The Basler Blog

Dec 20
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Proactive vs Re- Active: Athletes

By | Benefits of Chiropractic | No Comments

Proactive vs Re-active: Athletes

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet, and the cause and prevention of disease.” -Thomas Edison

When it comes to athletes, function of the body is priority for performance. Unfortunately, we have been deceived to think that just because we are not experiencing any pain or discomfort must mean our bodies are functioning how they are supposed to and that could not be further from the truth. Only 10-12% of a spinal sensory nerve transmits pain meaning 90% of the time, there could be an issue without us catching wind of it. It’s about how you FUNCTION, NOT how you FEEL.

Receiving chiropractic care is a preventative approach for athletes to avoid an injury from occurring while they are partaking in their sporting event, it allows the brain to send the proper mental impulses to the body and in turn, allowing the body to react to specific sporting movements appropriately. Most sporting events involve swift movements and if our brain is not in tune with our body, we are susceptible to injury.  A muscle can only do what a nerve tells it to do.

 By restoring the integrity and communication of the nerve system, the performance of an athlete can be enhanced by making them faster, stronger, and improve their sleep. When an athlete is injured, the main question running through their mind is how long will it take them to return to play in their sport. Each athlete is going to be different but chiropractic not only helps with nerve function but also blood flow which increases the process of healing reducing the recovery time as well as reducing swelling and inflammation. The majority of sports involve specific movements catered to that sport and by receiving chiropractic, athletes will experience increased range of motion allowing the proper mobility they need to perform at their best level.

A functioning nerve system leads to an improved performance! Get checked and stay healthy!

7 Reasons Your Student Athlete Could Benefit From Chiropractic Care
10 Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Student Athletes
Dec 01
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Healing: The Long Game

By | Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, Chiropractic Myths, depression | No Comments

Healing: The Long Game

“Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity”. – Hippocrates

Healing is a process which cannot be rushed, the body’s innate intelligence to handle issues takes time. There is no one hit wonder adjustment that operates as a “magic pill”, especially with years of damage and neglect. If the issues are not dealt with, they are more than likely to reoccur and increase frequency as well. 

After an injury takes place, the body first vasoconstricts (narrows) blood vessels to regulate swelling, then vasodilation (blood vessels expand) occurs causing plasma proteins to escape the blood vessels which leads to swelling. Swelling and edema are the bodies response to stabilize the joint and prevent the joint from unnecessary movement to initiate the healing process. If swelling is not dealt with, it could delay healing and cause scar tissue to be deposited as well as putting pressure on a spinal nerve. When the body is under pain for long periods of time, central sensitization occurs which causes the pain fibers to be bombarded with unnecessary stimulus not allowing the body to adapt efficiently to the stresses of life and heal properly.

In chiropractic, there are phases of healing. In the beginning, the goal is to remove the interference and restore function back in the joint as well as alleviate any pain present.  This usually takes 4 weeks, but it depends on the person since everyone is different with how their body responds. The next phase is the corrective phase to train the body to correct the misalignment and stay corrected restoring the communication between the brain and the body by repairing the integrity of the nerve system. This phase is usually more extensive. The last phase is stabilization which is meant to strengthen the correction of the misalignment. By this phase, frequency of visits has decreased to at least once a week, once every two weeks or once a month. Lifetime care is recommended because our bodies are constantly under attack by thoughts, traumas and toxins we experience daily. The “function” of the body is the name of the game. 

We live our life through our nerve system! Don’t neglect it! Get checked, stay healthy! 

Oct 23
0

Poor Posture

By | Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, Ear Infections, emotions, energy | No Comments

Thee Social Condition-Poor Posture 

In this era, technology has taken over our lives and with it, poor posture. If you look anywhere in public nowadays, it’s almost a guarantee an individual is on their phone. They are also more than likely to be looking down at their phone rather than keeping it at eye level. We call this “text neck.”

