Low back and/or pelvic pain in pregnancy is extremely common. A study published in the journal Spine in 1996 indicated that 76% of women reported back pain at some time during pregnancy (1). A study published in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in 2002 indicated that 35.5% of pregnant women […]

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Six years later, in 1986, prescribing opiates for chronic pain was further enhanced when physicians Russell Portenoy, MD, and Kathleen Foley, MD, published a small case series (38 subjects) that concluded that chronic opioid analgesic use was safe in patients with no history of drug abuse (5). By 2017, America’s opioid crisis had escalated to […]

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Whip Cracking Mystery Explained The snapping of a whip occurs in part because the tip of the whip reaches the speed of sound and creates a sonic boom. “Although the loop travels at one speed, some parts of the whip, including the tip in the final stages of motion, travel twice as fast.” Professor Alain […]

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In the floor of the main hall of the Jordan Hall of Science at the University of Notre Dame there is a mosaic medallion, which states: “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” This saying is from Ukrainian-American Geneticist and Evolutionary Biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975). Dobzhansky originally made this statement in […]

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All perceptions occur in the brain, specifically in a region of the brain called the cerebral cortex (cortical brain) (1). These perceptions include sight (vision), sound (hearing), hot/cold (temperature), taste, smell, pressure, vibration, positional sense, pain, and more. The cortical perception in this discussion will be referred to as dizziness. Dizziness is a cortical perception […]

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The human body is designed to effectively absorb and disperse vertical forces. This allows humans to jump off a curb, walk-run-jump, to stuff basketballs and engage in many other sports activities, plop down into a couch, etc., without injury. In contrast, humans are not well designed to effectively absorb and disperse horizontal forces. The injuries […]

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Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. Clinical practice guidelines define the role of specific diagnostic and treatment modalities in the diagnosis and management of patients. Clinical practice guideline recommendations are based on evidence from rigorous systematic reviews and synthesis of […]

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Concept and Terminology A common cliché is that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Another certainty for the elderly is the increasing incidence of the wear-and-tear breakdown of one’s joints. The presence of joint breakdown increases with age at all joint sites. These joint breakdowns have a number of names: Arthritis Osteoarthritis […]

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Approximately 36 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches. Current pharmacological treatments are not very effective and they may have dangerous side effects (1). Migraines are the second most prevalent neurologic disorder (after tension-type headaches), with a female-to-male ratio of 3:1 and an estimated 1-year prevalence of approximately 15% in the general population (2). The total […]

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The “discovery” of X-rays occurred in 1895 by German physicists Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen. Rontgen did not actually discover x-rays; he identified them. He named them “x-rays” because their exact nature was not yet identified. Much of the world refers to x-rays as “Rontgen Rays.” Rontgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics for his […]

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