Most head pains are caused by problems outside the head: too little sleep, too much alcohol, or too much stress. Rarely is there a trauma in the head or a stroke causing the pain. More commonly, neck injuries from whiplash or sporting accidents can cause headaches. This is because the spinal joints have been sprained […]
Fibromyalgia and Vitamins – What’s the Connection?
Fibromyagia is a debilitating disease that affects millions of Americans, with most sufferers being female. Research has explored a lot of different possibilities, but fibromyalgia remains a poorly understood disorder with no known single cause. Fibromyalgia can be more thought of as a global disease with likely many different factors coming together to create the […]
Can Losing Weight Really Help Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?
Losing weight is important to your health for a variety of reasons. Your heart health is especially affected by excess weight. Diabetes, stroke, and back pain are also more common in persons with excess weight. However, most of us do not have enough lean body mass and need to do something about changing our nutrition […]
Long-Term Results for Neck Injury
A neck injury such as a pulled muscle or a “knot” in the muscle is something we’ve all experienced. These little aches and pains usually go away on their own or with a little massage from a loved one. But sometimes the neck injury is more substantial, such as in a whiplash or sports injury. […]
Things to Do and Not to Do for Low Back Pain
We want to do the things that promote and speed healing and not do the kinds of things that cause more harm or are destructive. A lot of us know that a little rest when we injure the back is okay, but staying in bed for a week might not be a good idea. Studies […]
Headaches in Children
Ouch! Did you know that 96% of children experienced some acute pain in the previous month? Headache, at 78%, is the most common type of pain reported. You may not have even known that your child was experiencing pain. Sometimes children will show behavioral changes rather than complain of head pain. One study tested parents’ […]
Time for a Comprehensive Approach?
Fibromyalgia (FM) affects millions of Americans each year. The back and neck pain, sleep problems, headaches and so on add up to a syndrome that has a lot of disease over-lap. Patients with headaches are more likely to suffer from fibromyalgia. Irritable bowel syndrome is also more common among those with FM. It’s important not […]
Treating Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Most patients with carpal tunnel syndrome will put up with their symptoms for days and weeks until they’re troubling enough to bring to a doctor’s attention. Their doctor should rule out certain causes for the hand pain (such as diabetes) and focus the examination on the wrist and other anatomic sites where nerve compression may […]
Different Doctors and Different Approaches to Care
Whiplash injuries are a major public health problem. Not only do they cause significant pain and time off from work and leisure activities, there is also a general effect on quality of life. A study in the European Spine Journal compared female patients with whiplash of the neck to patients with low back pain and […]
Walking for a Healthy Back?
Scientists who have studied the architecture of the spine have concluded that it is meant for walking. This may come as a surprise since we humans do very little walking these days. Over the millennia, our lives have moved from days filled with walking and searching for food to a largely sedentary existence. A good […]