As a Chiropractor who specializes in prenatal care, I have always been an advocate of women taking care of themselves through pregnancy. However, now that I am 27 weeks pregnant myself, I realize the importance of this now more than ever! So many of my patients are asking me, “how are you feeling now that you are so far along?” I always answer that I feel fantastic! I have been taking great care of myself through this pregnancy, and have a wonderful healthcare team on my side. For those mommas who are wondering how to take care of themselves and have the best pregnancy possible, I will tell you the top 5 things that I recommend:

1) Regular Chiropractic Care: I have been under regular chiropractic care for over 10 years, however, pregnancy is a crucial time to continue regular adjustments for several reasons:
a. Chiropractic adjustments allow our master control system, our nervous system, to function properly. Since mom shares a nervous system with baby, this is imperative for mom to be healthy, and for proper growth and development of your little one!
b. Chiropractic adjustments (utilizing the Webster technique) allow for the hips and soft tissue structures to balance so that the baby receives proper nerve flow, and so baby can naturally go into the best position possible for birth. This also leads to a shorter, less painful, and more straightforward delivery both for mom and baby! Who doesn’t want that??
c. Mom’s body is constantly changing throughout pregnancy and chiropractic care allows mom to adapt to these changes. This leads to a MUCH more comfortable and pain free pregnancy!

2) Massage: My career as a chiropractor is extremely physical and I have to keep up with its demands (in addition to the increased physical demands of pregnancy). In order to keep my body functioning optimally and reduce overall stress, I get 2 prenatal massages each month. This not only promotes overall wellness but helps to improve circulation, reduce muscle tension, and relieves physical stress placed on various joints.

3) Acupuncture: Acupuncture helps to regulate hormones which can not only help with infertility (prior to conception), but can also minimize typical pregnancy symptoms including heartburn, nausea, or overall stress. In addition, towards the end of pregnancy, different acupuncture points can be used to promote labor and get things moving! I get acupuncture treatments every 4 weeks to keep my hormones in check.

4) Proper Nutrition: In addition to eating clean whole foods, I take a daily whole food based prenatal vitamin. There are several that are wonderful choices, however, I personally use Innate Choice Baby and Me Prenatal vitamin. A whole food based prenatal is able to be absorbed and readily used by the body for nutrients.

Furthermore, I would suggest having blood work done throughout the pregnancy so that you can see if you deficient in any nutrients or vitamins and find a high quality supplement to help with those deficiencies.

5) Regular Movement: Whether this is a prenatal yoga class, a long walk on the beach, or a swim, movement is key to keeping your body in optimal shape during pregnancy. Stay away from high intensity workouts and find a low impact exercise that you enjoy doing to keep your body moving! I do some sort of exercise/movement each day to keep my body in shape!

From the beginning of time, women have been cared for and nurtured as they become mothers. Family, friends, and the community would gather around the new family to support and guide them during the early weeks and months with a new baby. Now today, we have doulas to be a part of mom’s support system and nurture her.

A doula is “a trained professional who provides continuous physical, emotional, and informational support to a mother before, during, and shortly after childbirth to help her achieve the healthiest, and most satisfying experience possible.”

Whether it’s a family’s first or tenth baby, a doula can help support the family, and make the birth and postpartum experience better.

What are the Benefits of Having a Doula?

Physical Support
– Continuous uninterrupted presence; freedom from other obligations, other patients, hospital polices etc. – only there for mom!
– Position ideas with hands-on comfort measures (comforting touch, counter pressure, breathing techniques, etc.)
– Help a malposition baby find its way through the pelvis
Emotional Support
– Help mom and family feel supported, and ease the emotional experience of birth
– Knowledge and understanding of emotions and physiology of labor
– Ability to remain calm and objective for mom
Advocacy
– Be the bridge of communication between mom and her providers, and advocating for mom’s wishes and goals
Partner Support
– Support the birth partner in being as involved as they’d like with the birth
Maternity Care
– Reduces the length of labor
– Less likely to need Pitocin
– Less likely to have a cesarean birth
– Less likely to use any pain medication
– More likely to rate their childbirth experience positively
– Increases breastfeeding and enhances bonding time

                 

The acceptance of doulas in maternity care is growing rapidly with the recognition of their important contribution to the improved physical outcomes and emotional well being of mothers and infants.

For more information check out “The Doula Book,” and https://www.dona.org.

Did you know that Tara is a certified DONA doula? Ask her any questions!

Sleep is one of the most important things you can do for your health daily. Sleeping recharges your whole system, especially your brain. When you are sleeping, your brain has a very unique system of filing and filtering the important and unimportant things. Therefore, when you do not sleep well, or sleep very little, you are not giving your brain the ability rest, cleanse, and file and delete.

