spinal degeneration Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Hometown Family Wellness Center

May 11 2020

Are You Sabotaging Your Health and Recovery?

Many people come to the office in pain or looking to improve their health. Then they wonder why it’s taking so long or they aren’t getting the results they are looking for. What are you doing that is sabotaging your health and recovery? If you continue to do things that are causing the problems, it makes it difficult to heal. There are many factors that affect your recovery and whether you get healthy again:

1) Hydration: Your body is made of many tissues. Muscles, tendons, ligaments, organs all comprised of cells that require water. Think of a sponge. If it is kept wet, it is pliable. You can bend it or twist it and it is more resilient. BUT if you let the sponge dry out, it gets hard and brittle. Try bending the sponge now and it will break and tear. When your body is dehydrated, it is like that dried out sponge. It becomes brittle and fragile. It tears easier. Your tissues and cells require water to be healthy. Being dehydrated is sabotaging your health and recovery.

Stop Sabotaging Your Health and Recovery!

Unfortunately most people do not drink enough water and on top of that you drink caffeinated beverages like coffee that dehydrate you. Your body needs half your weight in ounces of water per day (eg. if you weigh 150lbs you need to drink 75 ounces of water per day). If you drink just one cup of coffee per day it negates up to 4 to 8 glasses of water. I recommend that you cut out the coffee and try for just 30 days to drink the required amount of water and see how much better you feel.

2) Inflammation: Swelling is a response to injury, trauma and an unhealthy body. Even a poor diet and dehydration can lead to an increase in inflammation. Inflammation in your body leads to many diseases and even cancer. This is another factor sabotaging your health.

Many people take NSAIDs or pills that help decrease the inflammation but these pills are dangerous and have many side effects. By changing your diet and using natural supplements, we can reduce your inflammation naturally. In our office, we have a product call Inflammation, which is 20 herbs and botanicals to help your body reduce inflammation.

3) Tight, hyper muscles: Your muscles get tight to splint the areas of concern. Also, dehydration leads to tighter muscles. Stretching is a key component not only of your treatment plan, but to be done on a daily basis to help your body reduce stress built up each day while sitting or standing at work or doing other daily activities. It’s like brushing your teeth! You don’t only brush your teeth when the dentist finds a cavity do you? No, you brush daily to help prevent future problems and your teeth from falling out. At least your teeth can be replaced. You are born with one spine, and just like your teeth, the bones and discs decay when you don’t take care of them. Your spine cannot be replaced, so take 5 minutes a day to do stretching. Here are some links to stretching we show patients: neck stretching, low back stretching and leg stretches. Also, getting adjusted regularly is proven to help prevent spinal degeneration and improve overall body function, as well stopping the sabotaging your health.

4) Weight: 80% of the United States is overweight! Obesity is a leading cause of heart disease, diabetes, cancer, stroke and other diseases. This extra weight also puts on additional stress to your spine, joints, muscles and discs. For every 25 pounds you are overweight, there is an exponential amount of stress added to these tissues. Being overweight is sabotaging your health! By losing weight you not only remove this stress, but decrease inflammation and improve your health! Our nutritional weight loss system is scientifically proven to provide results. You can find out more: Freehold Weight Loss

5) Nutrition: Your body needs quality nutrition to heal tissues. Nutrition is the fuel for your body to run. Just like a high performance car, if you put low grade fuel into it, the car will drop in efficiency and start having problems. Your body starts to crash, have less energy and is less healthy when you put low nutritious food into it. Your body also needs the vitamins, minerals, quality protein to help tissues to heal.

Many processed foods are depleted of vitamins and minerals you need. Even organic foods aren’t what you are made to think they are. Our soils are deficient in elements from overuse. Studies show that you have to eat 10 apples today, to get the value of one apple from the 70’s. Another study shows you’d have to eat 50 bowls of spinach to get the value of 1 bowl from the 70’s. These are scary stats.

It’s so important to supplement with a quality multi-vitamin, mineral, antioxidant and omegas. Many patients tell me they take a vitamin: centrum, one a day, GNC daily or others. You have to know these vitamins are not bioavailable. This means they do not break down in time to be absorbed into your body. Research has shown many of these supplements even get stuck in the intestinal walls and cause inflammation in the gut. I had one patient that didn’t believe me and when we sent her for an X-ray of her back, the results came back stating multiple supplemental pills likely stuck in the intestinal mucosa. Once we got her off the centrum, stomach problems and joint pain she had for years, started to go away.

