Detroit Free Press' Mitch Albom Touts Chiropractic Care

Compares Return of Pavel Datsyuk to a Chiropractic Adjustment !

In the June 6, 2009, edition of the Detroit Free Press, inter-nationally renowned and best-selling author, journalist, screen-writer, playwright, radio and television broadcaster and musician– and Freep sports columnist – Mitch Albom compared the return of Detroit Red Wings Center Pavel Datsyuk to a chiropractic adjustment. “But his presence was like a chiropractic adjustment for the Wings; it put steam in their stride,” Albom wrote in a column after the Wings won game 5 of the Stanley Cup Finals. Professional athletes have long been one of chiropractic care’s biggest proponents. NFL Hall of Fame wide receiver Jerry Rice is the latest athlete to come out for chiropractic through the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress. Other prominent athletes who have promoted chiropractic or credited its use in improving their performance include: former San Francisco 49er Roger Craig; New York Yankee outfielder Johnny Damon; NFL Hall of Famer New York Giant Harry Carson; and Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels. Many professional sports franchises have a DC on staff; in fact, 31 of the 32 NFL teams employ a chiropractor as part of the triage in managing and preventing injuries (including the Detroit Lions, whose team chiropractor, Dr. Sol Cogan, is a longtime MAC member who currently serves as Chair of the Michigan Board of Chiropractic). Only one team does not publicly admit to using chiropractic care - the Oakland Raiders. Many NBA, NHL, and college teams also regularly provide chiropractic care for their athletes.

 

References:

1.) Google Images 

2.) Michigan Association of Chiropractors Journal; July 2009, Page 18

Hockey player scores with chiropractic

After almost a decade playing in the National Hockey League, Gary Roberts feared that his days as a professional athlete were finished.

Thirty years old at the time and a left winger for the Calgary Flames, Roberts suffered a neck injury that left him with severe nerve damage and numbness in his arms. Repeated surgeries and rehab had little effect.

“I couldn’t hold a steak knife to cut my food,” he recalls. “My career was over. I was a pretty lost soul.”

But then, after a visit to a sports chiropractor in 1996 to relieve stress and reduce scar tissue in his upper spine and neck, Roberts regained his strength and mobility. He returned to the ice to play professional hockey for another 13 years.

“It saved my life,” says Roberts, who eventually retired from the NHL four years ago. He is now an advocate of chiropractic treatment as a complement to proper nutrition and training techniques — a program offered in his eponymously named Gary Roberts High Performance Centre at the Fitness Institute in North York. His highly regarded fitness and nutrition regimen is customized to his clients, be they elite and junior hockey players or business executives who want to be physically active.

“[Whether] you’re a professional athlete or a weekend warrior, the results are the same — your body gets beaten up,” says Roberts. “Chiropractors have taken sports to a new level.”

Dr. Mark Scappaticci agrees. Integrated techniques such as active release techniques (ART), manipulation and acupuncture are increasingly used to help athletes recover from injury and to perform at their best, says Dr. Scappaticci, a sports chiropractor who practices in Niagara Falls and Toronto. Roberts has been a client of his, as well as Olympic gold medallists Donovan Bailey and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

Currently, Dr. Scappaticci is on staff at the Toronto Blue Jays front office as a consulting chiropractor.

Sports chiropractors understand the biomechanics of different sports and the injuries that can result from them, he says — injuries typically related to the build-up of abnormal tension in tissues, which increases with repetitive use of those muscles.

In order to restore and enhance function, sports chiropractors apply research-based therapies involving soft tissues (muscles), the nervous system and the joints.

“When those three things are operating optimally, we can optimize biomechanics,” Dr. Scappaticci explains. He also points out that there are long-range benefits from treatment beyond sessions on the track or rink, where results are immediate. “We are talking about significant

improvements in performance parameters.”

Chiropractic techniques, along with an integrated approach involving other types of therapies such as massage and osteopathy, can help athletes across the sports spectrum, from football and hockey to squash and golf. He says they work “phenomenally” with elite athletes who want to recover from injury and perform maximally. But the results are “even more astounding,” he notes, for non-pro-athlete patients with active lifestyles — say, those experiencing knee stiffness from jogging or shoulder pain from swinging a golf club.

Newer methods used by chiropractors, such as ART and acupuncture, appear to be helpful in treating the strains, tears, imbalances in muscle groups and tendon inflammation that lead to injuries in all types of athletes, says Dr. John Theodoropoulos, an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

“Everyone is high-level, everyone takes sports seriously now,” he says. As well, a “multidisciplinary approach” involving chiropractors, physiotherapists, massage therapists, trainers, strength coaches and surgeons is increasingly common nowadays.