To function at our best and have our bodies function optimally, we need adequate and consistent nightly rest. What happens when we don’t get enough quality sleep? We have fatigue, irritability, low productivity, mood swings, and poor behavior. This puts us at greater risk for heart disease and cancer, and harms the brain by halting new neuron production, interferes with growth hormone production, weakens your immune system, decreases problem solving ability, and causes constipation and trouble focusing. Even a few days of sleep deprivation or disruption, can increase appetite, increase blood pressure and cortisol levels, and elevates insulin and blood glucose. These changes can lead to an increase in memory impairment, and an increased risk for Alzheimer’s and dementia.

 

Common Sleep Disruptors:

Noise: Even unconsciously observed or background noise in people’s normal surroundings, such as local traffic, music, and television, can have a negative impact on your sleep quality.

Stress: Stress keeps the brain active and impedes “sleep initiation” through stimulating the body.

Alcohol, Nicotine & Caffeine: Consumption of alcohol shortly before bedtime can impair sleep that night, and alcohol dependency can lead to chronic sleep problems. Even if alcohol helps you doze off quickly, after it metabolizes it will interrupt your sleep later. In addition, exposure to nicotine is associated with sleep problems. Large doses of caffeine close to bedtime will disrupt sleep. The half-life for caffeine is about 4 to 6 hours.

Technology: Blue lights from computers and phones are very stimulating and places stress on your eyes. The blue lights send signals to your brain that you should be on full alert, when it is actually time for bed. F.lux is a great app to download that adjusts the color of the screen to adapt to the time of day.

 

How to have a Good Night’s Sleep

Exercise: Moderate bouts of exercise lead to improvements in the following night’s sleep. Even a little will go a long way; just 10-20 minutes of yoga or light exercise daily will help you sleep better. A daily 15-30 minute walk after dinner is a great way to increase digestion, move your legs, and promote better sleep.

Establish a Bedtime Routine: Maintaining the same bedtime and waking time make it easier to sleep deeply and wake more easily. Creating a routine of limiting electronics at least one hour before bed, drinking a warm cup of tea (chamomile, lemon balm, dandelion, passionflower), taking a warm bath, stretching, meditating, and reading a book is an excellent routine to develop to help promote and improve sleep.

The Bed is for Sleeping: Keeping your bedroom as a sleeping sanctuary is a great way to consciously think that your bed is for sleeping only. Avoid over stimulating tasks in bed such as work and technology use, to help your brain efficiently kick into sleep mode. Use a Himalayan salt lamp, essential oil diffuser, air purifier, and play meditation music to help create a calming and sleeping sanctuary.

Regular Chiropractic Care: Chiropractic care works with your nervous system, which is the master control system of your body; controlling and coordinating all your organs and systems. Adjustments activate the parasympathetic, “the rest and digest” portion of your nervous system, and as a result, decreases stress and promotes relaxation within your body. Less stress and more relaxation improves your overall quality of sleep.

Finding a good chiropractor isn’t only key to correcting the damage caused by years of poor posture and/or trauma — it’s also important for everyone wanting to take a proactive approach to his or her health care.

Here is some of the medical research and studies proving the therapeutic benefits of chiropractic.

                         

1. Sciatica
The European Spine Journal published the findings from a clinical trial last year uncovering how chiropractic adjustments resulted in a 72 percent success rate in treating sciatica and related symptoms compared to the 20 percent success from physical therapy and 50 percent from corticosteroid injections.

Compared to most medical treatments, few interventions can initiate back pain relief and healing like chiropractic adjustments can!

2. Low Back Pain and Neck Pain
In a study published in the British Medical Journal 2003, 183 patients with neck pain were randomly allocated to manual therapy (spinal mobilization), physiotherapy (mainly exercise) or general practitioner care (counseling, education and drugs) in a 52-week study.

The clinical outcome measures showed that chiropractic adjustments resulted in faster recovery than physiotherapy and general practitioner care. Moreover, total costs of the chiropractic-treated patients were about one-third of the costs of physiotherapy or general practitioner care.

Another study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics found patients with chronic low-back pain treated by chiropractors showed greater improvement and satisfaction at one month than patients treated by family physicians. Satisfaction scores were higher for chiropractic patients.

A higher proportion of chiropractic patients (56 percent vs. 13 percent) reported that their low-back pain was better or much better, whereas nearly one-third of medical patients reported their low-back pain was worse or much worse.

In a study funded by NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to test the effectiveness of different approaches for treating neck pain, 272 participants were divided into three groups that received either spinal manipulative therapy from a doctor of chiropractic (DC), pain medication (over-the-counter pain relievers, narcotics and muscle relaxants) or exercise recommendations.

