The other day I had the pleasure of meeting a young kid who was in his early twenties. It’s not unusual for me to see young kids or even children in the office (but I digress). What was unusual was the fact that this young man told me, “Doc, I’ve been feeling good but I want to make sure I stay healthy and avoid back problems”. Turns out that when he was a teenager his dad had brought him to a chiropractor because he thought he looked “crooked”. He remembered getting adjusted and feeling better.
He recently got a new job that offers him health insurance for the first time in his life. So naturally he wants to use it to keep himself “healthy” right? The only problem is that his particular “Health Insurance” does not allow for healthcare benefits. What do I mean?
Let me try to explain this with an analogy. Lets say you have a front tire on your car that is wearing away faster than the others. What would your auto insurance say if you called them to cover the cost of replacing your tire. It might be hard to hear what they say while they’re laughing so hard. But now what happens if you fail to “maintain” or keep your car “healthy” by replacing the tire and it blows out and you crash into a tree? That’s when your auto insurance kicks in and now has to cover the cost of the repair plus replace that tire as well.
Health insurance is getting to this point. My new patient has a plan that does not cover “maintenance” adjustments. That means he basically has to wait till he has pain for his benefits to kick in. Sounds crazy I know, but health insurance is turning our health care system into a “sick care” system. Fortunately, there still are a lot of plans that cover some form of maintenance but I wouldn’t count on these plans being around too long. So stop kicking the tires and get your spine checked out today!
There was some news this past week about what’s the best password length and configuration. It got me thinking about how important and painfully complicated passwords have become. Every site requires one and we now have so many sites we log into on a regular basis. Choosing a secure yet memorable password is essential and can even be vital to your health…
More and more physicians are starting to use ‘medical portals’. Portals are websites that are setup by your physician that allows you access to your medical information. For example, you could check your recent lab results, diagnostic reports, or current medication list. Portals can be real empowering to patients because you can get immediate access to “your” health information, which let’s face it, can be sometimes tough to get from your doctors office when you really need it.
But this opens up another possibility, your personal health information accessed by non-authorized individuals. Having a strong password is just one thing you can do to make sure your private stuff stays private. The current recommendations include using a 12 character password that includes letters, numbers, and symbols. It is even suggested you use different passwords for each different website. Now if your like me, you don’t have time to be keeping up with so many different passwords and changing them all the time. That’s why I use a password manager (LastPass). But you can use any of the several different ones out there.
The latest password cracking software can crack a six letter-only password in under one minute, scary right? So make sure your password is not simple, short, and easy to recognize, your health may depend on it…
Many patients come into our office saying, “Doc, I’m getting old. That’s why my back hurts”. And I always tell them that it’s not that their getting old, it’s that their “problems” are getting old. We don’t realize that a lot of our issues actually started when we where kids. There was a study done a while back that I remember, which said that by the time kids turn 11 years old they’ve fallen about ten thousand times. We’ve all seen kids take a fall and just get right up. Well, there is a price for all those hard knocks.
You might have heard about a recent research article that linked an increased risk of heart attacks with the use of calcium supplements by post-menopausal women. Calcium supplements, which many people consume hoping to ward off osteoporosis, may increase the risk of heart attack by as much as 30 percent, say researchers. The odd part was that there was only a link with supplemental calcium and not calcium ingested in food. What?
Yeah, so if calcium is calcium then why would it increase in a supplement and not in food. Could it be that it was not the calcium but rather the packaging around the calcium? It reminds me of a professor at FIU (Go Golden Panthers by the way!) that would always say that “supplements were not necessary, food was necessary.”
Keep an eye on this topic because I wouldn’t be surprised if there was further studies that contradicted this study. So is the case on these complicated research studies that involve multiple factors that are hard to correlate. Trust me, it makes it hard for me to keep up with the “latest research”. Here’s a link if you are so inclined to read further about it… Here
I usually like to make my blog posts about new information or recent health news. NOT TODAY…
After interacting with some patients yesterday, I am reminded that there are many people out there that are misinformed. So, my post today will attempt to try to clear up some myths and misconceptions when it comes to basic back pain issues.
Let me be clear, these are basic issues that everyone should be aware of. It is not a totally encompassing list. Trust me, there are many more things that you should know when it comes to back pain. Stay informed and always do your homework about treatments and your options when it comes to your health care decisions.
NOW LET’S PLAY: FACT or FICTION
1. Bed rest until the pain goes away. This is Fiction. In an acute situation, you may need to rest for the initial healing to begin, but following that it’s better to be active and treat the root of the problem.
2. Apply heat to a recently injured area. This is Fiction. Following an initial injury or pain, the body produces large amounts of inflammation. Inflammation is a good thing initially, it allows your body to bring the proper nutrition to the area to allow for healing. However, too much inflammation can lead to scar tissue formation and make the area more susceptible to future injury.
3. Exercise creates more back pain. This is Fiction. Regular exercise can be preventative in nature provided that you also strengthen the muscles holding the spine in place. In acute situations it may be a good idea to slow down the exercise though until some of the healing has had a chance to take place.
4. Skinny people do not suffer back pain. This is Fiction. Stress and injuries can affect skinny people as well, creating back pain for them. Body weight is less of a factor that muscle tone. Even people who are slightly overweight but with good muscle tone will suffer less pain that a skinny person with poor muscle tone.
5. Back pain is always caused by an injury. This is Fiction. Back pain can be caused by degeneration, infection, disease and other inherited conditions.
6. A firm mattress is best for your back. This is a Fact. The spine needs support in the proper position and very soft beds do not provide that support, allowing undue stress on the spine.
