El Paso, TX. Chiropractor Dr. Alex Jimenez examines good health and wellness.
Most individuals will experience neck or back pain at some time in their own own lives. Neck pain and back are among the leading causes of disability worldwide, along with the number of cases is increasing. Some factors behind this are increased usage of cellular devices bad position, and unhealthy lifestyle choices.
Though it’s not necessarily possible to stop neck and back pain, you will find steps individuals can take to help decrease the chance it is going to occur.
Why good posture?
One of the most important approaches to ensure your spine stays healthy would be to keep good posture. A healthy back has three natural curves� an external curve at the upper back an inward curve at the neck, and an inward curve at the low back. Proper bearing helps maintain these curves that are natural and puts minimal pressure in your joints. Defective bearing does the opposite. It may stress or pull muscles, causing pain and musculoskeletal imbalances in the back, neck, and extremities. Some typical postural blunders rounding your shoulders are positioning your face too much forward, and slouching so you lose the normal curve in the lower back.
Cellular Devices &�Neck Pain
The increasing use of cellular devices can bring about inferior spine health, influencing our posture and body mechanics in ways that are unhealthy. Kenneth K. Hansraj, MD, the Chief of Spine Surgery at New York Spine Surgery and Rehabilitation Medicine, created a computer model of the cervical spine that demonstrated how use of mobile devices directly contributes to neck pull. In an article published in Surgical Technology International, Dr. Hansraj, MD, revealed that neck pull increases as the forward angle of the head increases, as it does when you look down at your cell phone or tablet. As you lean your head, you round another aspect of poor position, your shoulders. All this surplus strain creates additional wear and tear on the structures of the neck, upper spine and back, and can result in spinal degeneration that could need surgery.
Body Mechanics &�Prevention Tips
Good posture and placement is particularly important when you’re bending over, squatting, and when you are lifting things. When lifting boxes or alternative things you should avoid twisting your body. But it also is crucial to keep good posture while standing and sitting. It really is a lot more crucial that you develop a good ergonomic working arrangement to safeguard your spine with people spending increasing quantities of time at work,. Over time, poor sitting posture and workplace ergonomics can damage spinal structures and contribute to persistent or persistent back and neck pain.
Sleep Time
One other place people spend a sizable percentage of the time is in bed. That makes it vital to truly have a mattress that enables you to have a supporting and restful slumber. The identical natural spinal alignment you have is maintained by a mattress that is good when standing and will help prevent back pain.
Eat Well &�Exercise Frequently
The diet and exercise choices you make might assist you to protect your back. Exercise can help prevent back pain and neck pain by strengthening the muscles supporting your vertebrae. Strength training, flexibility training, and aerobic exercise are part of a healthy exercise routine, and every type of exercise contributes to spinal health. Great nutrition also is crucial to helping us reach our optimum well-being and feel our best. A nutritious diet along with exercise also assist you to keep a healthier weight, that is just another approach to simply help make sure your back is not overstrained.
Smoking, Your Brain, Chronic Back Pain & Bone Health
Another lifestyle alternative that’s damaging to spine health is cigarette smoking. Researchers from Northwestern University conducted a study demonstrating that smokers are three times more likely than nonsmokers to develop chronic back pain. �Smoking affects the brain,� according to scientist Bogdan Petre, who headed the study, which was published on the internet in the journal Human Brain Mapping. �We found that it appears to make people less resilient to an episode of pain and changes the way the brain responds to back pain.�
Smoking also reduces bone density, which increases the risk for osteoporosis along with other degenerative spine conditions, and it can reduce the success of spinal fusion. People who are facing fusion or any back surgery should make every endeavor to avoid smoking. The associated dangers will reduce and raise the probability of an effective spinal fusion surgery.
El Paso, TX. Chiropractor Dr. Alex Jimenez looks at exercise and fitness from a chiropractic perspective.
The advantages of exercise are plenty: Exercise might help prevent numerous conditions � to osteoporosis � from heart attacks and it can also prevent back pain and neck pain.
Cardiovascular, strength training, and flexibility training exercise all play a significant part in a healthy exercise routine, and each form of exercise contributes to spinal health.
Training &�Stretches
Flexibility is something most people take for granted when they’re young, but growing elderly tends to make the significance of flexibility and stretching training a lot more clear as range of movement begins to fall. Yet, stretching and flexibility training may be incorporated into your fitness routine at any given age, and you may reap the benefits for a long time. Flexibility training can boost your mobility, balance, equilibrium, and posture, which will assist you to avoid back and neck pain. Pilates all, yoga, and flexibility training classes might help you enhance your stretches technique and lead to long-term flexibility.