And although the medical community would like to see more scientific research on the effect of chiropractic in sports, Dr. Theodoropoulos says those who receive chiropractic care swear by the results. “When athletes refer to their doctor,” he says, “their doctor is usually a doctor of chiropractic.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Scappaticci is planning a study beginning in October, wherein members of Britain’s Olympic track-and-field team will receive different levels and types of chiropractic treatment, after which their performance will be compared and analyzed. He’s interested in helping athletes achieve their full potential through an integrated approach to chiropractic and to be able to do it injury-free.

“If you want to improve outcomes,” he says, “you have to have more tools in your toolbox.”

By John in Sports, www.chiro.org on September 13th, 2013 at 3:26 pm

Source The Toronto Star

Baseball & Chiropractic

At Bat: Baseball and Chiropractic

Posted by rosemaryriess on Wednesday, June 19th 2013     

Baseball season is upon us! Chiropractic and baseball have had a strong association throughout the years. In “Baseball & Chiropractic: Maturing Together” (Chiropractic History, vol. 29., no. 1, 2009, pp. 15-18), Steven Parker, D.C., states: “. . . throughout the twentieth century, baseball’s professional athletes came to rely on chiropractic for both the treatment and prevention of injuries. Today, chiropractic has become an integral part of the healthcare team within professional sports.” Parker describes players such as pitcher Mordecai “Three-Finger” Brown, who he speculates as being in 1911 the first professional athlete to receive chiropractic treatment. The Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig are also known to have benefited from chiropractic treatment throughout their careers.

 

The image here is of the Palmer School of Chiropractic (P.S.C.) baseball team in 1938. Student Daze, the 1938 yearbook, details the 1937-38 baseball season as very successful despite the hot weather and the “disadvantage of the fairer sex attracting the attention of a few of our outstanding players.” At this time, Palmer played in the same league as the U.S. Engineers, French and Hecht, Firestone, Victor, International Harvester, and the Y.M.C.A. Reserves. Team leaders for the season included Wolfe with a .385 batting average and 4 home runs, Clements and Rising with 13 singles, and Schmidt with 19 runs batted in.
Interested in being a sports chiropractor? Consider joining the Professional Baseball Chiropractic Society, which was founded in 1995 “to integrate chiropractic into professional sports and build a network of practitioners to call on.” To learn more about chiropractors for successful teams, check out “St. Louis Cardinals: Primed for a Pennant”  (Today’s Chiropractic, vol. 30, no. 3, 2001, pp. 34-38). The article contains a fascinating interview with Dr. Ralph Filson, who followed in his father’s footsteps to become the team chiropractor for the Cardinals. In an interview on the American Chiropractic Association web site, Michael Trancedi, D.C., discusses what it was like to be a sports chiropractor with the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2008 World Series Championship.
Reference: blogs.palmer.edu

Pregnant Running

The old-school thinking about pregnancy was that women should exercise very little--or not at all. Fortunately, times have changed, and doctors routinely advise expectant mothers to stay active.

After you get your doctor's go-ahead, your mileage is determined in part by how much you were doing before. If you regularly ran five miles a day, you can keep logging those miles, albeit at a gradually slowing pace. So if you ran an eight-minute mile, you may find an 11-minute mile during pregnancy is just as challenging.

As your due date approaches, lower-impact activities like swimming and walking may be more comfortable.

Continuing to run during pregnancy isn't only about doing something you enjoy. Studies show that exercise improves the health of mom and baby--it lessens back pain, prevents excessive weight gain, improves sleep quality, and reduces delivery complications and time spent in labor.

Find this article at http://www.runnersworld.com


Dr Parker is a Sports Trained Chiropractor that utilizes Many different techniques to improve your health.
Your Sports Injuries are our Focus! Call (517) 381-9730 for your appointment.

