One of my “Ask The Doctor” clients wrote to me yesterday asking about a natural analgesic known as Arnica Montana. He is an avid runner, and was looking for something to deal with the aches and pains associated with a long run.
Arnica is a wild flower that grows in high elevations. It is in the sunflower family. In the United States, it is found in the mountains of the Northwest. This plant works well as a natural anti-inflammatory. It is best used topically. In the field, one can poor boiling water over the flowering head, remove the excess water, and then apply the flowering head hot to the injured area. Leave it in place until it cools, and then repeat 2 to 3 times.
This herb can also be taken orally, however there are some risks. overdosing with this herb can lead to vomitting, diarrhea, and mucos membrane hemorrhage.
It also acts as a cardiac muscle stimulant, and therefore can be an effective treatment for cardiac insufficiency. Again, it is necessary to be careful with this as overdosing can lead to cardiac muscle palsy following overstimulation.
Other names of this herb are, Mountain Tobacco, Leopard’s Bane, Wolfsbane, Arnica Flowers, and Arnica Root.
If you have any questions, you can write them to me at drmarksnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com.
Insulin grabs glucose(sugar) in the blood, and carries it to the cells. The surfaces of the cells have receptor sites on them to allow the insulin to attach, and unload it’s glucose into the cells to be used. In our society, we eat foods that are high in fats and simple sugars, and most of us do not get enough exercise. This lack of exercise causes a reduction in the amount of recepter sites for insulin. This reduces the amount of glucose (sugar) that can be removed from the blood. We wind up with elevated sugar levels in the blood, and starving cells. A regular exercise program is essential to the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes. We also need to supplement our diet with products that cause our body to better metabolize the sugars that we eat. If you have any questions, feel free to email them to me at drmarksnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com.
It is amazing how many people come in to my office in terrible pain, and when asked what started it they say something like, “I just bent over to pick up a piece of paper.” Nothing ever happens all of a sudden in the body. This is characteristic of a classic case of subluxation degeneration. A problem has existed for months or even years without symptoms, and finally when they bent over that was just enough to put the weakened system over the limit.
Thinking that something like this happens all of a sudden is like waking with a tooth ache, and going to the dentist. The dentist finds a cavity, and you think it developed over night while you slept.
The problem has been there for a while without pain, and once care begins it will still be there even though the pain subsides. This is another reason that proper examination and x-rays are critical. These are objective ways to monitor progress. Follow up x-rays should be taken between 30 and 90 days after beginning care.
Once the problem is properly taken care of, then maintenance care is critical to prevent further problems from developing. If you would like to ask me any questions, feel free to email me at drmarksnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com. To listen to my recorded messages, go to http://www.westvalleyfamilyclinic.com/media.
Here we are in the cold and flu season, and we are hearing all the hype about the late coming flu vaccine. Well, we would all be a lot better off if it never got here in the first place. What they do not tell you about the flu shot, is that they started making it last year. The flu virus mutates every year and they do not know what the flu virus is or how it looks until it gets here from asia. So the vaccine this year that they sarted making last year is most likely not effective against the strain that we will see. More over, getting a flu shot is allowing all kinds of toxic chemicals to be injected directly into your body causing the body to react in various ways. The side effects of which can include autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Take your chance with the flu. Take good vitamin supplements to build your immune system, and wash your hands frequently. If you get it, you will be sick for a while and then you will be truly immune to that strain. You can email me at drmarksnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com to ask any questions that you may have.
I am shocked at the continued efforts of neolithic medical doctors to tarnish the reputation of the chiropractic profession.
Recently, a patient that I have been seeing for injuries she received in a car accident told me of an experience she had at a local medical doctors office. She went there to appease her parents who have been deluded by the medical profession. This “spine specialist” told my patient after a perfunctory examination, that nothing was wrong, and that all her pain was just in her head. This “doctor” performed one X-ray, a frontal view of her spine, and said that it was perfect.
What this “specialist” failed to do was a side view of the spine (this is the basic standard of care to see the structure from two views at 90 degrees of eachother). If he had performed the basic standard of care, he would have seen what I saw, which is that this patient’s cervical spine was curved backwards of what it should be.
