Chiropractic Tips Archives - Advanced Chiropractic of South Carolina

Aug 01 2021

Chiropractor Greenville shares low back exercises for beginners.

Here is a simple exercises that you can do at home with no equipment.
It works the multifidus, erector spinae, transverse abdominus, oblique muscles.
The purpose of this exercise is to Increase low back strength and muscular endurance. By doing this exercise you can have the benefits of Improved stability, functional strength and injury prevention

Begin lying on your back.
Extend arms above head flat on floor.
Activate core and lift knees above hips and maintain a 90/90 hip and knee position.
Activate core.
Lift one arm off the floor and raise it towards ceiling until above shoulder level while simultaneously extending one leg downward towards floor.
Pause momentarily.
Return to start position, alternating sides.
Core activation should be maintained throughout entire exercise.
Repeat for recommended repetitions and sets.

Aug 01 2021

Yoga Beginners Hang Tough

Maybe it’s your first time in a yoga class, or maybe even your tenth and you’re beginning to think that this is not the exercise for you.
I get it. I was introduced to yoga in high school and while I was able to do the head and shoulder stands, I didn’t learn the mind-body connection until some time later.
Most people who encounter yoga as a young person are in it only for the movement, the exercise, for the “burn” of the exertion of the muscles. They, too, don’t get the mind-body connection.
I’ll be the first to agree that yoga isn’t for everyone, but for anyone who is breathing, they CAN do yoga. So before you quit going to yoga, here are a few things to consider:
1. You might be in the wrong place. Could be the class. Could be the instructor. Could be the type of yoga. When I returned to yoga many years after my high-school headstand triumph, I brought with me a very different body. And I found myself next to a group of lithe young bodies virtually trembling with the effort to remain quiet until the class started. And once it did, they leaped into action. I became so confused watching the instructor, watching them that I very quickly decided that I didn’t want to come to another yoga class as long as I lived. Fortunately, I was persuaded to try one more class, different teacher, different yoga style. And I fell in love.
2. Yoga is a very personal practice. My mistake in the class of young people was that I was trying to keep up with everyone around me. Yoga is not designed for that. Yoga is a very personal practice, and one to be done without judgment. Unfortunately, I was attending a class in a fitness center. The class had over 60 people in it. There was no way the instructor could possibly provide personal attention to someone who had a previous back injury and bad knees. All poses have modifications and a good yoga instructor knows them and will help you. Once I stopped competing with anyone, including myself, my yoga practice became much more effective.
3. Listen to your body. Today I have a twisted knee. I can tell that Monday’s yoga session is going to be different from the one last week because my knee is swollen, tender, and unpredictable. It’s not so bad that I can’t do some of the other poses, but anything that puts pressure on that knee, I’m not going to do. I’ve found a fabulous yoga studio, and I’m getting to know most of the instructors. They are fabulous and when they ask, “Is there anything I should know?” Speak up! They’re asking so that they can be of service to you. I tell them that my knee hurts and they pay attention to me and tell me when something might not work for me today. When it hurts, don’t do it. It’s really that simple.
Yoga is a persona practice. Some days you will want to exert yourself more than others. Other days you will want to focus more on the mind aspect of yoga than the body aspect. Both are right. Go to yoga for yourself. Never for anyone else.

Yoga Tabby Cat by Circe Denyer

Aug 01 2021

False Memories and All Nighters

Do you remember the last time you stayed awake all night? Most of my memories of this activity were during college, and not surprisingly, during my freshman year when I was not a very good keeper of my time. I excelled in procrastination and failed at planning.

My grades were good, and fortunately during that final physics lecture after I had successfully completed two all-nighters in a row I managed to take notes that regularly trailed off on the paper into a single line ending when my hand fell into my lap, waking me up.

Since that time I’ve learned that staying up all night hurts the body is oh so many ways. And there is not enough coffee in the world to bring the relief to the body that a good night’s sleep does.

Since those stellar days as a freshman in college, I’ve discovered that I am an insomniac. My father was one. My brothers and sisters share the trait. I don’t know about blessings or curses, but I do know that when I am able to sleep for six straight hours I consider myself to be very blessed.

I guess I wasn’t terribly surprised, then, to discover that there is a study that demonstrates that not only is staying up all night detrimental to our physical body, our mental health suffers too. We can damage our memory by this activity.

Sleep-deprived people can say they saw something happen that never happened. According to the article published in Psychological Science, sleep deprivation can cause us to think things happened when they actually didn’t. This gives rise to all kinds of ideas for horror movies and books. But the sad fact is that it is true.

In the study they divided a group of people into three. Group one slept four hours a night. Group 2 slept six hours a night. And Group 3 slept eight hours a night.

Obviously, the group who got a full eight hours of sleep suffered no cognitive problems. The group that slept six hours a night performed their tests as if they had a blood alcohol of 0.1 percent (drunk!) and the group that got only four hours of sleep a night fell asleep during the testing.

