Here’s something you might not know about Park Bench. We do a lot of stretching on our patients.
Adjusting something and then having tight muscles pull everything back out of whack is a letdown for both the chiropractor and the patient. Sometimes the tight muscles, from posture or injury, are the actual cause of the problem. If we don’t do something about that, the problem comes right back.
Lately, some other businesses have been popping up offering expensive stretch sessions for clients.
We’ve been doing this for more than 15 years. We stretch legs, hips, calves, shoulders, necks, forearms, backs and wrists. Chiropractors in Maryland have licensing options including with or without “Physical Therapy privileges”, and both Dr. Matt and Dr. Rob have those privileges, and one of the main things we like to do with that is to hit tight muscles with a good stretch alongside the adjustment. Many of our clients tell is that it’s one of their favorite things about our practice.
There’s even a decent number of our patients who just want to be stretched during appointments. Definitely not most of the patients, but there are some who just want that, or some other type of mobility work.
If you’ve had chronic (years!) of lower back pain that causes you pain to get up and down from prolonged sitting, and if your hips are tight, then consider making an appointment and having us check out how tight those muscles are. Sometimes a good adjustment to the SI Joints and lower ribs, coupled with some nice deep stretches of the hips, will lead to almost immediate relief.
Shoulder Mobilization
Another great way to get relief is with shoulder mobilization. This means we are using our hands to grab your shoulder blade (scapula) and, with force and pressure, cause it to glide up and down and even pull it off the back to create some space between the shoulder blade and the back ribs. This can feel like a mix of pain and relief that most people don’t particularly enjoy in the moment but are relieved when it’s done and the shoulder blade has more normal movement restored. While we don’t always need to adjust the upper back and neck, this shoulder mobilization goes really well with neck and upper back adjustments.
If you have been in pain, especially if it’s your dominant “computer” hand and your neck, perhaps even with headaches on that same side, then you should think about coming in for some neck and upper back work and some shoulder mobilization. Give us a call and set up an appointment.
It’s not that we’re not super-cool fun guys. We are the coolest.
Do we occasionally get airborne trying to get a stubborn vertebrae to finally unlock? Maybe we do. Sometimes you really need to get some heavy leverage to get the thing to happen!
Do we have a Y-strap in the office? Maybe we do.
Do we advertise it to entice people, who may or may not actually benefit from it, to come get their necks yanked and cranked? No, we do not do that.
When the patient is too much in charge, this is a bad thing. This is Rob here writing this, for those that know me. I have a Y-strap in my office. I place it where no one can see it. I do not want my patients bugging me to use it on them. Some patients I show the strap to and I describe the use of it and I tell them about it, and those are the patients who I think can safely benefit from that type of cervical traction.
The last thing I want is some hyper-mobile 21 year old with headaches from horrible posture coming in and expecting the Y-strap adjustment…because they saw it on the Internet. That person is not an ideal candidate for that modality.
Ironically, that person will probably get the ultimate “CrAcK!” from that adjustment as their head nearly separates from their body and their upper cervical stability ligaments are tested to the max, but those fireworks do not mean anything will be any better. They will feel great for a few hours of adrenaline and endorphins, the next day might be another story altogether.
Will some other chiropractor gladly take their money and apply 50+lbs of mechanical force, pulling their skull away from the neck with a sudden tug? Probably! Not us, though.
You may very well respond favorably to the Y-strap style of cervical traction. A really great part of chiropractic school is that I can tell the difference between someone who probably will benefit from that and someone who has an unfavorable risk profile for the Y-strap.
Sometimes a new patient comes in to the office and, in the course of our typical 20 minute conversation that we have before the physical exam starts, something will be said which raises an eyebrow.
In dealing with a patient, there can be “yellow flags” or “red flags“. A yellow flag is something that raises the level of concern about a case. A red flag is something which merits an immediate change in strategy.
An example of a yellow flag for a chiropractic patient with neck pain would be numbness in the arm or hand. It’s not a deal-breaker for chiropractic care. In fact, it’s right there on the list of things chiropractors can treat. It might be something “not that serious” such as a tight shoulder muscle, or it can be something more serious, like a disc bulge in the neck. It might be both!
