Sarpy Chiropractic Blog

We've been discussing a little bit lately, some of the most common things that bring people in to us with back pain and neck pain. Physically, one of the most common things is bending down to pick things up off the ground. But there's something that we find causes pain with people even more commonly than anything physical they do - emotional stress. Initially you might think that sounds kind of crazy, but think about the last time you were either really angry or really sad and how your body felt, especially when angry. Your jaw starts to clench, you feel your shoulders tighten up, you might even be making fists with your hands because your boss made you so angry or your spouse wasn't listening to you or whatever it was. Think about all the things that happen in your body when you feel those emotions. There's a lot of stuff that goes on, your body fires off certain chemicals, you get a lot of adrenaline and that makes everything more hyperactive and your muscle

Today, I want to address the lifelong debate - Ice or Heat? There may always be a few exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, I'm going to give you a basic guideline to follow to make the situations you find yourself in, easier. If you have a new injury or a fresh injury, maybe you rolled an ankle, bent down and felt your back twinge, or even just woke up with a neck kink, if it's new then you 100% of the time should be using ice. In a perfect world, you should be icing an injury for 15 minutes at a time, every hour.  Unfortunately, this may not be possible while leading a busy life, so focus more on icing your injury as much as you can, as the more you ice, the quicker you'll receive positive results. The reason that you don't want to use heat in those circumstances is because there's always inflammation. Where most people struggle with this is with back pain. We don't see any inflammation on our backs because there's such a thick muscle betw

There's a term that's been going around for the last couple of years known as "Text Neck." I'm sure a lot of you have heard it and what it means is that everyone's on their phone so much that they're constantly looking down and causing hunching in the upper back and painful neck issues. This is a problem that you want to start paying attention to immediately for the sake of your long term spinal health! There are small changes you can make that will limit a lot of the damage being caused and these changes can keep you from developing the kind of posture that will cause serious problems at an older age as well: 1.) Take breaks . Set a timer if you have to but restrict yourself from staring at your phone for hours at a time. Shorten those periods to 20 minutes when you're on your phone; try sitting in a supportive chair; or resting your phone up higher on a desk. 2.) Be aware that when your mid-back is hunched, you're causing so many other