Chronic Pain

A recent new patient has reminded me that many people consider their chronic pain as hopeless or even worse as normal. A frequent source of chronic pain are the muscles, joints, ligaments, and tendons of the body. Once these areas are injured, they often heal with a greater concentration of nerves in the tissue. That makes them more sensitive than normal tissue. Healing of these parts called "soft tissues" is seldom perfect but in many cases it is very far from what could even be considered good. The degree to which this tissue becomes more normal again is the degree to which it will be stronger and produce less pain.

Fortunately, with appropriate chiropractic care, these tissues can be stimulated to remodel further towards normal. This will result in better mobility and less pain. In fact, that recent patient who had been believing her condition mostly hopeless was pleased to report (and I was pleased to hear) that she was feeling almost normal again after just a few weeks of treatment!

Thumbs Up

Again recently a patient has come in with a chief complaint of thumb pain. At first you might think, "do chiropractors even work on thumbs?" That is a common question but the answer is emphatically Yes! In fact, we can help many conditions involving the extremities such as the shoulder, wrist, hip, knee and foot. Also what I frequently see is that the person with these problems has usually had them for a long time. Perhaps they have been helped to some degree by other treatments but the patient has given up hope that they will get completely better. Thankfully, in most cases, we can clear up the problem completely. It usually boils down to a lack of correct motion in the joint. That is also what we are dealing with in the spine. Please ask us about your extremity problems and quit accepting that pain as normal.