Sports Chiropractic Treatment for Running Injuries

The lifecycle of a running injury is not always linear.
The cycle of many running injuries goes something like this: After admitting that the pain was more than just soreness, you listened to your orthopedic surgeon talk about options ranging from surgery to rehabilitation. You spent months in physical therapy trying to rebuild strength and repair soft tissue damage, eventually hitting a plateau, only to wonder if you'll ever go out for a run again.
The desire to get back out to run is why many runners seek alternative rehabilitation plans that include seeing a sports chiropractor for targeted treatments for their injuries. In my case, after two months in physical therapy, my pain was shifting from my hip to my iliotibial band and psoas muscle, and I knew that it was time to try something new if I ever wanted to run again (or even sit for any length of time).
Why see a sports chiropractor for a running injury?
Although physical therapy is often the first line of defense in rehabbing a running injury, many athletes and runners have started to rely on sports medicine-trained chiropractors. While physical therapy can focus on strengthening and coordination, chiropractic care is designed to improve joint mobilization, making sure that all the joints in the body are moving correctly. Hirad Bagy, founder of the United Wellness Center in Herndon, Va., and team chiropractor for the Washington Redskins, Washington Nationals and DC United, believes that sports chiropractic care has evolved to incorporate the best of both worlds of joint mobilization techniques and soft tissue repair, creating a new gold standard of best practices in treatment plans for patients.
Bagy emphasizes that not only do all the joints in the body need to move correctly, but they also need to move in coordination with the soft tissue – a healthy body is one where all the factors are working well together. Runners who decide to visit a sports chiropractor should expect, according to Bagy, a thorough evaluation of bio-mechanics by their practitioner, including:
• How they are moving.
• How they are standing.
• What the arch of the foot looks like.
• How the knees are aligned.
• How the hips are aligned.
Once an evaluation is completed, sports chiropractors will, as Bagy explains, create the "recipe for the treatment stew" – taking into account the needs of each specific patient to decide between a variety of techniques, each designed to help the body regenerate healthy cells to "activate healing mechanisms."
[Read: How to Identify a Running Injury.]
Four types of chiropractic treatment for running injuries
1. Active Release Technique (ART) is a combination of massage and stretching where trained therapists apply deep tension while they move a joint through a range of motion. ART is used primarily for adhesions deep in the muscle.
2. Graston Technique is a therapy best used for surface level scar tissue that uses handheld stainless steel tools to break down scar tissue-releasing adhesions.
3. Functional dry needling is used for very deep trigger points to release tension in the muscles through deep muscle stimulation provided by the needles. Dry needling can be helpful for injuries involving the psoas muscle, which is a critical hip flexor muscle for runners.
4. Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) stimulates surface muscles to contract releasing tension as a complement to other techniques.
[Read: Physical Therapy for Running Injuries.]
Active Release Technique for runners
After three months of not being able to run, in almost constant pain ranging from my iliotibial band to the back of my hip and then into my psoas muscle, I was admittedly ready for anything when my orthopedist suggested trying Active Release Technique. According to Bagy, the reason that Active Release Technique can be beneficial – especially for iliotibial band and hip injuries – is that it combines different muscle work that breaks down scar tissue while also emphasizing correct flexibility. Through Active Release, as Bagy explains, you can actually "elongate some of the muscle fibers making those muscles more pliable and therefore healthier."
Anyone preparing for ART should know that this is not a particularly gentle treatment. I tried telling myself that it would be like a deep tissue massage, which I enjoy, although I quickly learned that while highly effective (after three weeks my pain, though still there, was incrementally improving), the pressure and work on the muscles is deep and sometimes painful.
[Read: 5 Keys to Injury-Free Running.]
How to stay healthy for the long term
Staying healthy is a constant concern for professional athletes who get constant care from stretching to active release to heat or ice. Most adults or mature athletes, on the other hand, do not make the time every day to use a foam roller, apply ice or heat or keep up with stretching. Runners who have overcome an injury should consider ongoing preventive care, ranging from every two weeks to every six weeks to maintain progress and reduce future injuries.
[Read: A Beginners' Guide to Running.]

 By Elena Sonnino
 http://health.usnews.com

Dr Parker is a Sports Trained Chiropractor that utilizes Many different techniques to improve your health.
Your Sports Injuries are our Focus! Call (517) 381-9730 for your appointment. 

More Benefits of Massage Therapy

Here at Spartan Family Chiropractic in Okemos, MI, massage therapy is an important part of the options for treatment we offer for patients recovering from injuries and also for those trying to overcome other chronic health problems. Our patients rave about how they feel after a massage therapy session, and not just because it feels good—our Okemos massage sessions bring patients Great health benefits!

How Can Massage Therapy Help You?

When you schedule a massage therapy appointment at this office, our chiropractors work directly with the massage therapists to prescribe the type of massage therapy you need for your condition. We offer the following types of massage therapy:
•    Swedish
•    Deep Tissue
•    Reflexology
•    Prenatal
•    Sports

Some of the general health benefits you can enjoy from massage include the following:
•    Stress relief—Stress is one of the most damaging things to health! Studies indicate that 90% of doctor visits stem from stress-related or stress-exacerbated illnesses ranging from high blood pressure or diabetes to headaches, anxiety, depression and more. Additionally massage relieves mental and emotional stress that can cause biochemical damage to your body, it relieves musculoskeletal tension, loosening tight muscles and their connections to the skeletal system.
•    Pain relief—Works by relieving musculoskeletal tension, improving circulation, reducing inflammation  and causes the release of endorphins (the body’s self produced natural, painkillers), patients enjoy an overall reduction in their aches and pains. These things also help accelerate healing of soft tissue injury and help reduce tight knots and muscular adhesions which prevent full healing and overall  joint range of motion. Massage therapy helps our patients feel better all over without the need for medication.
•    Improved immune system function—This is another great benefit with massage therapy, it is the ability to tone and stimulate the immune system, making patients less susceptible to the contagious illnesses that proliferate this time of year.
If you have never had one of our massage sessions with one of our Great massage therapists, you should call us today at 517-381-9730.

Chiropractic Is Effective for Neck and Low Back Complaints

New Report Finds Chiropractic Is More Effective for Neck and Low Back Complaints
Chiropractic care
and how it benefits the neck and low back