Weight Training &�Core Strengthening For Back Pain
You could believe strenuous exercise and strength training tend to be more prone to result in a back injury than to prevent one, but your overall spinal health along with function cans significantly enhance. With feeble back and abdominal muscles, on the other hand, you happen to be more inclined to encounter a back strain injury. For the best results, you will want to combine weightlifting with strengthening exercises that use your own personal body weight as opposition to maintain a healthier neck and back. Make sure do not fail core muscles such as transverse abdominals and the external obliques, and to alter your work outs.
Cardiovascular Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise has many health benefits, and it’s also an essential element of a well-rounded workout routine. One of the key advantages to cardiovascular exercise is the way it can simply help with weight reduction. Being obese or overweight can lead to worsening of spinal circumstances and puts extra strain on your back, so discarding some extra pounds with only a little help from cardiovascular activity can mean great things for your back and spine. Cardiovascular exercise also helps you build endurance, which can be essential for long-term health and will help with rehabilitation from spinal and back injuries. Naturally, cardio has wonderful effects on different aspects of well-being too, from enhancing mood and enhancing cholesterol amounts to lowering blood pressure. Because endorphin levels are boosted by cardiovascular exercise, it can also help alleviate outward indications of depression, which may add to the long-term pain experienced by some people. Like that were quality slumber is promoted by cardiovascular activity, and also a good night�s remainder is essential for back and spine well-being.
Exercise &�Aging
It really is particularly important as we age, although exercise is very important at all ages. These deteriorations can impede, although decline of flexibility, range of motion, and function are a part of the natural aging process. Although vigorous action may be hard amongst aged adults, aerobic activity that is light still has tremendous health benefits, specially in comparison to no activity in the slightest. The quantity of exercise one needs so that you can see health benefits might surprise you � you are able to exercise at an intensity level which allows you to carry on a casual conversation and still see health benefits.1 If you have a few other health issues, such as for instance diabetes, high blood pressure, or a heart condition, specific activities may well not be healthy for you. Request your doctor about your planned exercise routine, in case you do not feel comfortable exercising by yourself, and consider exercising in the existence of a physical exercise device. Don’t forget to tune in to your own body, and cease exercise at once should you experience pain aside from muscle soreness that is typical.
The SpineUniverse Exercise Center shows you the top back stretches and neck stretches to maintain your spine powerful and healthy. Discover the crucial advantages of exercise as how to keep healthy as well.
Could that glass of Chardonnay affect the condition of your skin?
Maybe, according to new research that found women with certain drinking patterns had a higher risk of developing rosacea, an inflammatory skin condition.
“We found white wine and liquor were significantly associated with a higher risk of rosacea,” said study senior author Wen-Qing Li. He’s an assistant professor of dermatology and epidemiology at Brown University.
Rosacea causes redness and flushing on the face and the neck. In some forms, acnelike outbreaks can form, and visible blood vessels can appear.
Genetics can play a role in the development of rosacea. In those with acnelike rosacea, their immune system may be reacting to a single bacterium, according to the American Academy of Dermatology.
While red wine is often pinpointed as the beverage that can trigger rosacea flushing, Li said that that information tends to come from reports by patients who already have the disorder.
The new research focused on alcohol’s role in the development of rosacea. Li’s team evaluated nearly 83,000 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II from 1991 to 2005.
The researchers collected information on alcohol intake every four years during a follow-up of 14 years. Over that time, nearly 5,000 new cases of rosacea occurred.
“For white wine, compared to never drinkers, [those who drank] one to three drinks per month had a 14 percent increased risk of rosacea. For five or more white wines a week, risk increased by 49 percent,” Li said.
For liquor, five or more drinks a week raised the risk of developing rosacea by 28 percent, the study found.
Li could not say if the link would hold true for men, as the study included only women. And, he points out that “it is just an association, it is not a causal relationship.”
Li isn’t sure exactly why white wine and liquor seem to increase the risk of rosacea. However, the researchers speculated that the white wine and liquor may weaken the immune system and contribute to the dilation of blood vessels.
For now, Li said, the message is to make physicians and consumers aware of the link.
The researchers also suspect that there are different biological reasons why white wine and liquor seem to increase the development of rosacea and why red wine seems to exacerbate the condition. But they don’t yet know what those differences are, the study authors said.