To make matters worse, he went on to tell my patient that she should not see a chiropractor because thay are not “real doctors” but just go to a few classes and get a piece of paper. Let’s examine the facts.
This medical doctor has not copleted an orthopedic residency, and is not a board certified orthopedist. He is a basic medical doctor who took some weekend courses in orthopedics. The fact of the matter is that the brand new chiropractor coming out of chiropractic college has over 400 hours more schooling than this nescient “specialist”.
It is not my intent to undermine the medical profession as a whole, but it is my intent to undermine the attempts of some unscrupulous medical doctors to harm the chiropractic profession.
Face it, chiropractic has been around for over 100 years, and despite the well funded and organized attempts of the American Medical Association, it has grown to the point where more than 20% of the population have at one time or another visited a chiropractor. Why has it grown? Because it works.
It is not the panacea to all health problems, but when a health problem is caused by a mis-alignment in the spine, then a chiropracor is the only one trained to find and treat that condition. If you are going from drug to drug, and the condition is not improving then chiropractic may be the thing that you need.
It is easy to find out, and will not cost much to know if chiropractic can help you. Make sure you find a chiropracor who will do a proper examination and X-rays, and give you a proper diagnosis before treating you. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me drmarksnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com, or you can check out my website. http://www.westvalleyfamilyclinic.com.
Years ago I had a car with a terrible vibrating problem. It was fine until I reached a certain speed and RPM, and then it would start to vibrate terribly. I thought that I probably needed to have the tires balanced and alighned, so I took it to a tire shop. I was a young man in my early twenties, and they saw me coming. I was sold a $900.00 set of new tires. I drove out of the shop, got onto the freeway, and as soon as I hit 55 mph, it started to shake again. I was furrious, and perplexed. I took it into a mechanic, and after looking it over he found that one of the engine mounts was loose. Thats it. He tightened it up, sent me on my way, and I had no further problems.
Like that engine mount, problems in the alignment of our spine can manifest in many different ways. Often we can spend hours and hours, and thousands of dollars chasing the symptoms. Then again, often people will ignore the problem, thinking it will just go away. What if I had done that with the car. eventually the vibrating would cause other mechanical breakdowns, and could lead to much more expensive damage.
The same is true with our bodies. If we just cover up the symptoms with pills, and don’t address the underlying structural problem we will cause more damage and incure more pain, suffering, and expense than if we had just had it fixed in the first place.
Scoliosis is the abnormal sideways bending of the spine. It shows up usually between the ages of 8 and 18, and effect girls more than boys. It is often identified by postural changes that may occur, but these can be missed, or even not present at first due to the body’s adaptive capabilities. This is why X-ray is the definitive diagnostic procedure for scoliosis. Scoliosis can progressively worsen, and can if left unchecked become crippling, and even life threatening due to interference with heart and lung function.
The medical approach to scoliosis is to try bracing the spine, and then watching and waiting to see if the curve gets worse. At some point, usually 25 degrees of curvature in an immature spine, they will recommend surgical implants of rods along the spine.
This is a highly invasive action, and will lead to rapid and progressive degeneration of the non-brace spinal joints. For this reason, this should be the last resort.
In most cases this can be avoided. Chiropractic has had great success in preventing the progression of the curve, and in many cases even reducing the angle of the curve.
I cannot believe the number of patients that I have seen in my office following a motor vehicle crash who have been checked at the emergency room and sent away being told that they are “OK”.
I am not bad mouthing the emergency room doctors; I am just trying to educate people. Emergency room doctors are trained to and do handle emergencies very well. When a patient goes into the emergency room following a motor vehicle crash, the doctors are going to look for three things. First, they are going to make sure that the patient is breathing, and that there is nothing that will threaten their ability to breathe in the near future. Second, they will check to see if there are any fractures, or grossly dislocated joints. This may or may not include the use of X-ray or other imaging modalities depending on the severity of the crash, and outward signs of these types of injuries like swelling and discoloration. Third, they will check for any bleeding both externally and internally. In the absence of these conditions, they are not an “emergency.” The patient will usually be given a prescription for anti-inflammatories, or pain pills or both and told to rest for a day or two.
