As a family chiropractor in Centennial Colorado, I’ve worked with all kinds of patients over the past few years. We treat people from 0 to 100, and everywhere in between. We’ve helped patients:

Recover from birth trauma. As a newborn, an infant goes through a traumatic experience during delivery. Health consequences and hidden injuries can take years to materialize. Adjustments shortly after birth can help an infant recover hidden nerve damage, and avoid potential problems down the road.

Excel at sports. Kids and sports go together. From soccer, to baseball to football, we’re pushing our kids to excel at earlier ages. With more access to sports, there are also increased risks of injury. Chiropractic care from early on can help reduce the possibility of injury, and help a child recover quicker when injury occurs.

Reduce symptoms of disease. From fybromyalgia to migraines, a good portion of today’s diseases are caused by stress. Stress is linked to nerve damage, which can be controlled by adjustments through chiropractic care.

Concentrate of good health instead of responding to problems. Western medicine has always been reactionary. Wait until you have a problem, then deal with it by throwing medicine at it. Unfortunately that has led to our current medical crisis. If you are ready to focus on wellness and how you can maintain good health now and into the future, chiropractic care is for you.

Here are good rules of thumb to follow when buying and packing a child’s backpack.

1. Selection. Choosing the right size backpack is the most important step to safe backpack use. Choose the right size for your child, and make sure straps can be adjusted to fit your child.

2. Pack Right. The maximum weight of the loaded backpack should not exceed 15 % of the child’s body weight. Teach your child the importance of packing a backpack, what they should carry in it, and what they can leave at home or at school.  Tip: If the backpack forces the wearer to move forward to carry, it’s overloaded.

3. Lift Right. Face the pack, bend at the knees and use both hands to check the weight of the pack.  Lift with the legs.  Apply one shoulder strap and then the other.  Tip: Don’t sling the backpack onto one shoulder. Distribute the weight evenly across your back.

4. Wear it Right. Use both shoulder straps – snug, but not too tight.  Tip: When the backpack has a waist strap – use it.

Backpacks are a popular and practical way for children and teenagers to carry school books and supplies.  When used correctly, backpacks can be a good way to carry the necessities of the school day. Be sure your child’s school allows students to stop at their lockers throughout the day.

Backpacks are designed to distribute the weight of the load among some of the body’s strongest muscles. However, backpacks that are too heavy or are worn incorrectly can cause problems. Improperly used backpacks may injure muscles and joints. This can lead to severe back, neck, and shoulder pain, as well as long term posture problems. Share these guidelines to help your kids select backpacks and use them safely.

Do not ignore any back pain in a child or teenager. It’s never too young to begin seeing a chiropractor. A chiropractor can adjust a child and keep them on track for avoiding back pain later in life. .

Do you experience pain in your joints on a regular basis?

Over-the-counter solutions not working anymore?

Don’t want to start another prescription to try and solve the problem?

Then it is time to explore the world of Chiropractic therapy.  Chiropractic is a form of spinal manipulation, which is one of the oldest healing practices, and yet still widely misunderstood.

In 1895, Daniel David Palmer founded the modern profession of chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. Palmer was a self-taught healer and a student of healing philosophies of the day. He observed that the body has a natural healing ability that he believed was controlled by the nervous system. He also believed that subluxations, or misalignments of the spine (a concept that had already existed in the bonesetter and osteopathic traditions), interrupt or interfere with this “nerve flow.” Palmer suggested that if an organ does not receive its normal supply of impulses from the nerves, it can become diseased. This line of thinking led him to develop a procedure to “adjust” the vertebrae, the bones of the spinal column, with the goal of correcting subluxations.

What Is Chiropractic Therapy?  Chiropractic is a form of health care that focuses on the relationship between the body’s structure, primarily of the spine, and function.  Chiropractic is most often used to treat musculoskeletal conditions, problems with the  muscles, joints, bones and connective tissues (such as cartilage, ligaments, and tendons).

