With the roll out of our new web site is the ability to blog. Though I’ve read a good number of blogs over the years this will be my first effort. As I ponder the content of this blog it will obviously contain a great deal of health related information. Yes, chiropractic care is my focus, but in this day and age we have to be aware of so many other aspects related to health. Nutrition, exercise and, of course, we can’t avoid listing to the sage advice of our law makers as they try to legislate our health care system. There I go venturing off into politics. I’ll honestly try to avoid doing that too much.

Chiropractic care continues to be one of the most efficient and effective forms of care for a great number of muscular and skeletal pain complaints. Whether these are acute pain events related to specific injury, pain events related to overuse or just some issue that has developed insidiously, chiropractic care is an excellent first line course of action to gain timely relief.

We are just now starting to settle into a pattern of spring time weather. We have already started to see patients presenting to our office with pain issues related to yard and garden activity. Spring also sees the introduction of outdoor sports. Track and field, lacrosse, running, bicycle riding or even just walking, when introduced without adequate preparation of your body to sustain the loading related to the activity pain will likely result.

What are some ways to prepare for spring time?

1. Pre-season training – the wise course of action is to prepare for your spring activities with some form of preparation for the activity during the winter. It may be difficult to completely duplicate the nature of the activity during the winter months, but introducing some form of aerobic and weight training during the colder months will make the transition to spring time much less prone to pain and injury.

2. Warm-up – whether you are participating in a sport or starting to clean the yard or garden, treat your introduction to activity like a sport. Rather than just diving into the activity why not go for a short walk and get the body moving.

3. Know when enough-is-enough – most of us know when we have hit the wall with activity. Learn to listen to your body. Rather than saying “just one more hour,” learn to listen to the advice our body gives us and decide that tomorrow is another day. Rather than making yourself miserable for the next week, decide to stop and do more work on another day.

4. When your body has been overworked – take action to calm the early symptoms. Gentle stretching and the use of ice therapy can be an effective tool to calm the more immediate and early symptoms. An excellent piece of research out of France demonstrated that the early introduction of ice as a therapy tool significantly shortened the duration of pain event and decreased the average intensity of the associated pain. The recommended use of ice was 15-20 minutes out of every hour in the first 24 hours of the pain event. This then backs off to 1x/2 hours following the first 24 hours until pain calms to manageable levels.