Dr. Carolyn Goh, a dermatologist at UCLA Medical Center, said the new findings add to knowledge about rosacea.
“It’s interesting that they found a difference between different types of alcohol,” she said.
One of the strengths of the research is the large number of women in the study, Goh said.
Meanwhile, she said, it’s known that drinking alcohol can make rosacea flare up in those already diagnosed. “In the past, people thought red wine would cause more flushing than white wine,” she said.
Besides alcohol, other common triggers in those who already have rosacea include sunlight, caffeine, hot and spicy foods, Goh said. People with the condition report different triggers, she said, so that list may not apply to all patients.
Treatments include topical creams and ointments, Goh said. Laser treatment can help the blood vessels that stay visible after periods of flushing. For patients who have pimples associated with rosacea, oral antibiotics can help, she said.
The study is published online April 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
One in five Americans has hearing loss so severe that it interferes with communication, said a 2011 study published in Archives of Internal Medicine. But there may be many more people who have “hidden hearing loss,” but remain undiagnosed because the damage wasn’t detected by commonly used hearing tests, according to a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.
People who have hidden hearing loss appear to have normal hearing when their hearing is tested using audiograms — the gold standard for measuring hearing — where hearing is typically tested in a quiet room.
The reason some forms of hearing loss may go unrecognized in the clinic is that hearing involves a complex partnership between the ear and the brain. Researchers found that the central auditory system can compensate for significant damage to the inner ear by turning up its volume control, partially overcoming the deficiency, says study lead author Richard Salvi.
“You can have tremendous damage to inner hair cells in the ear that transmit information to the brain and still have a normal audiogram,” says Salvi. “But people with this type of damage have difficulty hearing in certain situations, like hearing speech in a noisy room. Their thresholds appear normal. So they’re sent home.”
The reason hearing loss isn’t detected lies in the way hearing signals travel to the brain: About 95 percent of sound input to the brain comes from the ear’s inner hair cells.
“These inner hair cells are like spark plugs in an 8-cylinder engine,” says Salvi. “A car won’t run well if you remove half of those spark plugs, but people can still present with normal hearing thresholds if they’ve lost half or even three-quarters of their inner hair cells.”
Ear damage reduces the signal that goes the brain. That results in problems hearing, but that’s not what’s happening here, because the brain “has a central gain control, like a radio, the listener can turn up the volume control to better hear a distant station,” Salvi says.
Sound is converted to neural activity by the inner hair cells in the auditory part of the ear, called the cochlea.
The neural signals then travel from the cochlea to the auditory nerve and into the central auditory pathway of the brain. Halfway up the auditory pathway the information is relayed into a structure known as the inferior colliculus, before finally arriving at the auditory cortex in the brain, where interpretation of things like speech take place.
For people with inner hair cell loss, sound is less accurately converted to neural activity in the cochlea, but it is amplified as it travels. Once the signal gets high enough to stimulate neurons in the brain, “It’s like your brain has a hearing aid that turns up the volume,” Salvi said.
Salvi says it’s unknown how many people might have this type of hearing loss, but many older people have difficulty hearing in a noisy environment.
Spotting hidden hearing loss could be as simple as adding background noise to hearing tests.
An experimental drug called LY411575 may offer hope to people with hearing loss caused by a loss of sensory hair cells in the inner ear. The tiny hairs are vital to hearing, since sound vibrations agitate them, causing them to send signals to the brain. When the hairs are destroyed, the brain no longer receives signals that result in hearing.
The new drug works by inhibiting a protein called Notch, which keeps stem cells in the inner ear — or cochlea — from developing into new sensory hair cells. In a study of sound-deafened mice, hearing was improved in the areas where the hair cells were replaced.
Adding a few miles of biking each day to your commute might add years to your life span, new research suggests. The British study found that bicycling to work appeared to halve people’s odds for serious disease and premature death.
Researchers from the University of Glasgow in Scotland looked at the commuting habits of more than 264,000 people in the United Kingdom and tracked their health over five years.
Cycling to work was associated with a 46 percent lower risk of heart disease over five years and a 45 percent lower risk of cancer compared to a sedentary commute. Risk of premature death was 41 percent lower. Walking to work was also beneficial, but not to the same degree.
Hoofing it was associated with a 27 percent lower risk of heart disease and a 36 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease. However, it wasn’t linked with a lower risk of cancer or premature death, the study found.