7. Chiropractic can help with back pain. This is Fact. There are numerous research-based studies supporting this as well as thousands of patient testimonials.
I’m sorry if these tips seemed basic or came across as common knowledge. Trust me, there are many people (and medical doctors as well) that continue to spread “old school” myths about basic back pain tips.
Here’s a disturbing trend that you might have herd of or even been effected first hand… Patient’s are walking into their Primary Care Doctor’s office complaining of back or neck pain and told to take… WAIT FOR IT… anti-depressant medication! Yes, you read that right.
Being prescribed pain medication for musculo-skeletal pain is almost common place right now. It has become so much easier to just say, “Here take this pill, don’t worry that it says ‘anti-depressant’ on the bottle. It is really for your back pain.” I have patients all the time complaining that their doctor put them on anti-depressant medication and they feel their doctor thinks the pain is in their head.
Now, I will say that may people who experience prolonged periods of pain as in 3-6 months, will have an increased likelihood of having depression. The reason is because pain is not fun. Being in pain can be depressing but don’t you think it would be better to deal with the cause of the pain rather than just mask the depression with medication? Now don’t get me wrong, there are people who are truly suffering from mental illness and issues that can benefit from medication.
But focusing on the depression, which is a by-product of the pain, seems to be just wrong to me. Why not target the cause of the pain and try to relieve the actual problem. Once the pain goes away or diminishes, you will feel better and be happier.
I recently had a patient who didn’t initially admit to me that she was taking anti-depressants, she was actually embarrassed. But after a bout of treatment she mentions that because of me she no longer is taking the anti-depressants. It felt good but in my head I just told myself that she was never really depressed, she was just in pain…
I was recently doing some research on replacing one of our photocopiers. I like to use the digital copiers that allow for multi-functions like fax, copy, scan, print, and email. I came across a fact that most people are not aware of…Most copiers made after 2002 have hard drives inside of the units.
Yes, Hard Drives! What does that mean? Means that most digital copiers keep a digital copy of scans, faxes, copies and print jobs. If I was to just return that leased copier, it is possible that someone can remove the hard drive and have access to all of our documents that went through that copier, ever!
This was really shocking! Medical records, insurance info, financial info, employee records, tax documents… All those could be accessible if someone was inclined to look.
Fortunately, if you are aware of this, you can erase or wipe clean the hard drive. I was easily able to remove the info and avoid any patient data going out into the wild. Please keep this in mind if you have a digital copier and let any other business owner know about this little, potentially devastating fact.
Digital data brings a lot of power and benefits but like the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Lately I have been seriously contemplating the notion of eliminating my cable TV. I find that there is less and less that compels me to want to watch TV. The days of must see TV are long gone for me…
A new report out about “Children Who Watch Too Much TV Are…” fill in the blank with any bad thing in life. i.e. lower IQ, more likely to fail, obese, social misfits, etc. So, this made me think about losing the cable TV altogether. Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching TV and would not total eliminate it. There is a growing trend of just using the internet for watching your favorite shows. With sites like Hulu, Fancast, and Clicker to name a few, it is becoming easier and easier to watch what you want over internet streaming.
I’ve already been using an HTPC (Home Theater PC) for several years and enjoy surfing the web on my big screen TV as well as watching some *cough* downloaded movies. So, I don’t think the transition will be that hard. By eliminating cable and sticking solely to internet streaming content, it just makes it a little more likely that we will bypass TV watching altogether.
We have always limited our kids TV time but as they get older that becomes a little harder. Particularly when they already know how to use the remote control and have their favorite channel numbers memorized (Anabella loves her 51, Disney Channel).
So for the kids sake and to save a couple of bucks a month, I think I am gonna try going cable-less for a while. I’ll let you know how it goes and if you’ve already gone without cable or satellite TV, let me know how it’s going…
We’re having a Patient Appreciation Day at our Miami Lakes office from 2-7pm today. Just want to say THANK YOU to all of our patients who have made our practices a huge success. Gifts, food, and fun to those that can come by. We’ll also be offering free consultations to those new patients that are interested in getting checked out. For more information, please call the office at (305) 817-1661.
There was news yesterday that Hewlett-Packard bought the Palm Co. When I heard this news it made me a bit sad. Why? Because I have been a Palm user for over ten years, back to before Palm Pilot became a household name for any hand-held device. Now I know I’m not the only one who gets emotional about products, or am I?
Well in any case, this just got me thinking about the everyday stuff that causes us emotional stress. Stress is a major factor in our health and can be a catalyst for serious health conditions. Of course, I can easily relate this back to spinal health. When you get stressed, our animal instincts think we are being attacked or are in physical danger. It sets off a number of physical reactions in the body, i.e. increase blood pressure, increase heart rate, increase hormones in the blood. Another important consequence is muscle contraction, your body does this to get you ready for a fight or to flight.
But when your body is exposed to repeated incidents of stress and thus muscle contraction, this leads to your muscles staying in that contracted state. Muscle spasms and tension become much easier to occur and to cause problems. So, what can you do? Well, your family doctor may have told you in the past to “avoid stressful situations” or “don’t worry so much”. To me that is totally useless help! You can’t avoid stress. It is all around us! You can only control how you let it effect you and try to find ways to manage it. Exercise, meditation, healthy hobbies are just some of the ways to manage life’s stresses.
By the way, after hearing about my beloved Palm company news, I took my son to his baseball game. Seeing him have fun and playing with other kids made me happy and I forgot about everything else. Bye-Bye Palm, you will be missed…