Preventing Arthritis Pain From The Inside Out

Gone are the days where you turn to glucosamine and chondroitin supplements to improve the health of your joints. 

There are better ways to improve the health of your joints and one of them that is often overlooked is collagen supplementation.

Collagen has a gel-like consistency that can literally ad oil to your creaky joints. 

Many of you may have already heard of collagen for its anti-aging qualities, as it can impact the health of your hair and skin, preventing wrinkles and creating more firmness. I will save the anti-aging properties for another post, but for today let’s focus on what it can do for arthritis and joint pain.

Collagen is found in connective tissue, such as ligaments, tendons, and joints. If you haven’t seen the older video I did on how to make a bone broth, check it out below. I add chicken feet because these are loaded with collagen and will break down nicely in a long slow boil.

You can get adequate collagen from your diet, however, most of us don’t eat the foods consistently enough to get these effects. When we aren’t getting an essential component for health in our diet we must supplement to get the benefit.

Without getting into the details, here are a few studies that show the effectiveness of supplementing with collagen.

First, a study looking at collagen supplementation’s effect on functional daily activities. When comparing the collagen group with a group that took glucosamine and chondroitin supplements and there was a major difference in pain reduction and function changes.

Another study that reviewed the available literature at the time, looked at collagen’s effectiveness with osteoarthritis (OA). When the research studies available on the topic were reviewed the authors concluded that it was safe and showed improvements in function and pain for both men and women with OA.

Finally, a 24-week study done on athletes and joint pain found statistically significant improvements in joint pain when at rest, while walking, standing, and both lifting and carrying objects.

I try to intake collagen daily. One tip that I recommend is if you are making a bone broth, freeze large ice cubes of broth so you can grab 2 or 3 a day to heat up quickly. If you aren’t able to do that, then taking a hydrolyzed collagen supplement is going to be your best option.

I usually put my collagen supplement into a smoothie and since it has no taste, I don’t even know it’s in there. Another thing that can be done is simply mixing with water.

The other way I will supplement with collagen is I sometimes use a coffee “creamer” which provides protein and MCT (a good source of fat), which will help curb your appetite in the morning.

I hope this helps to give you some clarity for a natural way to improve joint pain. It will not only reduce pain and increase function, it will help support your joints proactively as well.

Back Pain While Raking

When the leaves turn their beautiful fall colours you know you will be burdened with the task of doing a fall clean up shortly there after.

Every autumn I have a plethora of new back pain injuries that show up in my chiropractic office.

Ranging from neck pain, to shoulder blade pain and even sciatica, it never ceases to amaze me when these painful conditions present.

One of the main reasons why you can develop different types of issues while raking is that it is in fact seasonal. You may only doing this once or twice a year, and you may try to do it all at once creating muscle fatigue and eventually back injury.

As a chiropractor, I see many different complaints present in the fall, but I decided to create a video to explain two of the most common back injuries that can happen while raking.

Bend With Your Knees or With Your Hips? Protecting your low back while lifting

Bend With Your Knees or With Your Hips? Protecting your low back while lifting

You have definitely heard the saying “bend with your knee, not your back”. In theory, this is to keep a “flat back” which is a protected back. But practically speaking only bending with your knees may put you at a disadvantage.

You probably know someone who has “thrown out their back” while lifting something, doing a half bend, or picking something up off the floor. I can tell you that as a chiropractor I know many of these people.

What this is called is sub-maximal buckling. It’s a common chiropractic complaint, and many people are perplexed why something so nominal can cause so much back pain.

The truth is this is multi-factorial and I could make this an extremely long post, speaking to the complexities of low back mechanics and muscle recruitment, but for the sake of simplicity, I will explain how to keep your back in a protected position by bending with your hips and knees while keeping your back in a flat position.

A “flat back” is usually referred to as a neutral spine or neutral low back. The easiest way to describe this is the position your low back goes into if you push your butt out behind you. essentially you are creating an arched back.

The components of your spine are able to handle the forces placed on them, and the increased forces while lifting an object if you stay in this protected position.

In the video below I demonstrate how this can be achieved by locking your arms out and letting them slide down to your knees as you bend. This will keep your low back neutral, and help to protect yourself while lifting.

How to Prevent Hunchback - Only 5 Minutes a day

No one ever said when I grow up I want to stare at my shoes all day.

But for many of us, the path we are going down ends up here.

With many of repetitive daily postures in a forward seated hunched position, it forces your spine into a strained position that can cause long term tension and stretch to the ligaments of the spine.

Over time the muscles in the back become long and weak, while the muscles of the chest and shoulders tighten pulling your shoulders and rounding your back.

Bad posture can lead to other problems including back pain and even compression fractures of the spine.

