Social media, technology, depression and anxiety

https://tmb.apaopen.org/pub/yvcb5y06/release/1?utm_campaign=Friday%20Favorites&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=268141852&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9S-3SFxxn7YzRT-K6-3FUGoJYt2zesPTPQ_njcdzoO4CbtcclbjR-vXbRTFOR6ukwfML_WuzNGr0xtTADAXQYH0pRCyw&utm_content=268141852&utm_source=hs_email

I'm currently the temporary parent of 2,15-year-old girls who are staying with us for almost 3 weeks as part of a family vacation and summer camp. This experience on the ground has brought home the reality of this research article I came across a few weeks ago, about the ever increasingly clear correlation between the use of smart phone, especially social media, and the risk of depression related disorders not only in teens but also in adults.

Depression is certainly a very complex multifactorial health problem. That involves situational stress, biochemical and inflammatory disturbances in the brain and body, (1 of the areas of intervention in our office along with chiropractic care). But I think the blindside is often the contribution of technology exposure to the disease. The healthcare system at large is developing more robust validated assessment questionnaires to help identify how much of a contribution it is for individual patients, and incorporates technology exposure reduction as part of the treatment plan. Incidentally, I get a lot of pushback from patient about requiring them to silence or shut off their phones when they are in the room, but this is based on solid science about how our nervous system responds to the presence of even apparently minor technology signaling such as a message beep on your phone while you're in the middle of a chiropractic treatment, when we are trying to achieve optimal neurological communication between your brain and your body, and the phone signaling constantly pushes your primal stress response system to go into fight or flight mode.

Birds of a feather: the eagle and the pigeon streches

The pigeon stretch is getting the lion’s share of the attention when it comes to hip and gluteal stretches, Both the pigeon and the very similar and lesser known eagle stretches have great value and target slightly different structures. The eagle stretch affects the sacroiliac and surrounding ligaments and muscular origins. It is more central and often overlooked. The pigeon stretch ( supine version instead of the traditional prone yoga version) affects muscles closer to the lateral and inferior part of the buttock muscles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hv6Tu6pAeyw

Pigeon

eagle

CHIROPRACTIC TO REDUCE C SECTION RATES: WHY IT MATTERS

Long-term risks and benefits associated with cesarean delivery for mother, baby, and subsequent pregnancies: Systematic review and meta-analysis - PMC (nih.gov)

For the last three years, I have been incorporating the concepts of the Spinning Babies midwifery teachings in the care of our expecting moms. The idea behind the system is that the fetus is meant to proceed with a smooth descent into the pelvic outlet as long as there is no obstacle to the process. The latter being a pretty significant caveat. In addition to intra-uterine sources ( cord and placental position), the anatomy of the mother’s bony pelvis, pelvic muscles and ligaments, abdominal wall and pelvic floor has a huge role in either allowing or interfering with a smooth descent to an uncomplicated vaginal delivery with little to no stress to the child. Early on, the midwife developer of the Spinning Babies method recognized the importance of body workers as an adjunct to midwives in that process. Dr. Carol Phillips, who incidentally was my first pediatric chiropractic teacher at Northwestern, was the main source of information.

The current rates of C-section worldwide range anywhere from 15% to a whopping 45%. The stakes are high to keep it closer to 15% and there is no reason why that number should feel unreachable. The research on the long term rates of C-sections on overall pediatric and long term health outcomes are sobering. It is important for expecting moms and dads, and their support system, that there are lots of things you can do to prepare for a non surgical birth outcome and lots of resources at hand

SURVIVING SITTING: STANDING LUNGES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0RyS2KtrE

As a corollary to the Bruegger's stretch/relief position for the neck and shoulders, the standing lunges addresses the long-standing postural shortening of the hip flexors associated with the sitting position. It is a more convenient option than a traditional lunge, often not accessible because of knee problems or clothing limitations.

Neurodeflective disorders , milestones and children's chiropractic

I am always interested in keeping up with chiropractic pediatric research because I feel that the future of our profession so much intersects with the future of our kids health and thriving. I found out about this most recent research article through 1 of our chiropractic research podcast, and I have listed both references at the bottom of this blog.