According to Steven Frenda from the University of California in Irvine, he was surprised to learn that few studies looked at the connection of sleep deprivation and memory distortion. He said, “Most studies only look at a sleep deprived person’s ability to remember lists of words, not real people, places and events.”

During Frenda’s test, they kept college students awake for 24 hours. Then they tested them to see if they were likely to mix up events. The test included a series of photos showing a crime taking place, that of a man stealing a wallet. One group of students went to bed after viewing the photos. The other group remained awake.

Phase two of the experiment had the groups review a written narrative of the event containing statements that did not support the photographs that were initially shown. As an example, a photo might show the man putting the wallet in his jacket pocket, while the narrative said the man put it in his pants pocket.

Students who were most sleep deprived reported more false details.

This is hardly a surprise. Sleep deprivation is responsible for automobile accidents, medical malpractice, industrial mishaps, as well as physical ailments. If you are even remotely sleep deprived, you might not want to be a key witness to a crime. You may misremember something vital.

Asleep by Vera Kratochvil

Aug 01 2021

Chiropractic hip exercises for Greenville .

Here is a simple exercise that you can do at home with no equipment.
It works the gluteus medius/minimus, piriformis and hip lateral rotators muscles.
The purpose of this exercise is to Increase hip strength and muscular endurance. By doing this exercise you can have the benefits of Improved stability, functional strength and injury

Begin lying on side on the floor with legs extended.
Top leg should attain a straight line through hip and shoulder.
Bottom leg may be bent for added stability.
Activate core muscles.
Lift top leg upward, abducting leg as foot simultaneously rotates. This will result in a toe-up position.
Slowly return to start position.
Repeat for prescribed repetitions and sets.

Aug 01 2021

Feeling Anxious? Try This

The first time I experienced a feeling of anxiety or panic so profound that I wondered at my own sanity was during a holiday season. My husband and I were shopping at a mall where there was a store that specialized in holiday decorating and holiday themed merchandise.

I figured this would be a perfect place to not only get some decorations for our home, but perhaps to do a little shopping for other people. At first I didn’t notice how many people were there, but after a time of being in the store I began to pant. I felt that I couldn’t catch my breath. I began to remove my coat, my sweater, anything I could because I felt so hot.

The feeling of pressure on my chest was almost excruciating.

Suddenly I felt my husband’s presence next to me. “Are you OK?” he asked.

“Of course, I’m fine.” It was my standard answer. Mainly because I didn’t recognize that I was having a bit of a panic attack.

I knew that I had trouble with elevators, but it had never expanded to the point where I felt panicked while I was in a larger crowd of people.

Fortunately for me, my husband’s father suffered from claustrophobia. I would never have given myself that label. But his gentle words and touch got me out of the store without the things I held in my hands. I didn’t event regret leaving them behind.

My only goal was to get out of that store.

“Are you claustrophobic?” he asked me.

His question brought me up short. I had never considered myself to be claustrophobic. Sure, I don’t like elevators, and if I’m waiting for one and it appears full when it opens, I smile, wave them along saying cheerfully, “I’ll just wait for the next one!”

To me, I was just being polite.

But after that event, I began to notice that I do have trouble with anxiety when too many people are around me. If I were to attend a church ceremony, I need to be within two people of the aisle or I would begin to feel sick. I just thought I was truly ill.

Not so.

It turns out that I suffered from a level of anxiety related to claustrophobia. I do remember my brothers packing me into a cardboard box when I was about four. They put me into a closet and I couldn’t get out. It was only my screams that brought adult intervention to release me. I had forgotten about that episode.

Now that I know I have an anxiety problem, I set about trying to figure out how to manage it.

The first step is to simply recognize it for what it is. I would acknowledge that I felt uncomfortable, and that often allowed me to hold it together long enough say to check out of a store.

Then I began to practice breathing techniques. When we are anxious, we tend to breathe very shallowly. I learned to practice deep breathing techniques, and by focusing on my breath, I was able to hold off increasing feelings of panic and anxiety.

Other times, when I knew what I was feeling, but I couldn’t seem to breathe through it, I would just leave the environment and either walk or if it was possible, run for a few minutes to stop the cycle of panic that I felt.

Sometimes, I could also focus on other people, what they wanted, what they needed to get my mind out of my own panic. It didn’t often work, but I really worked at it, and the more I developed empathy for others, the less I experienced feelings of anxiety.

And nature is my salvation. If I can escape to a park, to a beach where I can regulate my breathing to the lap of the water against the sand, I feel an immediate sense of calm. As a result, I use a recording of waves against a beach as my “go to sleep” sound. Since I have started using that sound of nature to sleep, I have found myself better able to manage my feelings of anxiety in public.

Headache by Petr Kratochvil

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