Over the last four weeks, we have seen a variety of reasons for people coming in. The first few weeks of April, we saw a lot of people come in with neck and lower back pain, secondary to sitting at the kitchen table and working from home. As the month progressed, we started seeing folks come in secondary to problems (mostly lower back) stemming from working too much in the yard!
This week's Overheard in the Office comes from a patient who had done both!
A's husband has been coming in monthly for years, so when her lower back gave out while leveling ground for a kids' pool, he knew right where to send her. The culprit: too much shoveling in a poor posture. Not surprising considering that her day job is an accountant!
As is typical for us, after adjusting her, I showed her how to use a tennis ball in the lower back and pelvis to work on painful trigger points (watch my video demonstrating here). In addition, we went over how to use it in the upper back and lower neck.
After several visits, her lower back started to clear up nicely (yeah, chiropractic!). With slight surprise, A indicated that she could really feel the trigger points in her upper back!
"That's your day job!" I said.
Many times, patients come in with an acute problem in one area, only to discover when they apply the trigger point ball full spine stretches and exercises to their whole body, some other area actually shows up quite tight and weak. That is not a sales ploy on our part! In fact, if you find areas that are tight and weak, but not painful, and you work on them, you can actually prevent them from becoming painful and save yourself a trip to our office.
I hope you are having a good week and staying healthy. If you are still off work, I encourage you to use some of the time to do something healthy for your body: go for a walk or hike, do some stretches, use your tennis ball! If you are heading back to work or starting on another home project, start slowly and build up. We don't want to see you before your time!
Yours in Health,
Care Chiropractic - Lafayette, Indiana