As a chiropractor, I see many people that complain of chronic tightness and pain through the shoulder and shoulder blade region.

Since many of the muscles holding up the spine and preventing it from slouching forward are postural muscles they need to be worked more frequently to build endurance. It is also important to stretch the tightened muscles of the chest and shoulders to allow the shoulder and back to straighten.

Check out this video that helps explain daily stretches and exercises that will help prevent the progression of a rounded hunchback.

How to Sneeze and Protect Your Back

There is no doubt that sneezing comes in many shapes, sizes, and sounds.

I have witnessed forceful sneezes, petite sneezes, chain reaction sneezes, and many more.

The one thing that they all have in common is that sneezing puts immense strain on your spine, which can lead to back injuries and back pain.

That is because sneezing not only increases the force around your spinal cord called intrathecal pressure, but it also creates a quick forceful contraction of your body’s core and spinal muscles.

This forceful contraction can back pain from conditions such as a muscle strain or joint strain. It can also cause more serious injuries like a disc injury such as a disc herniation or disc bulge, or in some cases a fracture to the ribs or a compression fracture of a vertebrae.

How do you protect yourself from back pain while sneezing?

You could try to prevent the sneeze from happening by looking into light or holding your breath, but I don’t think these are proven methods that are effective at stopping a sneeze.

Or you can set your body in a better position to protect your spine and so that you won’t be showing up to your chiropractor with an injury from sneezing.

There are a couple of important ways to improve the position of your spine and put you in a position that is less vulnerable to back injury and back pain.

Check out the video below to learn more.

Wry Neck - What it is & how to fix it.

Nothing is worse than starting your day with a pain in the neck. Even worse sometimes it can lock up and leave you with a very limited range of motion.

Sometimes this happens while you sleep and you wake up like this. Other times you just move your head and something lets go in your neck and you instantly feel the pain and stiffness.

Wry neck is characterized by some common symptoms like pain, stiffness, limited neck motion, muscle spasm, and sometimes referred pain into the head, shoulder, or upper back.

One symptom that is usually not related to this is consistent shooting nerve pain down into your arm, hand, and fingers. If this is what you are experiencing it is more likely that you are suffering from a pinched nerve.

Although wry neck can cause very sharp pain it should not travel past your elbow.

There are many different conditions that can cause wry neck, but if this is something new to you, it’s most likely that you have acute facet syndrome.

Your spine is lined with facet joints on the left and the right and allows for smooth motion. Sometimes they can become acutely irritated, and due to their high sensitivity, they can cause severe pain.

The natural course of healing for this type of neck pain usually is around 14-21 days. In really bad cases and with re-aggravation you may look at closer to a month.

I personally love using chiropractic for treating this as I can decompress your neck to the point where it alleviates the pressure and spasm around the joint. Also, the adjustment and other techniques can help considerably with regaining movement in your neck. It may not go back to 100% right away but you should have more range of motion.

Deep massage and heat are two things that you want to avoid in the first few days, as this will increase the inflammation and make the condition more drawn out.

In the meantime, before you can get in and see your chiropractor, try these few things that I talk about in the video below.

Better Seated Posture - Do This One Thing

Low back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, headaches, muscle strain, spasms, and more are all the consequence of bad posture. Bad posture isn’t the main problem, it’s a bi-product of sitting for long hours each day.

The average American sits on average for 6.5 hours per day. YIKES! Not only are the effects of sitting bad for your general health due to inactivity, it’s terrible for your posture.

When we sit everything is out in front of us and it causes us to round our backs, drop our heads and reach in front of our body. This is compounded by the fact that gravity is also pulling us down the entire time.

When we think about correcting our posture, intuitively we think to roll our shoulders back to relieve some of the strain that is consistently happening. This may help with the strain in that specific area but it negates the fact that there is an underlying problem that we must correct first.

That problem is the foundation of your spine. By setting up a good foundation at the base of your spine while sitting you will improve your posture drastically by giving integrity to the structures above, therefore reducing postural strain and the back pain and stiffness associated with it.

Check out the video below for a quick explanation on what setting a strong foundation for your spine looks like.

How to Get Out of Bed and Avoid Low back Pain

Low back pain first thing in the morning is very common. Unfortunately there are many contributing factors that cause low back stiffness first thing in the morning. The underlying cause is usually low back arthritis or an existing injury to a lumbar disc. However, there are many aggravating factors that can contribute to the morning low back pain and stiffness. These include but are not limited to the mattress, you sleep position and finally the way you sit up out of bed.

This last maneuver is similar to a sit-up which puts a ton of strain and compression through the lumbar spine,.

This is made even worse by the fact that your discs re-hydrate overnight and increase your risk of low back injuries with certain movements.

Below is a video explanation of a better way to get out of bed, or off the couch when you are laying on your back.