Doctors of chiropractic, who are also called chiropractors or chiropractic physicians, use a type of hands-on therapy called manipulation (or adjustment) as their core clinical procedure. Manipulation is passive joint movement beyond the normal range of motion. The term adjustment is preferred in chiropractic.  The basic concepts of chiropractic can be described as:

• the body has a powerful self-healing ability
• the body’s structure (primarily that of the spine) and its function are closely related, and this relationship affects health
• chiropractic therapy is given with the goals of normalizing this relationship between structure and function and assisting the body as it heals

So, the next time you feel a twinge or a deep ache in your joints, consider the alternative world of healing in Chiropractic therapy.

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The fact is, stress is real. It’s something you can actually track and measure. Science shows that higher stress levels can lead to a variety of health problems. The good news is your stress can be managed.

Stress management starts with identifying the sources of stress in your life. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Your true sources of stress aren’t always obvious, and it’s all too easy to overlook your own stress-inducing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Sure, you may know that you’re constantly worried about work deadlines. But maybe it’s your procrastination, rather than the actual job demands, that leads to deadline stress.

If your methods of coping with stress aren’t contributing to your greater emotional and physical health, it’s time to find healthier ones. There are many healthy ways to manage and cope with stress, but they all require change. You can either change the situation or change your reaction. When deciding which option to choose, it’s helpful to think of the four A’s: avoid, alter, adapt, or accept.

Learn how to say “no”
Know your limits and stick to them. Whether in your personal or professional life, refuse to accept added responsibilities when you’re close to reaching the goal. Taking on more than you can handle is a surefire recipe for stress.

Avoid people who stress you out
If someone consistently causes stress in your life and you can’t turn the relationship around, limit the amount of time you spend with that person or end the relationship entirely.

Take control of your environment
If the evening news makes you anxious, turn the TV off. If traffic’s got you tense, take a longer but less-traveled route. If going to the market is an unpleasant chore, do your grocery shopping online.

Avoid hot-button topics
If you get upset over religion or politics, cross them off your conversation list. If you repeatedly argue about the same subject with the same people, stop bringing it up or excuse yourself when it’s the topic of discussion.

Pare down your to-do list
Analyze your schedule, responsibilities, and daily tasks. If you’ve got too much on your plate, distinguish between the “shoulds” and the “musts.” Drop tasks that aren’t truly necessary to the bottom of the list or eliminate them entirely.

Take time for yourself
It doesn’t have to be hours every day; even something simple can do the trick. A bubble bath before bed. Reading a chapter in a book when you get home from work. A great massage once a month. And your regular trip to the chiropractor to help keep your body in top shape.

You can take control of your stress – are you ready?

Integrated Approach
Chiropractors consider the holistic relationship between all of the body systems. Likewise, soccer players rely on the strength of their bones and muscles, the endurance of their respiratory system, the speed of their reflexes and the efficiency of their cardiovascular system to keep them in top shape during a game. Chiropractic care addresses all of the areas required for top soccer players through an integrated approach to medicine that recognizes the connection of the body systems.

Treating Injuries
Injuries in soccer are common; stress injuries in particular are everyday affairs on the soccer field. When a player relies on pain killers to treat pain, he runs the risk of exacerbating the injury because he is only addressing the symptoms rather than the injury itself. Chiropractic treatments provide pain management as well as treatment for the injury itself. Chiropractic care for soccer players provides relief as well as recovery from injuries.

Improving Reflexes
Though much of chiropractic care focuses on joints and muscles, some research has shown that chiropractic medicine also have benefits in the nervous system. The nervous system interacts with the musculoskeletal system during the reflex actions required to guard a goal and measure a kick. Proper alignment promotes the flow of nerve messages and oxygenated blood throughout the body.