Since the level of concern is increased a patient with a complaint about this numbness will be carefully interviewed and examined and might be sent for imaging (X-ray or MRI). In most cases the presence of numbness doesn’t mean a chiropractic neck adjustment can’t help.
At Park Bench we have seen hundreds (thousands?) of neck pain clients, and there has been countless examples of a neck adjustment helping reduce numbness or tingling in the hands or arms.
An example of a red flag is if the patient says that part of their face is numb and they have the worst headache ever, and that it feels different that any other headache they’ve ever had. This represents a possibility the person is having a stroke. It might just be a migraine, but this means that the interview and exam must be tailored to tell the difference between a stroke and a migraine. The likelihood of imaging, or a 911 call, is much higher than a typical neck pain or headache patient. Saying things like “worst headache ever”, “different headache than ever before”, or “my face is numb on one side” are all things which should create immediate concern in any healthcare provider.
It’s usually not something scary.
There are much more benign things which would lead us to tell a patient that chiropractic isn’t what they need. Maybe we have adjusted you gently, adjusted you less gently, adjusted you aggressively, performed myofascial stretch and trigger point therapy on you, given you home exercises, and talked to you about posture and nutrition and you still aren’t improving.
In cases like this we have that conversation with the person about progress and other options. We aren’t against sending you back to your Primary Doctor, sending you to a local Physical Therapist, referring you to a Massage Therapist or Acupuncturist, or sending you to an orthopedic consult or Pain Management specialist. We want to see you get better, whether it is due to our efforts or someone else’s.
It’s not uncommon for a person during their first appointment to start off with something like “I’m not sure if this is the right place to start…”, letting us know that they aren’t really sure that chiropractic is the place to start. Sometimes it is a concern about bone density – a very smart thing to wonder about if you are a female over 40 years of age. Sometimes you know from prior imaging that you have degenerative or bulged discs. We treat those cases all the time and we know when it’s OK and when it’s not OK to adjust. Still, we like educated and informed patients and we apreciate it when our patients give us a “heads up” about their pre-existing conditions and their concerns about safety.
Sometimes the best chiropractor isn’t the one who knows what bone to adjust, it’s the one that knows what bone NOT to adjust.
If you’re looking for a chiropractor in Frederick, then give us a call or send us an email. We take most insurance plans and we have reasonable self-pay (cash) rates.
Everyone gets shoulder pain from time to time. It can be from a sudden injury, or it can be from something like posture or sleep habits. Sometimes the pain is coming from the inside of the shoulder joint, or the rotator cuff muscles, or the muscles around the shoulder blade. Here are a few examples:
Joint Pain / Arthritis
Shoulder joint (glenohumeral joint) pain. This type of pain is often from arthritis or a sudden injury. When it is from arthritis it’s a type of pain that sets in slowly over time. It is a degenerative process where your bones degrade and your joint surfaces wear down over time. That kind of pain sometimes leads to surgery, but there is a lot of time that can be bought by addressing the muscular (soft tissue) problems that coincide with the joint damage. When a joint starts to break down, the muscles that surround and control that joint then start to function poorly. That tightness in muscles, and the painful knots or trigger points that take hold inside the shoulder blade, often exacerbate the shoulder pain. By eliminating those muscle issues the arthritis pain in the shoulder can become much more manageable, and the possibility of surgery can be pushed back.
The other goal at our office when we are dealing with an arthritic shoulder is that we need to get the shoulder joint back to as-close-to-normal function as possible. The shoulder is a ball-and-socket joint, and it needs to have a smooth “roll” with normal biomechanics in order for the joint to not get worse. While arthritis is already “baked in” by the time it is visible on x-ray, the progression of the degeneration can be slowed down by getting the joint to move normally again. We regularly treat this type of shoulder issue here at Park Bench, with great results.
Postural Pain / Sleep Positions
Postural or Sleep (muscular) pain. This type of pain is often worse when certain positions are held for periods of time. For example, sleeping or sitting in a chair working at a computer. Proper posture is a struggle we all are working on constantly. It is very easy to let our posture slip. Unfortunately for all of us, it is usually more comfortable to rest in a bad posture. It is when we try to improve our posture (after months or years of bad posture) that we then feel even more pain. It becomes painful to try to improve our posture! Sleeping is a whole other problem – we are asleep while we are in a bad posture. It’s difficult enough to change our posture while we are wide awake with a coffee in front of us, it’s much more difficult to control our body positioning while we are asleep! We have advice and ideas to help with that, so make sure to talk to us about your sleep habits.
