Chiropractic Care and Pregnancy

How many of you have been to a chiropractor? Did it help? Did you feel better? So what is your first reaction when I say Chiropractic and Pregnancy in the same sentence?

Yeah - I see the eyebrows, let me guess your thoughts ae something like - "Your crazy. What would a quack know about pregnancy?" Oh yeah, I have heard it all.

However I want to talk with you about the importance of receiving chiropractic care during pregnancy; why I believe it not only helped me have a good pregnancy and delivery, but why I believe that I would greatly benefit all expectant mothers.

Now I realize that many people believe chiropractic care is not safe. However studies show that while 4,000 people will die from a reaction to medically prescribed drugs and 100 people will be struck by lightning, only 1 in 1 million people receiving chiropractic care will have a news worthy adverse effect. Now, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty safe to me.

So why should you consider going to the chiropractor and what can they do for you?

One of the biggest complaints you hear from women about being pregnant, is how much their backs hurt. Call me crazy, but isn't this what a chiropractor specializes in? The reason for the back pain is the hormones. These hormones cause the bones, muscles and ligaments to soften and become pliable. This allows the body to get out of whack very easily, but it also makes it easier to put it back the way it belongs.

Making regular appointments similar to that of your scheduled prenatal appointments help to re-align the spine and pelvic bones to adjust to the growing baby and changing center of gravity. Of the women who receive chiropractic care, 84 percent notice a large reduction in lower back pain.

Secondly, they can help reduce the length of labor and delivery.

Regular adjustments throughout, and especially during the last trimester, help to establish the pelvic balance and reduce the stress to the uterus and supporting ligaments. This allows the baby to get into the best possible position for birth.

The process to help relax the uterus is known as the Webster Technique. Since 1 in 40 babies are breech, this method helps the baby to turn naturally. In women who received chiropractic care, there was a 25 percent reduction in the average labor time versus the generally accepted average. That goes up to 33 percent for women who have already given birth.

Considering that my personal labor and delivery, from the time my water broke to the time my daughter was born, was seven and one half hours versus the 12 - 14 hour4s I was told it could be, I am a believer!!!

Third, a quicker recovery time after birth. Labor and delivery is hard on mom and baby. With bodies in better shape and alignment, post partum pain was relieved in 90 to 120 moms that had received regular chiropractic care.

One myth that exists within the obstetrical community is that chiropractic has no role for pregnant women. That couldn't be more wrong and lots of women have suffered when they didn't have to.

To summarize, chiropractic care is very important for the expectant mother. It can help reduce lower back pain, shorten labor and delivery times, and allow for quicker recovery after giving birth.

I know that it was the best decision I could have made for myself and I would challenge all of you to consider these techniques for yourself or loved ones during pregnancy.

--Toni F.

Ban Prescription Drug Advertising

Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertising for pharmaceutical drugs is beginning to dominate our broadcast airwaves and many of our print magazines. It's curious that in all the hype about health care reform, little if anything has been said about this practice adding costs to our health care packages.

Pharmaceutical companies claim they need the revenues generated so they can continue their research and development of new drugs they think we so desparately need. When you "follow the money" however, we find that in 2004, the drug companies spent approximately 25 percent of their sales income on promotion and only 13.4 percent on research and development. If you don't have new items coming down the pipe line, spend more on promoting what already exists.

Part of the problem with this is the commercials appeal to our emotions so that we want to demand these drugs even if our doctors might suggest otherwise. It also gives us the deliberate thought that all of our ailments and problems can be solved by taking the right pill. This is a form of addiction, telling us that we should not tolerate any type of pain and should take a pill immediately to resolve the situation.

Many of our conditions are a result of poor lifestyle choices, which the commercials for pharmaceuticals as well as over the counter (otc) medications try to lead us to believe that we can do whatever we want to, then fix it with a pill.

If you pay close attention to the commercials they are required to tell you about possible side effects, which always sound worse than the original problem. What they don't tell you however, is that many of the drugs they are promoting, are not going to be effective in solving the problem they say they cure in the first place. But as long as we keep buying them, they don't care if they are ineffective or if we stop taking them, because someone else will take our place and profits will continue to skyrocket.

We need to stop the drug companies from playing on our emotions when it comes to this type of drug abuse. The only effective way to stop it would be to pass a ban on this type of advertising, just like we passed on alcohol and tobacco advertising. If the drug companies stop spending so much on advertising, maybe the cost of the medication to us would drop, thus reducing some of our health care costs.

Dr. Andrew Weil just published a new book that address many of these issues, called Why Our Health Matters: A Vision of Medicine That Can Transform Our Future. If we find more information about this issue, maybe we can get some resolution on the problem. What do you think?

Your Friends Can Make You Healthy - or not

Research has shown that our social networks - family and friends - help us lose weight, or gain it, depending on how good our networks are. A study reported in The Gerontologist (48(5): 603-611) in 2008, indicates that our social environment plays an important role in the amount of food we eat.

This research learned that when we eat alone, there is little correlation with what we eat. But when we eat in social setting - with a companion, at a family dinner, pot-lucks, etc. - the amount of food we consume increases.

You might say that these are special occasions and we can offset them later. This is true and if they are only occasionally, there probably isn't too much to worry about. But, our social network also set the atmosphere for what is okay to eat and how much we should be eating. If your family and friends are overweight, you will probably be so. Not always but usually.

What can we do? If your friends and family are insistant on you eating more and more of the wrong foods, there's not much you can do other than ignoring them - if possible. Consider however, that you may be the influence to get them to change. If you can stick to your guns and show them how much better you feel, you may be able to make the change necessary for them to feel better also.

If you have a group that already keeps you healthy - wonderful! If you have any ideas about how to make changes or have experiences of how family and friends help you stay healthy or make you overweight, leave a comment and let's get ideas flowing.

Changes at the Chiropractic Centers

Welcome to our first blog. We are making several changes at The Chiropractic Centers and want to keep you informed. We also hope to use this space to communicate to you about many subjects and to get communication back from you about what you have been experiencing and what questions you may have that might be answered by others.

Give us suggestions about what you would like to see on this blog, in our new quarterly newsletter and on our website. We hope this will be of service to you as well as to us.