Lower Body Focus
Most soccer injuries occur in the lower half of the body including the knees, ankles and shins. Chiropractic medicine is especially effective in treating these problem areas for soccer players. Lower body alignments and massage are simple and routine procedures than can be tailored to a soccer player’s specific injuries or ailments.

Musculoskeletal Maintenance
Even without injuries, soccer players who receive regular chiropractic alignments report fewer injuries and pain as well as more comfort during playing time. The more comfortable a player feels, the better his performance during a game.

[Received a sports injury this summer? Ready to take your soccer game to the next level? Maybe its time you tried Watts Chiropractic. Helping kids and adults take their soccer game to the next level with chiropractic care.]

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Pain in the lower back is a common concern for nearly 90% of the American population and will occur at some point in their lifetime.  This is not a specific disorder rather, it is often a symptom of a variety of causes such as: overexertion, injuries to muscles and bones, tumors, falls, improper lifting, ill-fitting shoes and a poor back support mattresses just to name a few.

The causes can be as varied as the treatments subscribed to affect relief.  Simple, over the counter types of aspirin, analgesic muscle rubs, soaking in a tepid bath with Epsom Salts are the most common forms of relief and are appropriate for short-term back pain.  Persistent lower back pain can be harder to diagnose and sometimes even more difficult to deliver relief.  The majority of physicians will at first subscribe mild to moderate pharmaceutical medications and muscle relaxants then monitor the patient’s progress.  However, when these don’t work, more than half begin to look elsewhere, and look towards chiropractic care.

If your spine is mis-aligned or you have soft tissue damage that is causing pain, there is no pharmaceutical that can fix it.  Chiropractors provide physical solutions to help the body heal from many conditions that are physical in origin.  Spinal manipulation can be quite beneficial during the first signs of lower back pain.  If the spine is in its proper alignment, muscles and nerves resort to their natural path in conjunction with the body.  The objective of chiropractic adjustment reduces pressure on the spine, which results in increased range of motion. It reduces nerve irritability and muscle spasms, which results in reduced pain and improved mobility.

Chiropractors are licensed and recognized health care providers with training and standards as rigorous as any medical student.  They are subjected to the same testing procedures and monitoring by state and national peer-review boards.  Medicare, Medicaid and Workers’ Compensation programs all cover chiropractic care.  And study after study shows the superiority of chiropractic in helping patients with a host of conditions. And the best benefit of all is that it is a non addictive form of pain relief.

The next time you incur mild to moderate lower back pain, consider making an appointment with your local chiropractor first and experience for yourself the non-pharmaceutical benefits of spinal manipulation.

Yes, there are times when the drugs that they produce save lives.  I am not disputing that.  However, most of the drugs they produce and market have nothing to do with saving lives; they are symptom cover ups and quick fixes for things that healthy living and a positive attitude would correct.  It’s a branch of legal drug trade that I have a problem with.  We now have 1 in 6 adults in this country on Prozac or a similar “lifestyle” drugs, we have nearly 8 million children on Ritalin, we have antibiotics that are over prescribed by at least 50%, and the list goes on and on.

Let’s face it; we have a massive drug problem.  In 1998 the U.S. spent $93 Billion on prescription drugs, and in the same year, spent $96 Billion to treat the side effects of those drugs.  Not to mention the real kicker:  prescription drugs properly prescribed and taken KILL 106,000 Americans each year, and that’s only in hospitals and does not take into account nursing homes, people taking drugs at home or any drugs that are taken or given improperly.

You may ask why I encourage patients to stay drug-free or why I push you to refer friends and family to our office for what chiropractic has to offer – well – look at the alternative!

The scariest part of it all is that while you are reading this article the legal drug trade has marketing executives in fancy suits, in fancy board rooms figuring out ways to get more drugs into you, your friends and your family.  To make it even worse, some of those executives are there just to figure out how to get more drugs to our children.

