If your aching knees prevent you from doing the things you want to do, you aren’t alone. An estimated 50 million Americans deal with knee pain on a regular basis. Your knees may swell, your kneecaps can shift, or you can feel like your knees are unstable — all things that may make it difficult even to walk.
As one of your largest joints, your knees carry a lot of weight. Unfortunately, they’re susceptible to injury — and re-injury. If you have an old sports injury, you’re likely to find that it flares up again at some point. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center explain more about four ways you can prevent chronic knee pain.
What causes chronic knee pain?
Chronic knee pain has many causes. Some of the most common causes for knee pain include the following:
- Sitting too much
- Obesity (excess weight puts more strain on your knees)
- Previous knee injury
- Osteoarthritis
- Gout (a buildup of lactic acid)
- Rheumatoid arthritis
If you have chronic knee pain, the best thing to do is to make an appointment with us. We can determine the root cause of your pain, which can point us in the right direction to fix it. Some of the most common ways to prevent future knee pain are included below.
1. Physical therapy
Physical therapy is one of the best things you can do to prevent chronic knee pain. Physical therapy uses custom-designed exercises to strengthen the muscles around your knee. When the muscles around your knee are stronger, your knee is better stabilized.
We may also give you some physical therapy exercises to take pressure off your knee. By using your muscles differently, you may not have as much pain.
2. Chiropractic adjustments
We may offer chiropractic adjustments to reduce the swelling and decrease the pain in your knee. When your body is out of alignment, it affects much more than just your back. Holding your spine in improper positions can affect many other parts of your body, including your knees, hips, and even your ankles.
3. Massage therapy
Massage therapy isn’t just about a session that makes you feel more relaxed. Massage therapy has many benefits, including less knee pain, reducing inflammation, and extending your range of motion.
4. Trigger point injections
Trigger point injections are administered in a part of your body where you have acute pain. For example, if you have a “knot” in your muscles, the trigger-point injection will be given in that knot in your muscles to relax the muscles. A trigger-point injection is a mixture of a steroid (to reduce inflammation) and an anesthetic.
If you have chronic knee pain, we can help you learn how to live more comfortably. Contact the providers at Beeson Wellness Center today, or request an appointment online.
Finding effective relief of arthritis is a real challenge. Your general practitioner may prescribe painkillers, but may not offer much other relief. You’ve thought about chiropractic care but wonder if it’s really safe.
In most cases, chiropractic care is a safe and effective form of treatment for arthritis. However, there are some cases in which arthritis needs more treatment. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center explain more about chiropractic care and arthritis.
What type of arthritis you have
The type of arthritis that you have is one of the biggest determining factors in how effective chiropractic care will be for you. Osteoarthritis is by far the most common type of arthritis, increasing in frequency with age. An estimated 32 million adults live with osteoarthritis.
Other types of arthritis have an autoimmune component, including rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis. Many of these conditions can also benefit from chiropractic care, but you may need complementary treatment from a traditional doctor as well.
Benefits of chiropractic care for arthritis
Chiropractic care is generally safe for arthritis. Some of the benefits we see for patients with arthritis include:
Improved range of motion
Chiropractic care improves the range of motion for all types of arthritis, including the inflammatory or autoimmune types. However, you should use caution about getting certain types of chiropractic care if you have autoimmune arthritis and are currently in the middle of a flare-up. Make sure to tell your chiropractor if this is the case.
Reduced swelling
Osteoarthritis often comes with swelling around your joints. Chiropractic care can reduce this swelling, which can ultimately make your joints much more comfortable.
Decreased pain levels
One of the biggest benefits of chiropractic care is that it can significantly decrease your pain levels. One way that we achieve this is by reducing your stress, which is itself directly linked to your pain level. Another way that we achieve this is by introducing exercises that you can do that can counterbalance ways that you may be adjusting your body to adapt to the arthritis.
More than just adjustments
You may think of chiropractic care as adjusting your spine and neck, which is certainly part of what we offer. However, many of our other treatments are also helpful in treating arthritis, including the following:
Ultrasound
The sound waves produced by ultrasound therapy provide a soothing effect for your aching joints and soft tissues. This often reduces your pain, swelling, and stiffness.
Cold laser
Cold laser treatments target the painful areas on your body without heat and can reduce pain and swelling.
Infrared sauna
This treatment modality uses infrared technology to heal your body from the inside out. Infrared sauna technology improves arthritis symptoms by stimulating circulation at the affected areas.
Electrotherapy
This type of treatment uses painless electrical impulses to stimulate the nerves and muscles in the affected areas of your body. These electrical impulses encourage healing of the soft tissues.
Lifestyle modifications
Because chiropractic care treats your whole body as an integrated system, your chiropractic provider will recommend lifestyle modifications when applicable. This may be physical therapy exercises, nutrition counseling, or even weight loss assistance.
If you have arthritis, the providers at Beeson Wellness Center can help restore you to wellness. Contact us today, or request an appointment online.
Back pain is one of the most common conditions. Nearly 65 million Americans have experienced a recent episode of back pain, with 8% of all adults reporting chronic back pain. It’s a major cause of disability and discomfort.
If you’re experiencing lower back pain, you clearly aren’t alone. But lower back pain is often treatable. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center explain more about the five most common causes of lower back pain and how it can be treated.