Another 80% of the United States population is deficient in Vitamin D. Vitamin D serves several important functions in the body. These include: promoting calcium absorption (women tend to experience osteoporosis), maintaining normal calcium and phosphate levels, promoting bone and cell growth, reducing inflammation. A deficiency in Vit D alone can lead to difficulty thinking clearly, bone pain, frequent fractures, muscle weakness, fatigue and more.

We highly recommend the top multi-vitamin with omegas, antioxidants and telomere support that makes sure you get the levels you need and actually absorb into your body. : Complete Essentials Daily Pack

Are you ready to stop sabotaging your health? Are you ready to make your health and body a priority? Do you finally want to feel the best you can? Are you ready to enjoy a long, healthy life?

If you answered yes, feel free to contact me. The hydration is an easy thing to improve on. I can also help you with weight loss. We have the number one weight loss program available as it addresses not only weight loss, but nutrition, anti-inflammation, removing toxins from the body and much more. We also have a proprietary blend of herbs in supplement form to help you reduce inflammation.

I hope you found this information helpful. Please make sure to share this with others. You now just have to take the next step to implement. I’m here every step of the way for you!

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May 11 2020

Non Surgical Treatment For Degenerative Disc Disease

Chiropractors provide effective, gentle non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease. This condition is from degeneration of the discs between the spinal bones. Very similar to how teeth decay when not properly cared for, the same happens to the spine and discs. Low back pain and neck pain can be a result of degenerative disc disease. It can be a result of previous traumas, improper treatment, daily accumulative stresses, lack of exercise and spinal hygiene.

The joints of the spine provide full range of motion when aligned properly. The discs between the bones are soft gelatinous structures that act like shock absorbers. Different types of stress we are presented with from the time of birth cause the bones of the spine to misalign. Think of how many times you fell when you were learning to walk, sitting at poorly supporting desks at school, carrying purses or briefcases on one shoulder, bad posture, playing sports or rough housing with siblings, possible car accidents. Do you think this builds up over time? This shock to the musculoskeletal system causes the vertebra to misalign. Pressure builds up on the discs and the nerves. The discs begin to degenerate and at times even fuse the connecting vertebra. This adds more tension to the bones and discs above and below leading to further degeneration, restricted motion and pain.

Chiropractic helps maintain the health of the spine and prevent degeneration of the joints and discs. The treatment using spinal adjustments aligns the bones, maintaining optimal range of motion and flexibility and prevents spinal degeneration. This makes chiropractic a great non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease.

Case studies help show the success of chiropractic as a non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease. A 2012 case study in Journal of Chiropractic Medicine reports the response a 74 year old Veteran with degenerative disc disease and diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH) to chiropractic treatment. The patient was suffering with severe low back pain rated a 10 out of a scale of 10 and loss of feeling in his legs.

A gentle chiropractic technique called Activator Method was used in the case study. After just 2 weeks of treatment the patient reported no back pain and after 4 adjustments able to use a cane instead of a walker to get around. During treatment the patient experienced a gradual improvement in sensation of his legs, complete relief of his back pain as he rated his pain afterwards as a 0 out of 10 and his disability scores dropped by 70%. Follow up with the patient at 9 month and 1 years showed continued relief using non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease.

This case study as well as others show the success of chiropractic as a non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease. It’s also positive to see in this study that the symptoms from DISH were relieved.

As a chiropractor in Freehold NJ, I have helped many patients with low back pain and disc problems. Many have tried other avenues to relieve the pain to no avail. Here is one of our patients telling his story:

Getting older doesn’t mean we have to develop aches and pains. It’s important to enjoy your quality of life. Chiropractic helps maintain the health of the spine and prevent spinal degeneration. This helps you remain active and enjoy your daily activities. Going to the chiropractor keeps your spine healthy and flexible so you can prevent pain and disability caused by spinal degeneration. Hometown Family Wellness Center and Freehold Chiropractor, Dr. Russell Brokstein has been providing non surgical treatment for degenerative disc disease for 15 years. If you or somebody you know suffers with pain and would like to enjoy life again find out more: click here

May 11 2020

Chiropractor in Freehold NJ helps Low Back Pain and Sciatica Patients without Drugs or Surgery

As a chiropractor in Freehold, NJ I have seen many patients from the Monmouth County area who suffer needlessly with low back pain and sciatica. Around 80% of the population complains of low back pain but ignore the pain, think they have to learn to live with it, or go to their medical doctors that just prescribe them one pain medication or anti-inflammatory one after another. At best, these medications just provide a temporary relief of symptoms, but many times the pain persists and the side effects are numerous. Also, even if the pain is covered up, the patient falsely feels they are better and start doing their normal activities once again which can further damage the underlying condition.