The repetition of our neck in a flexed position is detrimental to our cervical (neck) curvature. With enough poor posture and time, our necks begin to create a reversed curve causing dysfunction in our biomechanics and training our muscles poorly to adapt to that negative change. This puts unnecessary stress on our spines, our spinal cord and therefore the rest of our nerve system. Pursuing correct posture improves your overall health. Our bodies are so efficient at adapting, pain does not surface until later when our bodies are desperate for correction. 

Subluxations or misalignments of the spine help contribute to poor posture. “An average person spends 2-4 hours a day with their heads tilted forward reading and texting on their smart phones and hand held devices, amassing 700-1400 hours of excess, abnormal cervical spine stress per year. A high school student may spend an extra 5,000 hours in poor posture per year” (Kenneth K. Hansraj, M.D.). With that said, “The weight of a dime can decrease the function of a nerve by 60%” (Chang Ha Suh, PH.D.). Subluxations contribute to poor posture and therefore decrease the integrity of the nerve system, it does not take much for the functionality of our bodies to be altered. 

There are many things in this world we cannot control but improving your posture is not one of them. Be the best version of yourself and give yourself the best chance at fighting the stresses of life by a simple correction. Train your mind to be self aware of your posture, it will take time to be cognizant of posture but your body will thank you in the end. 

No more excuses!  Make it happen! 

Oct 06
0

‘Tis The Season

By | ADHD, Allergies, Asthma, Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, immune system, migraines | No Comments

It’s that time of year where sicknesses begin affecting our lives! How are you going to combat the seasonal “bug”?

We take Vitamin C, Zinc, Quercetin, and other vitamin supplements to boost our immune system function, but an aspect of health we do not typically realize is the connection between the functionality of our nerve system and our immune system. 

The body can only do what the brain tells it to. The brain tells the body to release neurotransmitters through the nerves of your body that contribute to immune activity and when there is a misalignment of the spine, it decreases the function of where that nerve goes which disrupts the communication between the brain and the body. Our bodies are constantly adapting and that includes fighting off pathogens we encounter every day without knowing, so having a nerve system free of interference is crucial to overall health, not just dealing with pain. 

Dr. Pero with a PH.D. who is the chief of cancer prevention research at New York’s Preventive Medicine Institute performed a 3 year study with 107 individuals. He measured people who are under chiropractic care for 5 years or more compared to the general population who were not under chiropractic care as well as those with cancer and other serious diseases. He found that chiropractic patients had a 200% greater immune competence than those who had not received chiropractic care and 400% greater immune competence than cancer patients and others with serious diseases and immune system competency did not decrease with age. 

Get checked and stay healthy! 

Jul 17
0

Chiropractic and Mental Health

By | Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, Chiropractic Myths, energy, fibromyalgia, gonstead chiropractic, gut problems, High Blood Pressure, immune system, inflammation | No Comments

Chiropractic and Mental Health

Research supports that vertebral subluxations may result in altered autonomic nervous system activity. How does this affect mental health and behavior? We will look specifically the vagus nerve “fight or flight” response and “rest and digest” response. The vagus nerve is a major component of the HPA-axis which coordinates neural, behavioral, endocrine, and immune/inflammatory responses. This is why we check heart rate variability in the office to gauge how well your vagus nerve is functioning, therefore how well your HPA-axis is functioning.

There is a theory called the Polyvagal Theory (PVT) that was proposed by Porges in which nervous system regulation affects our emotional expression, communication, and social behavior. Or in other words the neural pathways supporting behavior are involved in maintaining health.

In a study by Williams et al, “There was some evidence that spinal manipulation improved psychological outcomes compared with verbal interventions.” A different study by Holder et al, looked at patients who received instrument assisted adjustments, the test group who received adjustments showed a significant decrease in anxiety compared to the control group.

Chiropractic care a whole is concerned with totality of the human experience. By correcting subluxations, patients are more optimally able to adapt to the world around them and build resilience. When an adjustment is delivered, a patient’s nervous system immediately responds by altering the body’s ability to function at it’s fullest potential again.