In the words of the band, the Temptations, “I ain’t too proud to beg!”  I beg you to tell people you care about to try chiropractic, to come find out what chiropractic has to offer.  If we can merely keep someone you love from taking unnecessary medication we may literally save their life!  We may keep them from becoming one of the 106,000 Americans that lose their lives to the most profitable business on the planet:  The legal drug trade.

It seems a bit counterintuitive to visit a chiropractor, whose specialty is in bones and muscles, for asthma help, but chiropractors also specialize in restricted blood and nerve pathways. Spinal realignments are intended to properly align the vertebra to reduce constricted blood vessels and nerves. Blood vessels and nerves that are impaired reduce the effectiveness of several body systems because of the reduced capacity to transmit oxygenates blood or signals from the brain.

Several research studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of chiropractic treatments for asthma control. Dr. Ray Hayek of Iowa conducted a study in which over four hundred asthma sufferers were given a range of manual therapy treatments for symptom management. He found that the patient group that received spiral alignments showed the most improvement in symptoms, suggesting that chiropractors can be utilized for asthma treatment.

The precise reasoning behind the promising results are not entirely clear, but many experts believe that spinal alignments improve overall immune system function and therefore reduce the likelihood of asthma attacks. Though the fact remains that asthma has no cure, research suggests that the benefits of chiropractic medicine extends beyond what had been previously believed. Chiropractics are no longer relegated to the world of bone and muscle treatment; with one more treatment plan in the queue, asthma patients may just breathe a little easier.

Think you’ve tried chiropractic care in the past and it just wasn’t for you? Think again.

Did you know there are many different types of chiropractic techniques used by chiropractors around the world? Some chiropractors use a holistic approach. Some mix in modern western medicine with their chiropractic beliefs. And still others blend a variety of chiropractic philosophies into their current practice.

Just like all dentists treat the teeth, yet have different philosophies and bedside manners, chiropractors each bring their own beliefs, personal experiences and education to the table. Which allows you to make choices on what is the best method for you.

If you’ve heard of the Blair technique before, how do you find a Blair Chiropractor in Colorado?

Luckily, you’ll find a chiropractor specializing in the Blair technique right here in the South Denver Metro area.

The Blair Technique is a specific type of chiropractic service that analyzes and adjusts the upper cervical vertebrae of the spinal column. Special attention is given to the first two cervical vertebrae – the atlas and axis – as they are the most freely moveable vertebrae in the spinal column, and the ones most often misaligned.

Our sole purpose as a Blair Chiropractor is to analyze and correct vertebral subluxations in a precise manner. Our goal is not to diagnose or treat disease or conditions. Instead, we rely on your body’s intelligence to mend, repair and maintain health from within.

Ready to give the Blair Chiropractic Technique a try? Give us a call today.

The reason I got into chiropractic care is because I wanted to concentrate on healthy living, not reacting to problems as they happen. I want to be just as active in my 20’s and 30’s as I will be in my 80’s and 90’s. And that doesn’t happen unless you plan for it as early as possible.

Chiropractic care can help you live pain free.
One of the reasons many of us slow down is because of pain. When a pain starts in your neck or lower back, its automatic to want to avoid pain. And because you feel pain when you’re active, you simply stop doing things that aggravate the problem. Chiropractic care can restore proper function to the joints and areas where you experience pain, giving you back the freedom to do what you love doing.

Chiropractic care can help you live with less stress.
We all have stress in our lives. That’s a fact of life. But sometimes you can have added stress if you can’t sleep well, or don’t feel your best. Restoring your health can give you back peace of mind, and allow you to feel better about yourself.

Chiropractic care can help you change the way you think of western medicine.
What seems healthier to you, doing things naturally, or supplementing with medicines and surgeries? Chiropractic care focuses on wellness, and restoring your body to a healthy condition. I believe many of today’s most common problems are caused by too many surgeries and over medication. Start with the root cause, and work to correct the function that exists within your body.

Only then will you live pain free, stress free, and a more health, balanced life.