Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC Manages Back Pain Fear with our Chiropractic Patients
Have you experienced back pain before? Yes? It’s common to fear its recurrence, but don’t let it hijack your life! This time of year, just think of Santa. Think he’s felt back pain before delivering all those packages and parcels? Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC imagines so! Santa can’t quit, and neither can you. La Grande chiropractic care can help you deal with new back pain and chronic back pain and lead our La Grande back pain sufferers to be a bit less fearful and a bit more confident getting around this holiday season.
FEAR OF BENDING
Your La Grande chiropractor knows this: many low back pain patients fear bending forward. Researchers analyzed this common clinical finding and found that this fear of bending forward also affects postural sway or balance by interfering with hip balance control, causing weight shifting from side to side to maintain balance. (1) What is an unwanted consequence of being off-balance? A fall. Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC finds it very critical to help our back pain patients – especially our older back pain patients – to keep their balance!
HELP TO KEEP BALANCE AND DECREASE FEAR
“There’s an app for that!” Just what our older La Grande chiropractic patients with balance issues want to hear?! As much as “tech” can frustrate some of its users, especially some older users, it can help! The novel smartphone-based Gait&Balance App is accessible. Researchers have documented that it is able to measure age-related differences in balance not necessarily picked up during clinical exam measurements like postural stability, step time, step length and cycle. (2) These insights can help healthcare providers like your chiropractor create a more beneficial and individualized treatment plan to reduce fear of movement and improve balance. This is quite hopeful, so much so that chiropractic researchers are exerting more research effort to measure the benefits of multimodal chiropractic care in its ability to affect gait, balance and/or fall risk and prevention. (3) One positive study with older lumbar spinal stenosis patients (average age 83.5 years) found that their postural sway and entropy in addition to function and symptomatology were better with a course of chiropractic care including Cox® Technic Flexion Distraction Decompression spinal manipulation. (4) Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC offers this treatment along with nutrition and exercise to keep our chiropractic patients moving, fearless, and balanced!
BIOMARKERS FOR BACK PAIN
One new nutrition finding this month may also help this effort. It comes from researchers analyzing levels of biomarkers – C-reactive protein, vitamin D, neuropeptide Y and others - in low back pain patients tested via blood tests with pain and disability. Vitamin D which appears in many health news reports today also seems to be a potential biomarker for back pain relief and disability. A respected randomized control study found a relationship between vitamin D levels and changes in both pain and disability for low back pain patients cared for with spinal manipulation. (5) Some day, we may do blood tests to manage risks for back pain!
CONTACT Dr. Paulette Hugulet, DC, LLC
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Joel Dixon on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes his helping a Vietnam veteran deal with his back pain for 20 years, incorporating the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management.
Schedule your La Grande chiropractic appointment soon. Calling all our La Grande back pain patients! Bring us your back pain and your fear of back pain, bending and falling. We can help you handle them as well as Santa fearlessly and efficiently delivers all his packages in a single night!