Now let me be very clear, if any of the above conditions exist, broken bones, compromised airway, or bleeding then the emergency room is exactly where I would want to be. However, most car crashes are low speed crashes.
This means that they happen at 10 miles per hour or less. These types of crashes do not usually produce broken bones, or internal bleeding. What they do cause is severe soft tissue injuries. These are injuries to the ligaments and tendons, and capsules around joints. The joints of the spine are the most vulnerable. The sad thing is that these types of injuries are not looked for and the patient is told that they are “OK.”
These types of injuries if left untreated will lead to premature degeneration in the spine, as well as impaired mobility and function. Eventually, due to the misalignments of the joints and the degeneration, vital nerves are compromised, and the function of vital organs is impaired.
A patient who has this type of injury, will probably get by on pain medication for a while, and may even reach a point where they are symptom free. It may be 18 months later that they start to notice problems like headaches on a frequent basis, or shoulder pain. Sometimes they take the pain pills for a few months, and realize that they are not getting any better.
I had a patient just yesterday who was involved in a car crash two months ago. The emergency room doctor told her that she was “ok”, and gave her some pills and sent her on her way. She has been having migraine like headaches now for one month, and her X-rays show that her neck is curved backwards.
So here is what you need to do. See a chiropractor. Not just any chiropractor, but one who specializes in treating auto accident injuries. Call and ask if they need to take X-rays. If they say “no”, don’t go to them. If they say they don’t know until they see you, or that they do need X-rays, then you are probably ok to see them. Ask them if they will treat you on a medical lien if you max out your insurance coverage. If they will not, then keep looking. There is a good chance (depending on the severity of your injuries) that you will go over the insurance max. If they will only treat you until the insurance is maxed, then you may be left hanging with injuries that are not completely healed.
Chiropractic is not a “miracle cure”. There is and has been for years a sort of mysticism associated with chiropractic. It’s almost as though some people think that it is faith healing. This is why we get statements from people like, “Oh I don’t believe in chiropractic.” That is like saying, I don’t believe in gravity. I will try with this message to de-mystify chiropractic. Hopefully this will help you to understand what chiropractors do, and why it is important for everyone.
Let me begin with a story. This is a true story of one of my patients. His name is Tom. It was July 4th 2006; I was out of town with my family for the holiday. I received a call on my cell phone from a woman whose husband was on the floor and couldn’t move. His back was hurting so badly that he could not get up. I suggested that she call an ambulance, and get him to the emergency room. If he was unable to get up to come into the office, there is nothing that I can do for him.
However, if he could get some temporary pain relief, that would allow him to come into my office then I could assess him. On July 6th, two days later, this man came slowly shuffling into my office. He was hunched over, and could hardly even turn his head without excruciating pain in his low back. He had tingling sensations in both legs also. I performed an examination and X-rays on Tom and found that he had a loss of the normal curve of the low back, and that the discs in between the second, third, and fourth lumbar vertebrae were in a phase two degenerative state. I also found that the first, second, and third vertebrae in his low back were tilted to the left.
So what does all of this mean? Doctors of chiropractic treat one thing and one thing only. That one thing is called “vertebral subluxation.” The spine is made up of 24 movable vertebrae (bones). These bones form joints with one another, which allow us to bend and twist and move the way we do. Between each pair of bones is a disc, which acts as a shock absorber, and also increases the mobility of the spine. When each pair of bones is properly aligned, then there is proper movement. A “vertebral subluxation”, is when one or more pairs of these bones get out of alignment. This is not a complete dislocation. The joint surfaces remain in contact; however, they are not lined up properly. There are a couple of things that this will lead to.
