here.

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Case of the Month June 2010

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I got a frantic phone call last month from a patient we will call Mary.  Mary had been in an auto accident and was in severe pain.  Mary was stopped at a light when she got rear ended from behind.  The impact was so hard Mary hit the car in front of her.  Luckily Mary was wearing her seatbelt.

When Mary came into the office she reported neck pain, shoulder pain, and right arm pain.  On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being severe, Mary rated all three pains a 9.  Upon exam Mary presented with tightness in the neck and shoulders as well as diminshed reflexes in her arms.

Mary had been x-rayed at the hospital and luckily had no fractures.  She did have an extremely reduced curve in her neck.  This lack of curve was putting a lot of tension on the muscles and nerves in her neck and in my opinion was the source of a lot of her pain.

We began treating Mary with gentle adjustments, ice, traction and exercise.  The going was real slow for the first week. I wish I could tell you Mary jumped off the table after one visit telling me how awesome I was…didn’t happen.

The second week of care was when we really started to see some results.  The muscle tension and spasm started to really clear up and most importantly Mary was really starting to feel better.

It was by week 6 when Mary was really able to get through the day without pain.  Needless to say Mary was thrilled. When she reported to the office she was a 9, with 10 being the worst, and now she was in the 1-2 range.

The key to Mary’s recovery was her dedication to getting better.  In 8 weeks Mary missed one appointment, did her home exercise and most importantly kept her chin up when the going got tough.

I am proud of Mary and so happy to be able to take a part in helping her.

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Who Else Doesn’t Understand Sciatica?

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Have you ever woken up and had burning pain going down the back of your leg.  As a chiropractor, I see this everyday. You are going along, everything is great, and then BAM, your leg is killing you and you feel like it will never go away.

Nerves of right leg, anterior and posterior as...
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A brief review of anatomy is in store here.  The sciatic nerve begins in the low back, travels through your buttocks and heads down the leg.  If anywhere in the course of the nerve, pressure is put on it, pain and numbness can occur.  The most common form of pressure is swelling from a misalignment.  As the pressure builds up, the nerve compresses and WHAM, you have sciatica.

What to do when I get sciatica.

Once we have it, the key is getting rid of it quickly.  Here is where ice and Dr. Harrington are your best friend.  If the sciatica is from the spine being out of place a few adjutments will go a long way to helping you reduce the pressure on your nerves.  While we are reducing the pressure on your nerves by putting your spine in place, ice will help calm the swelling down thereby taking pressure off the affected nerve.

How Can I Keep the Sciatica from Coming Back?

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Percocet and Vicadin could get banned

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Yesterday I wrote about more stringent warnings about acetaminophen (ACM). You can read that here.

Now a govt. agency is recommending that Percocet and Vicadin be banned due to the problems associated with ACM. The way that Percocet and Vicadin work is they combine a narcotic with ACM to fight pain.

ACM is combined with different narcotics in at least seven other prescription drugs have a combination with ACM and these will all be banned if the FDA listens to the advice of the experts. Vicodin itself is prescribed more than 100 million times a year in the US.

When the panel members were asked what the consumer could do to help themselves, most agreed that the there needs to be better education about the risks of these popular meds.

Dr. Jan Engle, a panel member and head of the Department of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Illinois in Chicago, encourages people to keep track of what they are taking. ““If you keep track of what you’re taking, none of this is an issue for you.”

While I think that Dr. Engle is correct, you must take it one step further. You must examine what is causing you the pain you are feeling. If it is something obvious, say golf, you must stop. Taking a Percocet or Vicadin in order to play golf is only covering up the pain signals. Continuously covering these signals of pain is only going to lead to further problems down the road.

In the past I used to think that patients would only hurt themselves worse by taking a bunch of meds to keep doing what they want to do. Now I am afraid that taking these meds may actually really hurt someone, and to me that is unacceptable.

Acetaminophen is Getting a Closer Look

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Acetaminophen (ACM) is the most popular over the counter drug for pain relief in the United States. There was an estimated twenty nine billion units sold in 2005. Twenty nine BILLION! Whoa, that is a lot.

The FDA recently released a report urging stronger warnings and stricter dose limits for drugs, like Tylenol® that contain ACM. The concern here is the apparent liver failure that people are experiencing after taking drugs with ACM in it. Research has shown that hundreds of people are experiencing liver failure and approximately 100 die each year from overdose whether intentional or unintentional.

One of the major problems is that people don’t realize how many products contain ACM. There are currently over 200 products that you may not even think about. Products like….Robituson®, Alka Seltzer Plus® and Sudafed®.

When the max recommended amount is 4,000 milligrams, one can see how it is not too hard to exceed that when one isn’t feeling well.

Now onto the rant portion of the blog.

I am not licensed to dispense drugs, I cannot legally give you advice, etc. What I am about to share is my opinion and should no way be construed as advice from an MD.

In my humble opinion most of this stuff is crap. It is bad for you, it covers up symptoms and does damage to vital organs. Do I understand there are situations where you need to take it…of course.

However, there is a large portion of the population that are taking these drugs for the completely wrong reason. If you need to take 4 Tylenol® before tennis and 4 Tylenol® after tennis just so you can play….STOP PLAYING.

Let’s assume that it is your neck that is bugging you. If you take the 4 Tylenol&reg before and after, you can swing the racket pain free. If you don’t you can’t. Now we know the pills aren’t fixing the problem, they are just covering it up.

One question then, “What is causing the pain?”

Shouldn’t we look into that?

“Oh, Doc I don’t have the time”….”It will go away”……”I think it is genetic, my mom used to get this when she played tennis”

Look you may not have the time now, but I can assure you, if you keep covering this problem up, you will have time in the future……your body will make sure you get it fixed.  I have seen this too many times.  What starts out as a small problem, can very easily escalate into a major problem if you keep patching it up.

End rant.

The experts say these drugs are safe if taken as they are intended and I don’t doubt them. When you sell 29 million units and only a small number of people get real sick from them, the problem is small. What I am more worried about is the prevailing attitude that we can just patch stuff up and it will go away.

Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t, do you want to gamble with your liver, kidneys, etc?