The research article focused on tracking traditional pediatric milestones through the chiropractic care intervention of 37 children's with neurodeflective disorders (the newest term coined to describe the spectrum of children with nonnormative neurological development for any reason). What was interesting and may be unique about this article is that it focused on the improvement in some of these traditional milestones (speech, social, gross and fine motor etc.) with the only variable being the chiropractic intervention, without some of the rehab therapy specific to each category (speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, sensory integration therapy, behavior modification therapy). The podcast producer theorizes that there is a grossly underutilized rule of chiropractors addressing subtle spinal functional lesion in the pediatric population, which will not manifest as pain, but have enough of an impact on neurological circuitry to interfere with normal neurological progression of expected milestones. The author also is strongly pushing for a better coordination of care and cooperation of chiropractors with their rehab counterparts in the above-mentioned specialties, with the idea that chiropractic will restore some degree of neuronal circuitry integrity, which then allows rehab specialists to maximize the benefit of their therapies in the affected pediatric population. This would be a refreshing departure from the current relative lack of cooperation between chiropractors and pediatric occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech and behavioral therapy.

https://vertebralsubluxationresearch.com/2022/07/10/1830-chiropractic-brain-development/

https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/understanding-and-changing-neurodevelopmental/id1360919805?i=1000596043004

SURVIVING SITTING: BRUEGGER'S RELIEF POSITION

When reviewing with patients some of their postural distortion patterns causing or aggravating their existing pain pattern, the triad of anterior head shifting, rounded shoulders, and increase midback kyphosis comes up more often than it does not. And with it the question: why does this happen? The simplest answer is that modern human life involves everything in front of you and below shoulder level, with very few counterbalancing activities. And by far the biggest culprit is sitting, especially sitting at a computer workstation.

The so-called Bruegger's stretch or relief position is a rapid focused counterbalancing posture that emphasizes thoracic lengthening an extension, cervical retraction and extension, external rotation and retraction of the shoulders. I tell patient to do this every 2 hours, for 6 slow breath cycles as a sort of postural reset.

Orthodontics and Headaches

I had 2 similar cases since the beginning of the year that made me realize it would probably worth blogging about it to let the word out. Pediatric and adolescent headaches can be frustrating to figure out. Often the easy causes have already been ruled out by the time they show up in the office.

I wanted to talk about one very specific type of headaches often affecting our young teens. These headaches tend to affect one side of the face, usually one side but sometimes both, tend to be in the temporal area, sometimes behind the eye. The pattern is random, coming in cyclical episodes that come and go. There is no other associated trigger identified, from diet, sleep, stress, cervical spine, food, etc. The only matter in which I was able to successfully identify them and treat them was in some patients for whom the location was very close to the jaw, and there was some mild painful information along the soft tissues on the side of the head. However when doing some intraoral palpation along the posterior muscles of mastication, I was able to reproduce quite a bit of the lateral headache pain pattern by findings trigger points of the posterior internal muscles of the jaw.

Some orthodontic treatments will require pretty aggressive positional changes of the lower jaw in relationship to the upper jaw, as well as some lateral shifting. This will obviously result in better long-term alignment for the purpose of not only cosmetics but also proper chewing and occlusion, and sometimes improved airway opening. However the transient stress on existing particular structures of the jaw and supporting muscles of mastication can be symptomatic in the form of headaches and the distribution of the intraoral muscles, while the jaw itself can be minimally painful during normal activities such as talking and chewing.

In the case of both patients, once we isolated the pain producing source of the headaches, we were able to track back the cyclical episodes more or less following the adjustment of the patient's orthodontics, usually 5 to 7 days after tightening the braces or adding internal banding between the top and lower jaw. The combination of trigger point therapy in the internal muscles of the jaw, gentle joy adjustment and other soft tissue supporting measures seem to be quite helpful at relieving the transient headaches episode.

Bras, neck and shoulder pain

This is a long overdue blog and patient resource video. I've been thinking about it off and on for several years every time I stare at strap grooves in my patients trapezium when I look at them from the back. Half the world is at risk of aggravating neck and shoulder pain by not wearing the appropriate bra, it should not be a mystery and I hope that the video will shed some light on the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tnr6cJu66I