The study doesn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship between commuting by bike and longevity.
Still, “if these associations are causal, these findings suggest that policies designed to make it easier for people to commute by bike … may present major opportunities for public health improvement,” said researcher Dr. Jason Gill in a university news release. He’s with the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences.
Gill suggested bike lanes, city bike-sharing, subsidized bicycle purchases and increased accommodation of bicycles on public transit.
The researchers said cycle commuting may offer greater health benefits than walking because cyclists cover longer distances, get more intense exercise, and have higher levels of fitness than walkers.
For example, cyclists commuted an average of 30 miles a week, compared with 6 miles a week for walkers.
The study was published April 20 in the journal BMJ.
The scope of our information is limited to chiropractic and spinal injuries and conditions. To discuss options on the subject matter, please feel free to ask Dr. Jimenez or contact us at 915-850-0900 .
SOURCE: University of Glasgow, news release, April 20, 2017
Additional Topics: Chiropractic and Athletic Performance
Chiropractic care is a popular, alternative treatment option which focuses on the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of injuries and/or conditions associated to the musculoskeletal and nervous system, primarily the spine. Many athletes, and civilians alike, seek chiropractic care to restore their natural health and wellness, however, chiropractic has been demonstrated to benefit athletes by increasing their athletic performance.
El Paso, TX. Chiropractor Dr. Alex Jimenez discusses clean eating.
When it comes to eating clean, it�s often much easier than you think. Plus,�you rarely�have to alter the essence of your favorite dishes to achieve a cleaner plate. The key to turning them�into �a �clean� dish is to start from the root�the ingredients.
To build a cleaner plate, it first starts in the market where you choose your produce, whole grains, dairy, proteins, and other items. Look for ingredient lists that are short and contain no preservatives, artificial colorings, added sugars, and other processed ingredients.
Make sure you balance your plate by filling at least half with fruits and veggies, choosing whole grains for a fourth of your plate, and lean, clean meat for the remaining fourth.
To Convert A Recipe To Clean Recipe Look At The Ingredients & Substitute
Protein > Choose leaner meat, and limit meat portions such as pork and red meat to 3 ounces and chicken to 4.5 ounces per day. Seafood and plant-based proteins are encouraged. Look for meat that is grass-fed and raised without antibiotics or hormones.
Condiments, dressings and salsas >�Make your own, and nix the added sugars and excess salt.
While this recipe is almost completely clean, the marinade calls for brown sugar. For a cleaner sugar, replace 1� teaspoons of maple syrup for the 1 tablespoon of brown sugar.
El Paso, TX. Chiropractor Dr. Alex Jimenez takes a look at parenthood and longer life.
Parents, take courage. If you survive the sleep deprivation, toddler tantrums and teenage angst, you may be rewarded with a longer life than your childless peers, researchers said Tuesday.
Fathers gained more in life expectancy than mothers, a team wrote in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health — and particularly in older age.
“By the age of 60, the difference in life expectancy… may be as much as two years” between people with, and those without, children, they concluded.
Researchers tracked the lifespan of men and women born between 1911 and 1925 and living in Sweden — more than 1.4 million people in total.
Data Was Gathered On Whether The Participants Were Married & Had Children
Men and women with at least one child had “lower death risks” than childless ones, the team concluded.
“At 60 years of age, the difference in life expectancy was two years for men and 1.5 years for women” compared to peers with no kids, the researchers wrote.
By age 80, men who fathered children had a remaining life expectancy of seven years and eight months, compared to seven years for childless men, said the team.
For mothers, life expectancy at 80 was nine years and six months, while for childless women it was eight years and 11 months.
The study merely pointed out a correlation, and cannot conclude that having children is the cause of the life expectancy gains, the researchers admitted.
But they theorised that parents may benefit from social and financial support from their children in older age, which childless people lose out on.
It Could Be That Childless People Live Unhealthier Lifestyles Than Parents Do
The association between having children and longer life was found in married and unmarried people, but appeared to be strongest in single, older men, said the study.
This could be because unmarried men relied more heavily on their offspring in the absence of a partner.
The study did not echo previous research which found that having daughters is more beneficial for longevity than sons.
Fewer and fewer people are having children in Sweden at the same time as older people are spurning old age institutions to receive care at home — often by their children.
“Therefore, to further investigate health and survival consequences for childless older individuals is of importance,” wrote the team.
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