First let’s talk about the disc. Imagine that you are looking down on a doughnut. In the hole you place a blob of jelly. Now this doughnut with its blob of jelly represents the disc between two vertebrae. The outer (doughnut) part is a tough fibrous material made up of concentric rings of fibers running in a diagonal direction perpendicular to the fibers in the adjacent ring. The inner (jelly) part is a capsule of jelly like material, which moves according to pressure. If you push on the front of the doughnut, the center will move back, and so forth. This disc is intricately connected to the bone above it and below it. It is impossible for this disc to “slip.” What it can and does do however is to become desiccated (dried out) and shrink, and rupture. The disc has the ability to absorb fluid, and when we lay down and take pressure off of the disc it does just that. Through movement, the disc has fluid pumped in and out of it, and this is how it gets rid of old fluid and receives new healthy fluid and nutrients. Misalignments in the joints of the bones above and below a disc cause a lack of or improper movement. This will prevent the movement of fluids in and out of the disc, and even when lying down, due to the locked nature of a subluxated joint, the disc cannot absorb as much fluid. This will cause the rings that make up the outer part of the disc to weaken, and eventually tear. As they tear the middle or jelly part begins to push through those tears. The outer rings of the disc will start to bulge out and often will put pressure on adjacent nerves causing pain and tingling. If the outer rings of the disc also tear, then the jell will ooze out. The disc is tightly connected to the bone above it and below it, so if it shrinks, then it pulls on the bone where it connects to it. This pulling will cause the body to add calcium to the bone to strengthen it, and you start to form bony ridges along the rims of the vertebrae called “bone spurs.” Now, in the back part of the bones, are two other joints called facet joints, one on each side. So if you are looking at two vertebrae, you will see that they have three joints, or areas where they connect with each other. The one is the body, or where the disc is, and the other two are the facet joints in the back and to the sides. These facet joints are like other joints in the body, they have a lining, and are enclosed in a capsule. They also have a lot of nerve endings in them. There are two types of nerve endings. Those that sense movement, and those that sense pain. If the nerve endings that sense movement are firing, then the nerve endings that sense pain are blocked. If we have a joint that is subluxated (miss-aligned), then there will not be proper movement in that joint and the nerve endings that sense pain will fire. Between the disc and the facet joints, there is an opening through which passes the nerve roots. These nerve roots come off of the spinal cord, and carry information to and from all parts of the body and the brain. This is how your body functions. If there is pressure on these nerves, then the information is interfered with. When there is a subluxation, it puts pressure on these nerves. Not all nerves sense pain so even though there is pressure on these nerves you may not feel anything. The danger is in the fact that the organs and tissues that those nerves go to are not getting the proper information, and will not function, as they should. This may not be manifested with any type of symptoms for a while however.
This is how chiropractic is able to help people with so many different health problems. A chiropractic adjustment properly applied to a subluxated joint will re-align that joint and take pressure off of the nerves. When the organs and tissues that nerve goes to are receiving the proper nerve impulses, they can heal and begin to function properly. Because the body has memory, and connective tissues change shape over time, it takes repeated adjustments to get a joint to stay in proper alignment. This is also why it is important to receive regular (monthly) chiropractic check ups. This will prevent the body from holding any subluxations long enough to cause degeneration, and a change in the connective tissues that would maintain that subluxation.
So getting back to Tom, he said that he had originally injured his back in 2002 lifting some heavy equipment. He had seen his family medical doctor, who gave him some Lortab and told him to take it easy for a while. After that didn’t help, he went to a chiropractor that didn’t take any X-rays, or the time to properly diagnose the condition. He treated him for about a month and then told him he was on his own. (Dangerous Doctors) On July 4th 2006 he bent over to pick up a drill, and couldn’t get up. That is when I got the call from his wife. Because he had subluxations that were not properly diagnosed and treated in 2002, and because he didn’t maintain any correction that might have occurred through regular chiropractic visits and specific exercises, the subluxations caused degeneration. This is what Tom said about his experience here. “On July 4, 2006 I had an episode which put me flat on my back for two days. Finally I was able to get into the office to see Dr. Snow. Dr. Snow took the time to properly diagnose my problem and explain it to me. He also let me know that there was hope. This eased my mind considerably, as I was very scared. Now it is August 17, 2006 and I am pain free. I have tremendous mobility, and I have my life back. I am doing exercises that Dr. Snow taught me to strengthen my low back to prevent this from happening again.”
If you would like more information about chiropractic, or would like to know if chiropractic could help you, check out my website at westvalleyfamilyclinic.com. Or you can write to me at drsnow@westvalleyfamilyclinic.com. You can listen to this as a podcast at www.westvalleyfamilyclinic.com/audio/faithhealingpodcast.mp3
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