Holder JM, Duncan Robert C, Gissen M, Miller M, Blum K (2001) Increasing retention rates among the

chemically dependent in residential treatment: auriculotherapy and (in a separate study)

subluxation-based chiropractic care. Journal of Molecular Psychiatry 6.

Williams NH, Hendry M, Lewis R, Russell I, Westmoreland A, et al. (2007) Psychological response in spinal

manipulation (PRISM): A systematic review or psychological outcomes in randomized controlled

trials. Complementary Therapis in Medicine 15:271-283.

Jun 26
0

Sports Performance With Chiropractic

By | inflammation, kids chiropractic, stress, texting | No Comments

                Neuromuscular fatigue aka exercise-induced muscle weakness and reduced power are not only detrimental to athletic performance but also increases the risk of sports-related injuries. These factors are brought about by neuromuscular mechanisms in which our brain and spinal cord control how much our muscles contract and reflex responses or how fast our muscles respond to something. By optimizing these factors, athletic performance is likely to be improved.

                Lucky for athletes receiving chiropractic care it has been shown that chiropractic adjustments alters many of the brain functions that control muscle reflexes, muscle endurance, muscle strength, and “muscle memory” (creating muscle patterns). (Herzog et al. 1999; Niazi et al. 2015; Kelly et al. 2000; Lersch et al. 2005; Haavik Taylor and Murphy 2007; Hillermann et al. 2006; Botelho and Andrade 2012).

                In a study performed by Lykke et al., 11 elite Taekwondo athletes were evaluated on muscular strength. In the study, the force during the push-off phase of walking was evaluated and following an adjustment this force was increased. In the control intervention, in which the participants did not receive an adjustment, their force decreased over time. Following the adjustment intervention force increased!

                This study supports the growing research that indicates chiropractic adjustments impact motor control and training. Chiropractic care can benefit patients by improving muscle performance which then affects sports performance, strength training, and other activities.

May 08
0

Chiropractic Care for Babies with Colic

By | ADHD, Allergies, Asthma, Chiropractic Myths | No Comments

Chiropractic Care for Babies with Colic

Aside from being stressful, tiring even heart-breaking for parents, infant colic can cause both physical and psychological symptoms in parents and can lead to marital tension, social disruption and child abuse.1 The causes of infantile colic are still unknown and traditional medical intervention is often ineffective.1

The traditional medical management for colic involves prescribing drugs such as simethicone drops or proton pump inhibitors. However, systematic reviews have consistently shown that these interventions are no more effective than placebo.2

What is colic? When a baby cries inconsolably for more than three hours per day, more than three days per week, for longer than three weeks this is known as ‘infantile colic’.2 Colic affects up to 40% of children worldwide.1,2

Why try chiropractic? Chiropractic is a safe and effective choice for even the smallest members of society.3-5 In one study researchers showed that babies who received chiropractic care cried significantly less than those who did not receive care.6 Because so many high-quality clinical trials have shown chiropractic care helps babies with colic cry less – up to 50% less – it’s worth giving it a go!

Over recent years the safety of chiropractic care for children and infants has been investigated by many researchers.3-5 The results of their studies suggest that chiropractic care can be safely provided to even the youngest members of our society. Adverse events in children after chiropractic care are rare and usually don’t require further care.3-5

It’s every parent’s nightmare – your beautiful newborn is in obvious distress, and you can’t figure out how to console your little monkey. The suffocating array of parental advice may be leaving you confused. So, what do you do when your baby has colic?  We have summarized some of the latest research on infants with colic. We hope to bust some myths and put your mind at ease.

A study conducted in the UK looked at the effectiveness of chiropractic care in affected children.6 The researchers observed 104 babies who were randomized into three groups. The first group of babies was given chiropractic care and their parents knew they were seeing a chiropractor. The second group also received chiropractic care, but their parents didn’t know whether their baby was receiving the care or the control intervention. And the third group didn’t get checked by the chiropractor; instead, they received the control intervention.