You have to realize daily stresses accumulate in the spine and the joints get misaligned, making it more difficult to move, therefor straining the muscles, putting pressure on nerves and the discs. Some research even shows that arthritis or spinal degeneration starts forming after just 2 weeks of the joints being misaligned.

Most chiropractors will analyze the spine for subluxations and perform adjustments to correct them. But this is just part of the cause. I have seen many patients over the years who have gone to chiropractors who only adjust and report to me the low back pain and sciatica were reduced in intensity, but they still experienced it. The problem being missed is that many of these imbalances occur due to muscle tightness and spasms in the spinal regions but also the muscles of the legs, as well as the joints of the ankle, feet, knees and hips.

Imagine driving your car and noticing the tires are wearing unevenly. You bring in the car to be checked and the mechanic tells you that you need new tires. If you just put new tires on and the mechanic doesn’t balance out the wheels, you will notice the car still pulls more to one side and the tires will wear out more quickly. Same holds for if you just realign the wheels, but not put on new tires too. You would want the mechanic to take care of the cause by realigning the wheels first, then put on the new tires.

I bring this up as I recently had a new patient, who was a professional athlete, that found my practice online and when he came in he reported low back pain, sciatica and disc herniations which he had micro-discectomy surgery performed 5 years ago while in his mid 20’s. He told me he’s been to many chiropractors but adjusting didn’t help, physical therapy provided no relief and he also visited one of the biggest sports orthopedic practices in all of NJ with no change.

I explained our course of action is probably different than any other chiropractor he has been to and after performing a full chiropractic, orthopedic and sport evaluation, we address all the contributing factors to the pain: we not only adjust the spine, but therapeutically stretch the muscles that support the spine, including the hamstrings, quadriceps and piriformis, and adjust the joints of the ankle, foot, knee and hips. By addressing these instabilities, we can further balance the foundation that keeps causing the spine to misalign. Upon his first evaluation and treatment, he got up off the table and shockingly said it was the first time he was able to sit up with out low back pain.

Going one step further, we will analyze the arches of the feet. If the arches are dropping, it will cause the joints of the ankles, feet, knees and hips to keep misaligning, which will make the spine unstable again.

Another thing to consider is most chiropractors and medical doctors attribute sciatica as pressure on the nerves from the lower back into the leg by misalignments or bulging discs. A condition called piriformis syndrome is missed many times. This is where the piriformis muscle is actually what is causing the numbness and tingling associated with sciatica. When properly assessed, the right treatment can also correct this.

Chiropractors are the only health professionals that specialize in the spine and nervous system. Finding the cause of the pain and dysfunction is the start of correcting the problem once and for all so you can start living a pain free, health lifestyle once again. No more complaining of pain while bending over, picking up your children, going out and enjoying the evening with a significant other, etc. It is important to find a chiropractor that not only adjusts the spine, but helps balance the supporting muscles, joints in the legs and feet, and make sure your arches are properly supported.

We have helped many patients that suffer with low back pain and sciatica in Freehold, Marlboro, Manalapan, Howell, Jackson, Morganville and Colts Neck, NJ as well as many neighboring towns. Many have driven up to an hour away, passing by 1000 other chiropractors as they want to experience a full body treatment that addresses all the causes with the multiple pronged approach no other doctor in our area takes. If you are ready to gain your pain free, active lifestyle once again, contact our office, Hometown Family Wellness Center at 9 Broadway in Freehold, NJ at 732-780-0044

May 11 2020

Wear and Tear Happens explains Freehold Chiropractor

Every day I hear patients explain to me that they have pain and they don’t know how it happened. Many medical doctors explain to their patients that they have arthritis that has formed in their spine and other joints. The patient is concerned with how it got there, but most doctors say it’s part of aging.

