Medicare & Exercises

     Your Chiropractor may give you exercises or stretches to facilitate your healing and help keep your condition from recurring.

     Since for Chiropractic care, Medicare only pays for adjusting the spine, they will not reimburse for exercises, so the Medicare patient must pay for this often essential adjunct to their Chiropractic adjustments.

     The profession of Chiropractic is working with Medicare to change this, and hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, Medicare will agree to pay for this important part of a treatment plan.

Tight Psoas

     The psoas is a major postural muscle which attaches to the lumbar vertebrae and goes diagonally down and out to attach at the hip to the trochanter, or upper part of the femur.

     If the psoas is in spasm, it can pull the pelvic girdle into distortion, causing a short leg, and a myriad of other problems. 

     The spasm and resultant distortion cause discomfort, and can impact the gait.

     With my Activator instrument, I can correct the distortion, and reset the tension in the psoas. Then I'll show the patient how to stretch the psoas muscle at home on their own to help keep this from happening again.

Headache "Scrunch"

     Chronic extension of the neck---leaning the head backward---for example, to better see a computer screen when wearing bifocals or graduated corrective lenses---is a common cause of headaches. 

     It causes tension in the suboccipital muscles along the base of the skull, compression at the occiput, and can result in an upward tilt of the posterior part of the C2 vertebra.

     This combination is a reliable headache producer.

     Watch out for this posture, and if you do get in trouble because of it, my gentle, precise adjustments with Activator Chiropractic Method can correct the area and bring relief.

Memory Foam Pillows

     Some patients use them, and love them. In that case, I don’t try to talk them out of their pillow. But I’m not a fan of memory foam pillows, and here’s why:

     A good pillow, in order give adequate proper support to the cervical spine, should provide consistent resistive support.

     Is this what memory foam does? No, in fact the converse is true---it provides little to no such support. When you lie down on it, it squashes down as the weight of your head & neck contact the foam, creating an indentation which offers minimal, at best, support.

           

Calling All Birds

Attracting birds to your yard & garden is easy with native plants, which are adapted to your local climate, and require little special care in order to flourish.

The National Audubon Society offer a “native plant database,” where you can find your native plants, and how to grow them, by putting in your zip code  

https://www.audubon.org/native-plants?ms=digital-eng-email-ea-plants-20180505_native-plants_medium&utm_source=ea&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20180505_native-plants&utm_content=medium

Native plants will lure the birds you love to watch, help them to thrive, and support other beneficial pollinators in your area.

Numbness---Which Fingers?

   

     Numbness and tingling in the hand & fingers is often originating from impingement of nerves in the neck.

     The particular part of the hand or the finger(s) where the patient feels the numbness / tingling helps pinpoint the location of the impingement.

     Fortunately we have a "map" of the areas of skin (called "dermatomes") in different parts of the body that tells us which spinal nerve provides sensory innervation to each area. With minor individual variations, this dermatomal "map" is applicable to every patient.

     By comparing the patient's area of symptoms with the "map," the doctor can discern which nerve is being impinged. 

     As an Advanced Proficiency Rated Activator Chiropractor, I can make precise, gentle adjustments at the site of impingement, in this case in the neck, to relieve the symptoms.   

Glycemic Index

     The Glycemic Index (GI) is a relative ranking of carbohydrate foods according to how they affect blood glucose levels. The lower the relative value, the slower the metabolism of the food, and thus the slower the food causes an increase in blood glucose.

     Any rise in blood glucose, of course, affects insulin levels, a critical consideration for people who are diabetic or pre-diabetic.

     However, attention to the GI is a good idea for everyone, because spikes in blood sugar due to what we eat can lead, over time, to ever-increasing proximity to a diabetic state.

     So---it's not just about sugar! 

     Ultimately it's about how rapidly any food raises our level of blood sugar. 

     Find out more at   https://www.gisymbol.com/about-glycemic-index/ 

     

Arthrokinematics

     Combine "arthro" meaning "of a joint," and "kinematics," meaning "properties of motion of objects" and you get a cool new word, "arthrokinematics"---which is applicable in describing the motion of any joint in the body.

     For example, the "roll and slide" movement of the lower end of the thigh bone, the femur, moving against the top of the larger bone in the lower leg, the tibia, when bending the knee.

