Cleary Family Chiropractic: Blog

We talk a lot about preventing overuse injuries, but exercise is essential for a healthy body. You need a strong core to support your back and flexible hips to avoid pulling on your lumbar spine. So how do you minimize the risk of strain? Every exercise has its proper form, and we at Cleary Family Chiropractic in Woodstock want everyone experiencing back pain to get the approval of one of our biomechanical experts before engaging in a work-out. But one feature every routine has in common is properly warming up and cooling down. When your muscles have blood pumping through them, they are less likely to be strained or frayed. But stretching a muscle while it’s still cold puts it at much greater risk. Warm up stretches should be dynamic, meaning they should increase blood flow to a muscle while loosening it. Part of the reason for yoga’s popularity is that there are a lot of poses that do this. Other dynamic stretches include arm and hip circles, butt kicks, lunges, and leg swings. It wi...

Exercise is crucial to a healthy lifestyle and is often a core component in our patients’ recovery from back aches. Cycling is especially popular, since it won’t jostle the spine or other joints with impacts. However, lower back pain is a common complaint among cyclists, and we at Cleary Family Chiropractic in Woodstock want our patients to know to take steps that will prevent it. As with any sport, it’s important for cyclists to have properly-fitted equipment. Often, when people get used bicycles, they never get them properly refitted, but this will become a problem if they have to reach too far forward to reach the handlebars. Ideally, a person should be free to shift posture on the bicycle during the course of their ride so they won’t hold one position or stretch their lumbar spine for too long. However, professional cyclists also commonly experience lower back pain, and this probably isn’t due to old equipment. As a person cycles, the muscles supporting the lumbar region of their ...

The alignment of the entire body depends on the integrity of our feet. When there is a problem with the feet, people may compensate by tilting their knees or hips, causing the spine to be out of alignment. Cleary Family Chiropractic provides spinal adjustments, but to prevent future problems, patients may need to get new pairs of shoes. Good posture depends on proper arch support. This means that a shoe must provide support both underneath and on the side of a foot’s arch. Supportive flip-flops, dress shoes, and sandals are becoming more widely available, but most of them should still be avoided. Sneakers generally provide good support, but they need to be replaced when they get worn down, which could happen to running shoes after just a few months. The best sneakers are ones with high, cushioned cuffs and tongues to support the ankle, but which are lightweight and have traction. When people buy shoes, they should wear the kind of socks they’ll normally wear with that type of shoe for ...