JUNK IN EQUALS JUNK OUT WHY LIFESTYLE MEDICINE IS AN ESSENTIAL COMPONENT OF HEALTH
This is especially true if your only symptom is back pain . The AHRQ study also concluded that spinal manipulation was the preferred initial professional treatment for acute low back pain. The patient guide stated, “This treatment (using the hands to apply force to the back to ’adjust’ the spine) can be helpful for some people in the first month of low back symptoms. It should only be done by a professional with experience in manipulation.” For back pain lasting longer than four weeks, VAX-D is the best-known treatment to help the spine to heal. This recommendation was, in effect, an endorsement of chiropractic care, since chiropractors do 94% of all spinal manipulation in the U.S. After a century of defamation, it was a sweet vindication for the chiropractic profession to finally be endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service. Of course, the North American Spine Society, consisting primarily of spine surgeons, took a dim view of this precedent and politicked to have the AHRQ’s mission to establish guidelines eliminated with help from Newt Gingrich’s Republican Congress. It should be noted that of the 14 guidelines done by AHRQ, the acute low back pain guideline was the only one attacked by the medical profession. Despite the medical resistance, these warnings are escalating as the call for restraint is growing from a whisper to a roar. Certainly when leading medical professionals from prestigious universities, journals, and the U.S. Public Health Service openly criticize the onslaught and ineffectiveness of spine surgery, this has become an epidemic of legitimate concern for payers and patients alike. READ INGREDIENT LABELS Nutrition facts are helpful, but the fine print under them is far more important. Anything with more than five ingredients, especially if you can’t pronounce them, is usually cause for concern. STOCK UP ON PLANTS Whole, plant-based foods are the cornerstone of a healthy diet. We recommend that about 70% of your calories come from fruits and veggies, with the remaining 30% consisting of lean protein. BE SKEPTICAL OF HEALTH CLAIMS “When whole grain Lucky Charms show up in the cereal aisle,” writes food expert Michael Pollan, “it’s time to stop paying attention to health claims.” Usually, a food branded as healthy is just a less unhealthy version of an existing processed product. If you want to receive more lifestyle medicine tips to help you feel better, call our office today. We can give you the tools for long-term success — no fad diets necessary.
After nearly a century of warfare against the chiropractic profession, defaming it as an “unscientific cult” that deserved to be “eliminated,” research now shows chiropractic care to be very effective and, ironically, now seriously questions the efficacy of the medical management of back pain — opioid drugs, epidural steroid injections, and spine surgery. Indeed, the claim to be unscientific and dangerous now seems to be on the other (medical) foot. THE CALL FOR RESTRAINT IN SPINE SURGERY It must be bitter medicine to swallow for the medical profession to realize that back surgery “has been accused of leaving more tragic human wreckage in its wake than any other operation in history,” according to Gordon Waddell, DSc, MD, FRCS. As director of an orthopedic surgical clinic for over 20 years in Glasgow, Scotland, Waddell determined, “Low back pain has been a 20th century health care disaster. Medical care certainly has not solved the everyday symptoms of low back pain and even may be reinforcing and exacerbating the problem.” Richard Deyo, MD, MPH, also mentioned the problems with medical treatments and physician incompetence in diagnosis and treatment of low back pain treatments: “Calling a [medical] physician a back pain expert, therefore, is perhaps faint praise — medicine has, at best, a limited understanding of the condition. In fact, medicine’s reliance on outdated ideas may have actually contributed to the problem.” Undoubtedly, another knife in spine surgeons’ backs occurred in 1994 when the U.S. Public Health Service’s Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) conducted the most thorough investigation into acute low back pain in adults and concluded the following finding in its patient guide: “Even having a lot of back pain does not by itself mean you need surgery. Surgery has been found to be helpful in only 1 in 100 cases of low back problems. In some people, surgery can even cause more problems.” When it comes to losing weight and feeling better, there are two pillars that never change: diet and exercise. We know that maintaining a healthy diet and practicing regular exercise are essential for wellness, but over time, we’ve come to realize just how crucial these factors are in helping patients recover from all sorts of ailments. Often, our lifestyles are contributing causes of what’s hurting us, and improving them is an essential component of living pain-free without the use of medication. That’s why we began offering “lifestyle medicine” in the form of nutritional coaching 10 years ago. We’ve seen great success using lifestyle medicine in conjunction with other treatments. Everyone’s nutritional needs are different. If you’re somebody who constantly works out, your caloric needs are greater than somebody who’s more sedentary. That being said, there are healthy eating tips that apply to people of all ages and activity levels. Basically, they boil down to the fact that if you put junk into your body, you can expect junk in return. But what constitutes junk food? Here are a few easy- to-follow tips to help you identify just that. ... continued from Cover
Until next month,
-Dr. Vinton
2 | 724-458-1100 | Pain Relief and Wellness Center
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