This type of pain is usually mostly from the soft tissues of the shoulder, and it is the muscles that position the shoulder blade (the scapula) which most often are the muscles that are way too tight and sore. By working on those shoulder muscles with manual therapy (massage, trigger points, etc) and then adjusting the joint we can normalize the muscle and improve the joint’s range of motion, helping to address two of the problems that poor posture cause. When the shoulder works poorly, it puts a lot of strain on the thoracic spine (the upper back), and these tight muscles tugging on the neck and back vertebrae usually means a series of adjustments is needed to get your body back on track.
The big challenge to posture is to get the client to stop doing the wrong things and to start doing the right things. That is as much about psychology and motivation as it is about physics and ergonomics. Sometimes we look at your situation and we need to address your chair or your workstation, other times it is the amount of time you spend sitting or otherwise in a bad posture, and other times it’s the right combination of home stretches and exercises that you need to do in order to counteract the postural demands of your job. Some jobs, like plumbing/electrician or HVAC can involve a lot of bending and reaching and twisting. Computer jobs really jam up the body, and there’s not even movement involved. There’s no two ways about it, you just need to do certain things as part of a job. In situations like that we try to find ways to undo the problems by getting the body strong in the right ways so that those things don’t cause pain any more.
Rotator Cuff / Impingement Pain
When we have repetitive motions, even including reaching for the computer mouse or holding and pulling a dog leash, these movements can cause inflammation or damage to the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulder. Sometimes it is a tight jar lid! Rotator cuff or impingement typically will cause pain with trying to reach backwards, behind the back, or to try to rotate the arm bone on the shoulder socket. Think about the ref at a football game making the “field goal” sign. This often hurts at the top of the shoulder, or even in the muscular part of the top of the arm, just past the shoulder joint. It may hurt to lay on the painful shoulder at night in bed. Sometimes there will be tingling in the hand, quite often more on the “pinky” side of the hand.
This type of pain requires identifying the activity that is causing the problem and then changing or stopping that. There’s already some pain and inflammation, so treating with that chiropractic adjustments to the neck/upper back and shoulder, stretches, exercises and by working on the trigger points in the shoulder blade will all help resolve this type of pain. In some cases we will send you for x-rays or even an MRI if your case is bad enough, but often that isn’t needed.
If any of these shoulder issues sounds like something you are dealing with, give us a call at (301) 378-0334 to schedule a new patient appointment. We can usually get you in within a week or less. The first visit is an hour long and it is a thorough look at your problem. We explain everything up front. Check out our reviews if you aren’t sure, or just call and ask questions if you have any. Thanks for reading this!
Ideally, you will get your outside work done in the early morning or in the early evening – when the thermometer isn’t over 80 degrees. Sometimes, though, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do things when you want to do them, you just do them because you need to.
For example, I like to mow my lawn before it gets too tall so that when I mow I don’t have piles of mulched grass in a long line that I then need to rake up. If I mow in time the grass that gets tossed from the side of my mower doesn’t mound up. I do not have the grass collecting attachment. So I try to mow before the grass is too tall. I have kids, and they have swim or whatever all the time. I work until 6pm, and while I want to mow in the evening sometimes I have other things I need to do then. So I mow while I can, even if that is 1pm and it is 95 degrees!
When I mow in the heat I sweat my brains out. I get dehydrated. I come in and take a cool shower and have about a gallon of water. If I didn’t cool off and hydrate then I would get light-headed and weak later in my day.
When we are over-extended, thirsty, tired, and burning the candle at both ends we are more likely to screw something up or injure ourselves carelessly. So, do yourself a favor and try to work in your yard when the temperature isn’t too high. It’s a hot summer and the heat enough will wear you down.
Even if it’s not hot out on the day you are working in the yard, it is still the season for yard work of all types. Mowing, trimming, cleaning out the pool, power-washing the deck, and all sorts of other physical endeavors end up occurring in the summer. We typically have an influx of new patients in the summer months, and it’s a lot of yard work-related injuries – pulled back muscles, pinched nerves, and jacked-up necks.