Parents were asked to complete a 10-day ‘crying diary’. The findings from this study suggest that even without chiropractic care crying time reduced. However, babies under chiropractic care cried up to 3 hours less compared to those who did not receive care.

Interestingly, the parent’s awareness of whether their baby was receiving chiropractic care, or the control did not matter. This confirms previous studies that have also shown babies with colic responding well to chiropractic care.4 It suggests that the child’s improvement is probably due to chiropractic and not parent bias or parent placebo effect.

Further, this study found that excessively crying babies were (at least!) 5 times less likely to cry if they received care, compared to not receiving care. So it’s very likely that chiropractic care really does help at least some babies who are suffering from colic.
Remember that the chiropractor isn’t directly trying to treat the colic. Instead, they’re trying to improve spinal function with the aim of improving your child’s brain’s ability to process what’s going on in their body. And for some kids, this seems to result in less crying time! This has to be a good thing for the whole family!

Apr 20
0

What is Maintenance Care?

By | ADHD, Allergies, Asthma, Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, Chiropractic Myths, migraines | No Comments

What is Maintenance Care?

People go to see a chiropractor for many different reasons.1 Some go because they’re in pain, some go because they want to perform better on the sporting field, and some want to sleep better.

But did you know that almost 50% of chiropractic patients go to their chiropractor because they simply want to maintain their health and well-being?

Maintenance care is when patients go to a chiropractor even when they are not in pain or discomfort. The idea with maintenance care is that regular adjustments will help maintain your spine and nervous system function at its optimal level and help you to be your best and to prevent new episodes of pain from developing.2

It makes sense to look after your health, so you don’t get sick, right? And that often you get sick because you have been pushing yourself too hard and you’ve become run down? The research tells us that your spine can get run down too, long before you feel pain. We know that if your brain doesn’t send appropriate protective messages to your core trunk muscles, you will have a higher risk of developing low back injuries.3 This makes sense because a lack of core stability means you’re creating mini whiplash injuries to your spine each time you move around or lift your arm or leg.

If you end up in pain after bending down to tie your shoelaces your pain hasn’t just come out of the blue, it’s usually been developing for some time without you knowing about it. It’s often the thousandth straw that breaks the camel’s back.

All of life’s stressors can build up and impact the way your brain is communicating with your trunk muscles and then all that is needed is one last minor thing to go wrong, and you end up with pain. The goal of maintenance care is to help take the straws off your camel’s back before they cause symptoms or have a big impact on your life. So, the research tells us that chiropractic maintenance care makes perfect sense.

A study published by researchers from Sweden in 20184 showed the benefits of maintenance care in a group of people who suffered from low back pain. In this study, the researchers followed 328 patients with low back pain who went to 40 different Swedish chiropractic clinics. If the patients responded well when they were first adjusted they joined the study and received chiropractic maintenance care over the next year or symptom-guided care. The maintenance care patients were seen every 1 to 3 months with the intention being that they were checked before substantial pain reoccurred. Patients in the control group were told to call if and when pain recurred. 

They were then adjusted until they got better,  and they were told to call again if the pain returned. What the researchers were most interested in was the number of days of bothersome back pain suffered by each group throughout the 1-year trial period.

What they found was that the maintenance care group experienced 13 fewer days of pain over the course of the study on average compared to the symptom-guided group. The amazing thing from this study was that the maintenance care group needed less than 2 extra visits to their chiropractor over the course of a year to have 13 fewer days of pain. This suggests that patients who have had low back pain, and who respond well to care, should see their chiropractor regularly, irrespective of whether their symptoms have returned or not. This study did have some limitations of course. One limitation was that chiropractors were told not to schedule their maintenance care patients more frequently than once a month. So some patients in this group may have benefited even more if the chiropractors had been able to schedule their visits more frequently if they thought that was a good idea.

This study shows that it’s important to keep your spine working well, even if you don’t have pain or symptoms.

So, if you want to function at your optimal potential consider chiropractic maintenance care because the research suggests your spine will love you for it!