As a chiropractor in Freehold, NJ, it is important for the public to be educated on how this happens. Seeing people from all over Monmouth County, NJ in the towns of Marlboro, Howell, Colts Neck, Jackson, Morganville, Freehold and Manalapan, NJ, they always ask: Is it from the stress of their work? From playing golf for 20 years? Sitting at desks in school for years on end slouching? Or maybe the car accident many years ago?

The answer is.. it is more likely to be from the accumulative affects of all of these stresses to the body. From the time you are born, the medical doctors pulls and twists your neck and shoulders to deliver you. Then as an infant you start to learn how to walk… how many times do you think you fell? Do you have brothers or sisters? If so, did you wrestle or trip each other as a joke? As you get older you sit in classrooms with bad postures or carry backpacks that are too heavy for the spine. Did you play any sports and take a hard fall or tackle? Think of the trauma of just a little fender bender. Do you carry a pocket book or briefcase on a daily basis? Have you ever missed that last step or curb?

I think you get the point that every little thing builds up in your body, causing the joints to misalign. So, the real question with arthritis and spinal degeneration is not what you did, but what you haven’t done! Joints wear down faster when they are not aligned properly… they are stuck and not moving well. That’s why it is important to be under chiropractic care to get the joints aligned properly and keep them moving.

A great analogy to consider is your car: As you drive your car, your wheels become misaligned especially if you hit a pothole or a curb while parking. If you keep driving with them misaligned, the car starts to pull to one side, the tires wear out unevenly, and other parts of the car start to break down. You don’t keep driving like that if you want your car to last long enough. Also, every 3 months or 3500 miles or so we are informed to take the car in for maintenance, oil, lube and filter. Neglecting your car for this maintenance, you will build up expenses to fix things and the car won’t last as long as you want, your fuel efficiency decreases, you will have to keep replacing tires, etc.

Some research shows that arthritis starts to form after a joint is misaligned for as little as 2 weeks. Just like a cavity in the teeth, if it isn’t caught early enough it will progressively get worse. You know that waiting to fix these things costs a lot more money than if you had just prevented it from happening.

Blaming the activities in your life for arthritis is like blaming the sidewalk for scuffing your shoes. Everything wears down naturally as we use them, including your spine. If you focus more on prevention with regular maintenance chiropractic care, you can help slow down arthritis and other forms of wear and tear. Most people get this concept when it comes to their teeth: their teeth don’t hurt, but they get their teeth examined one to 2 times a year and cleaned, brush their teeth daily and floss to prevent decay. If you didn’t do this, teeth would decay as part of normal aging too! But it can be prevented with proper care.

Well your spine is a dynamic system that protects the most important system of your body.. your nervous system! Your nervous system controls all functions of your body. Many activities, stress and nutritional choices affect your spine and nervous system! Your teeth can always be replaced, but your spine and nervous system CANNOT!

In our office we take a different approach to your health than any other health professional in the area! As a chiropractor, we make sure your spine is aligned and properly balanced so your nervous system functions optimally. On top of that, Dr. Brokstein, DC also analyzes your body for stress, adrenal function and the toxicity of your body. We are the ONLY doctor in Monmouth County, NJ to have state of the art FDA cleared biofeedback to analyze your body for over 160,000 sensitivities and stressors. We educate our patients on healthy eating, weight loss and exercise. Prevention NOW is more cost affective and helps avoid harmful drugs that at best just cover up symptoms and surgery. Don’t wait and get your spine and health checked today!

May 11 2020

Chiropractor in Freehold NJ Shows Hamstring Iliopsoas and Quadricep stretching to help People Suffering with Low Back Pain

Stretching is a key component to any therapeutic or rehabilitation program. In our Freehold, NJ office, we advise all of our chiropractic patients on home stretching. We have been helping patients that suffer with low back pain, sciatica pain and disc herniations in Freehold, Marlboro, Howell, Colts neck, Jackson, Morganville, Manalapan and other neighboring towns in Monmouth Country NJ for the last 7 years. If more people would make stretching a part of their daily routine, many of the back injuries that people experience, could be avoided. Up to 80% of the population experiences back pain and it is the number one reason for people to call out of work.

Following is a video of some basic stretching that can be done at home to help relieve pain and help you enjoy a normal active lifestyle:

For other basic home stretching for the lower back, check out our other blog post by clicking here: https://www.chiropractorfreehold.com/freehold-chiropractor-shares-stretching-for-low-back-pain-sciatica-and-disc-problems/

If you are looking for a chiropractor or other advice, please contact our office for a complimentary consultation.

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