Please do yourself a favor and only work up to your limits but not past them. If it’s too hot, grab a cold drink. If you’re too tired, take a break. If you haven’t worked hard much lately, then start slowly and make sure you are careful. Getting back into activity after a period of rest – such as a busy summer after a quiet winter – is a recipe for sprains and strains of all kinds. We always welcome new patients, no matter how they ended up feeling all bent out of shape – but we prefer you just stay out of pain and not hurt yourself in the first place.
Facet Syndrome is a disorder of the spine that is INCREDIBLY common and it can be INCREDIBLY painful. If you have ever been adjusted by a chiropractor – or if you’ve ever just self-adjusted your own neck or back – the popping you feel and hear is actually from your facet joints. Since chiropractors are uniquely qualified to adjust facet joints, that means facet syndrome is something that we see a lot of.
First, let’s go with some terminology. A facet is a type of joint in the spine. There are two facet joints for every level of the spine. There are 24 individual vertebrae in the spinal column, of which 12 are thoracic (middle back), 7 are cervical (neck), and 5 are lumbar (lower back).
The facet joints stack up on each other, bridging their way from the sacrum to the skull.
Pen is pointing at the facet joint. That is the joint that POPS! when you get adjusted by a chiropractor.
These joints can become inflamed or irritated, or can become locked in place and painful, due to a variety of conditions. Bad posture can stretch and weaken facet joints, causing them to become chronically painful. Injuries or repetitive movements can jam them together and inflame them. Sudden falls or impacts can strain the muscles that help them move, or strain and cause micro-tears in the ligaments that help protect the facet joints.
Pain from facet syndrome can feel like a localized soreness or tenderness that is worse with bending forward or backwards. Ice may bring relief. Being still usually brings relief, though that isn’t recommended as a solution! Quite often the person suffering from facet pain will say that their back “feels like it needs to pop” when we ask them what it feels like.
The good news about facet pain is that, unless it is a chronic condition, it will typically feel better with a minimal number of adjustments. Assuming you aren’t screwing it up right after we adjust you, the joint should begin moving normally again and that will help the inflammation clear up. In short order the spine will move freely again and the pain will subside. Once you’re out of the painful phase, we will talk about stretching and exercising to keep the pain away and prevent recurrence.
If it recurs, as yourself what you are doing that may be causing it. We have literally thousands of patients here in beautiful Frederick, and we always ask how people hurt themselves, so if you aren’t sure what went wrong sometimes we can tease the answer out of you with some good questions.We have heard it all! People hurt themselves in some very interesting ways, although most of the time it’s not that exciting.
If you think you are feeling some facet joint pain then please give us a call or just drop in one day and say “hi”. Our contact information is here.
Ready or not, another year is upon us. There are a lot of people who make New Years Resolutions – essentially promises to themselves about things they will do better.
For a lot of people the goals center around diet and exercise. If that’s you, then we wish you all the luck in the world.
Whatever you choose to work on this year, make sure you set your goals in ways that you can make mini-achievements along the way. Don’t put some lofty goal in front of you and then not give yourself any roadmap towards success. Do not make your goal so huge that you cannot reach it. And, of course, congratulate yourself on every win. Let each mini victory feed your self-esteem and fuel your next step forward.
Even if you fall off and don’t find as much success as you’d like, don’t give up! Pick yourself back up and treat every morning like January 1st. You can start fresh every single day. So, if today isn’t the day that you meet all your personal goals for your meals or your exercising, then that’s OK. Tomorrow you start again and you’ll get better each day.
That’s all from us today, just a little pep talk. Enjoy your year.
As we get into this festive time of year we want to remind all the Park Bench family that we will have some days coming up that we will not be open. Obvious major holidays like Christmas and New Years Day come to mind, and we just were closed for Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
So, please plan accordingly. Everyone is a bit more stressed and we all lack enough self-care at these times. We start slipping on our exercising and stretching and we eat too much, drink too much, and fail to get enough recuperative sleep. Basically, we run ourselves ragged.
This holiday season please do yourself the favor of staying on top of your self-care routine, even if that just means taking some time to enjoy a few deep breaths. Better yet, schedule your appointment now because December is a busy month and we have our appointments filling up rapidly. If we don’t see you soon, then we will see you next year.