After 12 weeks, about 57 percent of those who met with DCs and 48 percent who exercised reported at least a 75 percent reduction in pain, compared to 33 percent of the people in the medication group. After one year, approximately 53 percent of the drug-free groups continued to report at least a 75 percent reduction in pain, compared to just 38 percent pain reduction among those who took medication.

3. Headaches (Tension and Migraine)
Second only to back pain, headaches are one of the most common conditions regularly managed by chiropractors.

A group trial found that 22 percent of people who had chiropractic treatment saw the number of attacks drop by 90 percent. In that same study, 49 percent said they had a significant reduction in pain intensity.

Compared to most medical treatments, few interventions can initiate headache relief like chiropractic adjustments can!

4. Colic and Ear Infections
A 2012 study published in Journal of Manipulative Physiological Therapeutics found that chiropractic adjustments greatly reduced colic symptoms.

Although very few randomized control trials have been conducted describing the clinical effects of chiropractic care on children, literally scores of case studies have been documented that describe how children suffering from otitis media (ear infections), acid reflux and colic have experienced complete to near complete resolution after just a few visits.

The reasons for this vary, but one common theme is that nerves controlling the gut and brain are intricately connected to each other and are quite sensitive to neurological insult caused by vertebral subluxations.

5. Neurological Conditions
Exciting research is currently being conducted via upright MRI showing how upper cervical adjustments affect various brain-based conditions. What we have seen so far is quite remarkable.

Not only are MRI scans revealing that cerebral spinal fluid and blood flow are markedly increased after a chiropractic adjustment, researchers are observing that cerebellar invagination (when the cerebellum drops down below the skull line) is being reversed and brain plaquing (common in multiple sclerosis patients) is disappearing!

6. Blood Pressure
In 2007, George Bakris, the world expert on hypertension, published a study with a team of researchers in the Human Journal of Hypertension proving that one upper cervical chiropractic adjustment had the same effect as two blood pressure-lowering drugs. Even more fascinating, the effects of just one adjustment lasted more than six months!

Compared to the placebo-treated patients, those who got the real procedure saw an average 14 mm Hg greater drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure count) and an average 8 mm Hg greater drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom blood pressure number).

Other studies have shown similar findings with hypotensive patients, and their low blood pressure was raised to normal levels after chiropractic care. This is exciting because it highlights the body’s ability to create a homeostatic balanced environment once vertebral subluxations are removed.

7. Surgery Prevention
Chiropractic has long been heralded by natural health care providers as a natural method to prevent back surgery.

In fact, the Journal of the American Medical Association just recently published its low back pain guidelines and suggested that people suffering from back pain first try chiropractic before resorting to surgery.

8. Frozen Shoulder
Last year a clinical trial was published describing how patients suffering from the debilitating condition frozen shoulder responded to chiropractic care.

Of the 50 patients: 16 resolved completely; 25 showed 75 percent to 90 percent improvement; eight showed 50 percent to 75 percent improvement; and one showed 0 percent to 50 percent improvement.

9. Scoliosis
Chiropractic adjustments for scoliosis coupled with muscular rehabilitation techniques may help prevent the progression of scoliosis. Organizations like the nonprofit Clear Institute founded by Dr. Dennis Woggon have set out to empower health care professionals with an effective chiropractic system to treat people with scoliosis.

They’ve perfected a model and discovered that it is possible to effectively treat the condition without the use of restrictive braces or dangerous surgeries. In many case studies, participants have seen a 10 percent to 30 percent decrease in their scoliosis curvatures.

10. Athletic Performance
There is a reason why athletes both today and in the past, like Michael Phelps, Jerry Rice and Joe Montana, are under regular chiropractic care. In fact, over 50 percent of NFL teams have a chiropractor on staff.

Because it is so effective at pain-based and pathological conditions, one of the most overlooked aspects of chiropractic care is that it enhances personal and athletic performance. Studies have sown that it:

Reduces inflammatory cytokines
Boosts your immune system
Enhances pulmonary function
Decreases mental and oxidative stress
Relieves muscle tension
Naturally increases your energy level

Studies have even proved, objectively and subjectively, that chiropractic patients experience “overall increased bodily function,” which includes bowl regularity and mental clarity.

Basically, because it helps place your body in the position where it can heal itself, chiropractic adjustments can free your immune system up to focus on keeping you healthy, which enhances your ability to think, move and perform.

Have you been checked by a Chiropractor? Call our office @ 727-498-5643 !

 

Reference: https://draxe.com/10-researched-benefits-chiropractic-adjustments/