References

  1. Adams J, et al. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2017;42(23):1810-16.
  2. Leboeuf-Yde C, Hestbæk L. Chiropractic & Osteopathy 2008;16:3-3.
  3. Cholewicki J, et al. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2005;30(23):2614-20.
  4. Eklund, et al. PLoS One 2018;13(9):e0203029.

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Heidi Haavik – BSc(Physiol) BSc(Chiro) PhD
  • Dr. Kelly Holt – BSc, BSc(Chiro), PGDipHSc, PhD
  • Dr. Jenna Duehr – BChiro, BHSC (Nursing), MHSc
Apr 10
0

Chiropractic Care & Reaction Times

By | Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, kids chiropractic, stress | No Comments

How quickly do you react when someone pulls in front of you when you’re driving, or when a ball comes your way on the sporting field, or when you have a slip and need to catch yourself before you fall?Are you accident prone or a ninja warrior? If you’re accident-prone, how can you bring out your inner ninja warrior?

We all react to these day-to-day challenges at different speeds. Some of us react slowly and some of us react really quickly. How quickly you react to a situation can actually be really important in many ways, from helping to prevent accidents on the road, to reaching your optimal potential on the sporting field.

How quickly we react to a stimulus or situation is called our reaction time, and will depend on how fast our brain can sense what’s happening around us, then process that information, come up with a reaction plan, and then perform the appropriate response.

As you can see from this description, your reaction time depends on how efficiently your brain and nervous system are working. So, what can you do to help improve the efficiency of your nervous system? This is a really interesting question that chiropractic researchers have been trying to help answer. The reason that chiropractors are interested in reaction time is that chiropractic care aims to improve the communication between your brain and your body so you are better able to react and respond to your environment.

When your brain can accurately perceive what is going on inside and out, it can better control your body for the situation at hand, and move your muscles in the right order and at the right speed.1-3

Researchers have now published a number of studies that have shown that chiropractic care can actually make a difference to your reaction time.

One of the first really good studies to look at how chiropractic care affects reaction time was published back in 2000.4 In this study, the researchers asked a group of students to look at a computer screen that had a letter ‘R’ on it and to hit a key on the keyboard to show whether they thought the ‘R’ was the right way around or back to front. To make it tricky, the researchers rotated the ‘R’ to lots of different angles, that way the student being tested had to mentally rotate it back in their head to really work out if it was the right way around or not.

The researchers then got a chiropractor to either adjust the person or have them lie down on a chiropractic table, without doing an adjustment, as a control intervention. What the researchers found was that after an adjustment the study subjects improved their reaction time much more than the subjects who were in the control group. They concluded that the chiropractic adjustments may have affected how quickly their brain processed the information they were seeing, which was a really interesting finding.

In 2016, another group of researchers published a study that looked at how quickly a group of older people could take a step on a platform that had 4 panels that could light up.3 When a panel lit up, they’d have to stand on it as quickly as they could.

Being able to take a fast step is really important because scientists have shown that people who are quicker at taking a step are less likely to fall.5-6 In this study, they tested the older people before, during, and after receiving 12 weeks of chiropractic care or receiving their usual medical care. What they found, was that after 12 weeks there was a dramatic, significant improvement in the chiropractic group’s step time. The improvement seen in reaction time in this study was actually 2 and a half times greater than a large clinical trial that looked at the effects of 6 months of exercise on the same stepping task.7 This might be really important when it comes to someone stopping themselves from having a fall if they trip or slip.

In another study that was published recently, what they found was that after 12 weeks there was a dramatic, significant improvement in the chiropractic group’s step time. The improvement seen in reaction time in this study was actually 2 and a half times greater than a large clinical trial that looked at the effects of 6 months of exercise on the same stepping task.8

Eight researchers tested a group of special operation forces military personnel to see whether chiropractic adjustments improved how quickly they could react and touch a set of panels on the wall in front of them that would light up at random. What they found in this study, was that when these elite soldiers were adjusted, they were quicker at reacting and responding to the lit panels than if they had no adjustment. This is a really significant finding because just imagine how important reaction time could be to a soldier!!