As Summer fades into the background and the colder days of Autumn set in, things get cold in Frederick. This morning is a great example. Car doors were a little tougher to open, lawns were frosted over and crispy, and you could see your breath in the air. And it’s still October. I’ve had a few patients pop in this morning and the first thing everyone said was something like “D@%*, it’s cold outside!”
Something I have noticed in practice is that as the temperaturedrops lower there is a sudden rise of neck pain cases coming through the doors at Park Bench. While I can’t say exactly why that is, and everybody has a different case, I suspect it has something to do with people needing to tighten up and try to hold themselves together tighter to retain heat. Shoulders get closer to ears when it’s cold outside – just look around and you’ll see! People really pull the covers tighter in bed, too, and they cuddle up closer to loved ones (or animals) as they sleep.
If the Shoulders are going UP, make them go DOWN
Whatever the reason is, neck pain is a real thing. Now, obviously we all need to put our phones down and do some neck stretches, but instead focusing just on that today I want to talk about something else. I want to talk about “UNSHRUGGING”.
Unshrugging is the intentional act of using your shoulder muscles to actively bring your shoulders down as low as you can pull them. If shrugging is the act of raising your shoulders, then unshrugging is the opposite. Use the muscles at the bottom of your shoulder blades to pull those shoulders blades downward and inwards towards each other.
It may be cold outside, but for this purpose I want you to drop it like it’s hot (outside). See what I did there? Clever, I know.
Check out this handy infographic I have created.
Pull those shoulders down, down, down!
Now, just like all changes to posture, this is going to take some repetition. We all get set into patterns, and to break a pattern we need to actively and very conscientiously focus on doing things a different way.
One of the better ways to do this is to tie your new habit to an existing habit, preferably a good habit. So, every time you go grab a glass of water or take a min-break from your computer desk, or every time you take a nice, deep breath from your belly…when you do something like that also be sure to UNshrug.
Getting your shoulders to stop being UP is a great goal. Making sure to purposefully get your shoulders DOWN is a great way to get there. And if you can relax your shoulders and keep them down then I bet you’ll start experiencing much less neck pain, especially the kind of stiff pain associated with cold weather hitting an already tight and dysfunctional neck.
Make it happen
Hey now, if you enjoyed reading this then don’t like it and don’t subscribe. We don’t do that, this isn’t Youtube. Instead, just implement this for yourself and enjoy the postural benefit and reduced neck pain. Better yet, come in to our office and see if Park Bench Chiropractic can help you reach some health goals. If you’re not so sure about chiropractic, that’s OK, just do lots of stretches and some rehab exercises and pay attention to your posture. But if you need a hand, or maybe a gratifying crunch, then give us a call.
I’ll be honest here. We stay pretty busy. We do the “Golden Rule” business model at Park Bench. We just treat people the way that we would want to be treated. We are honest and upfront about your condition and about what we can accomplish. We don’t try to dazzle you with silly deals or offers or free stuff. We don’t wear white coats and try to be “Real Doctors”. We do these things because it is easy and it really does make for good business.
We are pretty darn good at diagnosing musculoskeletal conditions, particularly of the spine, and we have a broad skill set of manual techniques to help you find relief from pain.
This Sub-heading Was Suggested by the Internet
All that being said, every few months my website reminds me to add content so that the Google Gods put our site up near the top of the listings. If we add “fresh content” full of keywords then our site stays closer to the top and then perhaps magically we will see dollar bills float through our front door in the form of new clients. In the interest of keeping our Google listing up top without sending a bucket of cash every month to Google, we occasionally pump out some keyword-rich word salad that provides an educational or informational value.
Today, though, I have about 20 minutes between appointments and I am going to blatantly just type keywords. For example, neck pain is not fun. We treat neck pain. Lower back pain is also unpleasant, and we also treat lower back pain. You’ve got nerve pain down the leg? That’s a bummer! Come on in and let us try and fix it for you! Your dealing with chronic headaches that set in as your day progresses? Probably from the spine and we would love to help you with that!
See? I just used a ton of keywords. I want to personally thank you for reading all that. Rather than close with some sort of “call to action” such as I am supposed to do (“always be closin’!”), I will instead just wish you a wonderful day. If you ever need a friendly Frederick chiropractor ( <– keyword!) then try to remember about us.
Oh, and here’s a picture to help that Google listing…