Lack of physical mobility
Our modern lifestyles often make it way too easy to avoid physical mobility. Many of us work in jobs for which we have to sit at a desk all day, then we go home, and it’s too easy to sit on the couch watching TV. You may have to make a concentrated effort to be physically active because your lifestyle makes it too easy not to do so.
Being too sedentary contributes to lower back pain in three significant ways:
Poor posture
Sitting a lot often means that your spine becomes compressed in many unnatural ways. You may have slouched shoulders, a protruding neck, and an arched lower back. These positions can make your lower back hurt.
Weak muscles
When you aren’t active enough, your muscles become weaker. Your core muscles, glutes, back muscles, and hips all become weaker. These muscles support your spine, and back pain is often the result when those muscles are too weak.
Poor mobility
The muscles in your glutes and legs can also become tighter, which makes it harder to move your body. This can create a condition called lordosis, which is an excessive curve of your spine. This can pull all the muscles of your back out of proper alignment.
Sleeping position
Your sleeping position can also play a big role in lower back pain, especially because you spend so many hours asleep. Sometimes, this can be temporary, just because you slept in a weird position. But if you find yourself waking up with back pain — especially if it gets better throughout the day — it might be a sign that you need a new pillow or mattress.
Sciatica
Your sciatic nerve runs from your lower back all the way down through your buttocks and the back of your thighs. Sometimes, your sciatic nerve can become compressed, which sends shooting pains along the nerve. Although sciatica is particularly common during pregnancy, it can happen to anyone at any time.
Spinal disorders
Sometimes, lower back pain is caused by another injury to or disorder of your spine. Some of these conditions include:
- Slipped or herniated disc
- Degenerative disc disease
- Spinal stenosis (a narrowing of your spinal column)
- Spondylitis (inflammation of the joints between your vertebrae)
Treating lower back pain
Most causes of lower back pain are treatable with a combination of chiropractic adjustments and physical therapy. Chiropractic adjustments put your spine back into proper alignment, which often needs to be performed more than once to counteract the stresses of your daily lifestyle.
Physical therapy also aims to strengthen muscles that have become weak, which can alleviate your back pain. We can also help you to find ways to incorporate exercise into your daily life, even if only in several small bursts. The goal is to help you to become more active so that your back pain is less of a problem.
If you’re troubled by lower back pain, it isn’t a condition with which you have to live. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center can help you to live a healthier life with less pain. Contact us today, or request an appointment online.
If you’ve been in an auto accident recently, you may be experiencing some residual pain as a result. In fact, it’s actually quite common for the pain from an auto accident to appear gradually in the days or weeks after the accident.
Auto accidents can cause soft tissue injuries, which can be serious even if the accident itself wasn’t. These injuries don’t tend to heal themselves with time; they’re more likely to get worse. Getting treatment right away is essential, and one treatment we use is massage therapy. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center explain more about what to expect from massage therapy after a car accident.
Why you should get massage therapy
After an auto accident, you might not think about the importance of getting a massage. You may have many worries to tend to after the accident, like getting your car repaired and finding a replacement in the meantime. And you may also have misconceptions about the value of massage and think that it’s only a way to pamper yourself.
The truth is that massage therapy can help you to recover from an accident both physically and emotionally. Your body is holding a lot of tension, and you may not even be aware of it. This tension can have physical effects as well, including delaying your healing. Massage therapy can also reduce inflammation, address whiplash, and help relieve neck pain.
What to expect from massage therapy
The first visit will likely assess your overall condition, including any injuries from the accident that may be obvious. We may do a series of X-rays, as well as other diagnostic imaging like surface electromyography and ultrasound. Then, we’ll come up with an appropriate treatment plan for your individual case. Some of the conditions we can treat with massage therapy include:
Whiplash
Whiplash is a common injury after a car accident. Even if the accident seemed minor, consider the fact that a 160-pound person going 30 mph is propelled forward by about 4,800 pounds of force. If you’re belted in as you should be, your body still experiences this amount of force, which can cause soft tissue injuries.
Other signs of whiplash include limited range of motion, stiffness, and pain, in addition to mental symptoms like memory loss, lack of focus, and insomnia. Massage therapy works to gently but effectively resolve whiplash and you should include this treatment regimen.
Concussion
If you have a concussion as a result of the accident, this is caused by a subluxation or misalignment of the vertebrae. Massage therapy can realign the vertebrae and allow your concussion to heal. Massage techniques that are designed to strengthen your parasympathetic nervous system help your body recover more quickly from a concussion.
Swelling
Swelling is quite common after an auto accident. This occurs because the soft tissues have been injured. Massage therapy helps improve your circulation and reduces your swelling in the process. This is especially helpful if you are experiencing knee pain and swelling.
Overall pain
After an accident, you may not know exactly where you hurt because your whole body feels sore. Massage therapy is particularly useful for reducing this type of generalized pain because it improves the function of your lymphatic system. Sometimes, we may also use trigger point therapy for treating overall pain.
You don’t need to suffer from the usual symptoms like pain, limited range of motion, and dizziness after a car accident, but you have to seek medical attention. The providers at Beeson Wellness Center can help you return to normal. Contact us today, or request an appointment online.