So, you can see that researchers are discovering that chiropractic care really does seem to have an impact on how efficiently your brain can accurately perceive what is going on around you and react to it. And maybe this could help you to move from being accident-prone to a ninja warrior.

If you want to get your ninja warrior on, why don’t you consider having your spine checked by your family chiropractor?

References

  1. Haavik & Murphy. J Electromyogr Kinesiol 2012;22(5):768-76.
  2. Haavik & Murphy. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2011;34(2):88-97.
  3. Holt et al. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2016. 39(4):267-78.
  4. Kelly et al. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2000;23(4):246-51.
  5. Lord et al. Phys Ther 2003;83(3):237-52.
  6. Lord & Fitzpatrick. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2001;56(10):M627-32.
  7. Lord et al. J Am Geriatr Soc 2003;51(12):1685-92.
  8. DeVocht et al. Trials 2019;20(1):5-5. doi: 10.1186/s13063-018-3133-2. © 2020 Haavik Research Limited

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Heidi Haavik – BSc(Physiol) BSc(Chiro) PhD
  • Dr. Kelly Holt – BSc, BSc(Chiro), PGDipHSc, PhD
  • Dr. Jenna Duehr – BChiro, BHSC (Nursing), MHSc
Mar 17
0

Migraines & Chiropractic

By | Benefits of Chiropractic, chiropractic adjustment, Chiropractic Myths, migraines | No Comments

Migraines

Do you suffer from migraines? If you do, you will know how debilitating they can be. If you don’t, just imagine suffering with a throbbing headache for days on end, and feeling nauseous, and vomiting, and being unable to stand bright lights and loud noises. They really are awful!

For about 1 in 6 people around the world, they experience this on a regular basis, often many times each month.1 They are often severe and are considered by the World Health Organisation to be the most debilitating of all neurological disorders.1 Trying to carry on a normal life when you suffer from migraines can be really challenging. Caring for yourself, let alone a family, can be tough, and trying to work when all you want to do is hide in a dark quiet room can be impossible.

A sad fact is that almost half of sufferers don’t get the relief they need from usual drug treatment options.2 And to make matters worse, commonly prescribed medications for migraines can actually end up causing more headaches and more pain in the long run.2 This is a real problem!

That is why researchers and health professionals have been exploring what other healthcare options may help people who suffer from migraines. One of these options that have received quite a lot of research attention is chiropractic care. This may be because so many people with migraines see a chiropractor for help.2 Let’s take a look at what the research says about chiropractic care and migraines.

In 2019 a systematic review was published that looked at all of the clinical trials that had investigated whether chiropractic care can help people with migraines.2

What they found was that when all of the research is combined, people with migraines who saw a chiropractor or another health professional who provided spinal manipulation had fewer days with migraines each month. And they also experienced less migraine pain. That means that chiropractic care really does seem to help some people who suffer from migraines.

In one of the studies they were looking at, the researchers found that for about 1 in 5 people who suffer from migraines, their migraines almost went away completely after 2 months of chiropractic care!

We don’t know for sure who will respond well to chiropractic care, and we don’t know how much of an influence the placebo effect might have, but for some people, when they get under chiropractic care, their migraines almost completely resolve within just a couple of months.

So, if you suffer from them, or you know someone who does, consider chiropractic care, because it may really make a big difference to you or the people you care about. They don’t have to be a life sentence, so go and see a chiropractor and rediscover what life is supposed to be like.

References

  1. Goadsby PJ, et al. Pathophysiology of Migraine: A Disorder of Sensory Processing 2017;97(2):553-622.
  2. Rist PM, et al. Headache 2019;59(4):532-42.

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Heidi Haavik – BSc(Physiol) BSc(Chiro) PhD
  • Dr. Kelly Holt – BSc, BSc(Chiro), PGDipHSc, PhD
  • Dr. Jenna Duehr – BChiro, BHSC (Nursing), MHSc