     Whether kicking a soccer ball (the femur is stable & the tibia is rolling & gliding)  or squatting (the tibia is stable & the femur will roll & glide), the arthrokinematics are crucial to maintaining stability of the knee throughout its range of motion.   

      

"The Straw That Broke the...

     .......Camel’s Back."  As the saying goes, when a seemingly insignificant action or event results in sudden, extreme pain. 

     What’s going on here?

     Patients often tell me, "All I did was bend over to pick up the newspaper," or "I just got up out of a chair." Simple actions that should not be expected to cause the pain that followed.

     In fact, 90% of the time, dysfunction has been building, often becoming more complex, but not yet symptomatic, or maybe the little twinges you felt were easy to ignore. 

     Then a simple movement, change of position, or event, suddenly pushes things over the edge into pain. What has been lurking becomes painfully impossible to ignore.

     When you feel those little twinges, or sense that maybe something in your underlying structure isn't right, come in and get your body balanced, and you're much less likely to get into that place of severe pain.

To Sit or Not to Sit

  Widely available in different configurations, the standing desk can be an ergonomic blessing to people whose work keeps them desk-bound for long periods of time. 
     Most advantageous are the adjustable types, which can be raised for working while standing, or lowered for sitting to work. The flexibility allows for changing positions throughout the work day, a good antidote to chronic unhealthy postures.

  Whether you sit or stand, or mix it up, it is still wise to take frequent breaks---at least once an hour, walk away from your desk, move around, get some motion in your body, do some stretching, rest your eyes.  
     If you decide to use a standing desk, it’s a good idea to have a cushioned pad to stand on.  

Rotated Scapula

The shoulderblade (scapula) often rotates abnormally, or becomes stressed, in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Another way to conceptualize this is to imagine the bottom angle of the scapula moving in direction toward, or away from, the spine.

Because of how the scapula articulates at the shoulder, these rotations can affect the upper extremity all the way down to the wrist.

In my Activator Chiropractic protocol, after I find a rotated scapula and correct it, I then check the humerus (the bone in the upper arm), the radius and ulna (the two bones in the forearm), and the carpals (bones in the wrist).

This is a good example of the thoroughness of Activator Method when assessing and adjusting the  body.

As A Doctor Serving Medicare Patients

        Sadly, Medicare fraud is apparently rampant and on the rise. According to the April, 2018 edition of the AARP Bulletin, ways that fraudsters have figured out how to “bilk the system” include:

---”charging for services never delivered,

---falsifying patient records,

---inflating claims,

---stealing your ID,

---filing duplicate claims,

---providing unneeded equipment,

---buying off doctors / patients, (and)

---shortchanging your care.”

As a Doctor Serving Medicare Patients, I take my responsibilities to you and to the Medicare system very seriously. I work hard and pay careful attention to:

 ---giving you honest, clear, and complete information about your care in my office,

---inviting questions about anything, anytime, including my services, fees, what Medicare covers and does not cover, 

---guarding your personal records and information carefully,

---keeping complete & legible records about your diagnoses, your treatment, and your progress,

---being vigilant, careful, and compliant about Medicare rules,

---treating you only as frequently & for as long as is reasonable & necessary for your recovery from pain & resumption of acceptable functional status, and

---reporting accurately to Medicare on your behalf about the care you receive here.

Ventana Wilderness Alliance

     I am proud to support this local group, which is dedicated to preserving, protecting, and restoring the wilderness public lands of the northern Santa Lucia Mountains and the Big Sur coast. 
     From their website  www.ventanawild.org :
     "Founded in 1998, the Ventana Wilderness Alliance (VWA) is a California nonprofit corporation with IRS 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. It is dedicated to protecting the wildlands of California's northern Santa Lucia mountain range. VWA is composed of people from all walks of life who share a love of Wilderness and a goal to ensure it remains wild in perpetuity."
     See page 6 in their Spring, 2018 newsletter  http://www.ventanawild.org/images/docs/newsletters/Spring_2018_Ventana_Wilderness_Watch.pdf   for my personal statement of support.

A Real "Pain in the Neck"

 Over my 25 years in practice, I have found that many cases of severe neck pain involve counter-rotations of cervical vertebrae. 

A vertebra will be abnormally rotated in one direction, clockwise or counter clockwise around a vertical axis, and its neighbor will be rotated in the opposite direction.

These misalignments are precisely corrected with the Activator instrument, placed strategically on each vertebra and appropriately vectored.

The patient feels instant relief.