October 2, 2014

Dr. Terry L. Wiley, D.C., C.M.E.                                

Your low back is usually one of the leading areas of pain at some point in your life. This is an area that can be supported and the muscles toned up to help you prevent back pain. The importance of the butt muscles (the GLUTEUS MAXIMUS, or GM) can’t be overstated. It’s a key muscle. This muscle will protect your low back, your knees and the hip. There is also a link between the Iliotibial Band and the GM. The famous researcher, Stuart McGill, has coined the phrase “gluteal amnesia” to describe this inhibition.       

When your gluteus maximus muscles are weak, you will use the hamstring muscles more for hip extension. This causes increased force on the hip. Weakness of muscles can then inhibit the GM and this can increase the likelihood of injury and impede athletic performance.

Most of your bodily exercises are performed weight-bearing in a closed kinetic chain.  For patients that have a greater degree of infirmity, they may use the clam exercise. It is preferred not to isolate muscles from their functional patterns.

Squatting is something we do hundreds of times per day.  When we raise from chairs, car seats or the commode, we are performing the squat. One of the factors that prevents geriatric patients from independent living is the inability to rise from a seated position. Some patients may progress to weighted squats in order to remedy this, but they must be monitored to use good form with body weight squats prior to adding resistance.

Here are some steps to doing the exercise:

Progression: Once the body-weight squat has been mastered, resistance may be added. Instead of beginning with a barbell, begin with the resistance of exercise tubing. Place the tubing at or above the knee and perform a squat while maintaining pressure against the resistance of the band. Once this is mastered, weighted squats with exercise bands may be added.  

I have exercise tubing and elastic webbing that sells for about 1 dollar a foot and patients can pick it up very inexpensively. Just stop by and buy five or six feet of the tubing or webbing.

Monster or Sumo Walks: Place an exercise band around the knees, ankles or fore feet. Next, separate the legs until the band is taut and the legs are at least 14 inches apart. While maintaining constant tension on the band, descend into a quarter-squat. Walk forward to perform monster walks or sideways to perform sumo walks. Do not let the exercise band lose tension while performing either exercise.

Hip Thrusters with Exercise: This exercise is performed from supine position with the legs bent. Place an elastic exercise band just above the knees. Spread the thighs until tension is felt and the GM is engaged; then rise up to a bridge position. A weighted bar may be placed across the pelvis to increase resistance.

Lunges or Lunge Walks: Lunges should be performed with the same principles used for squatting. Maintain the lumbar lordosis, keep the tibia parallel to the ground, and stiffen the core.  While watching yourself in the mirror, step forward with one leg. Keep upright with your shoulders back and your chest out. Descend until your femur is parallel to the ground. Your foot should remain flat on the ground, while the posterior foot may bend so that only the ball of the foot is in contact with the ground. 

Clams: Clams are not our preferred gluteal exercise due to their isolation of the external rotators of the hip. However, there are patients who are unable to perform the compound exercises we have previously proposed. In such cases, clams are performed with a resistance band placed just above the knees with the patient in side-lying position. The knees are bent and feet are together. The patient then opens the knees like a clam opening its shell to approximately 50 degrees. Perform repetitions on each side.   

There are dozens of exercises to help the gluteus maximus that range from using machines or equipment, to exercises without equipment and other ways to turn on the muscles.

The body has a nervous system, and poor diets that contain too much refined carbohydrates will turn off switches that can turn off the GM.   Many patients need to have their spine adjusted in order to turn the nerve energy back on in order to make the GM become full strength again.

If you come into my office, we can do a nutritional exam to determine if you have any nutritional stress on your body. We also coach you on diet and lifestyle changes to make the mechanical-musculoskeletal system return to normal.

When you make the decision to bring your body back to normal, call me and get yourself scheduled for a history and examination. Once you know where the stress is at and where it is coming from, the treatment plan becomes obvious.

September 29, 2014

Dr. Terry L. Wiley, D.C., C.M.E.

According to a recent study published in BMC Musculoskeletal,¹ “It is now widely acknowledged that neck pain (NP), mid back pain (MBP), and low back pain (LBP) (spinal pain) start early in life and that the lifetime prevalence increases rapidly during adolescence to reach adult levels at the age of 18.”

The study notes that by age 11, “The lifetime prevalence of spinal pain was 86%.” The authors also found that “the two-year incidence of spinal pain varied between 40% and 60% across the physical locations.  Progression of pain from one to more locations and from infrequent to more frequent was common over the two-year period.”

I can’t help but think of children that have fallen from swings or down stairs, or that have been bucked from their horse, rolled an ATV, or been tackled head to head by a 150 pound athlete. The ways that young people can back injuries is endless. 

Children need to be checked by a chiropractor and have their spines re-adjusted. I look at the national athletes that I worked on in my practice, and I have helped them with just the demands of training.  They are lifting, running, jumping, throwing and straining their bodies to the full limits to develop their full potential. This is why they came in for care. Chiropractic adjustments can help with the demands on the body and help keep them performing at their best.

Having been a parent of teenagers, I am familiar with the risks inherent in “coming of age,” and I’m sure you are, too. Many studies have shown that teens are particularly susceptible to abusing alcohol and drugs:

My point is there is a time and place to help someone with pain and the medications are a tool to help manage pain.   The education and mindset of the individual is key in how you will accept and authorize the medication.  Individuals disciplined with diet, rest, exercise and the care of the spine and nervous system will refuse medication whenever possible and will only take the minimum amount when they feel the need.

People that have never been shown and had explained the Beauty and Power of Nature will have no idea that the body does heal itself. The truth is that the body does repair and pain is “your friend.” Don’t disagree with it.  It will pass and you will heal.  Often the first aid of R.I.C.E. (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation) is the most important thing you can do for a new sprain.

Headaches are often a sign that you are dehydrated and need a glass of water.   Contact Assists and Locational Assists⁷ are excellent for illness and injuries.  I can’t count how many times that I have done an assist on some individual that had an old injury or a fresh injury and seen that they were able to cope and tolerate the pain, or that the pain vanished. Their bodies healed faster and they were able to get on with life much faster. 

As adults, we have a responsibility to become educated and to set an example for our children and teach them what to do when they are injured. Currently in the Valley, here where I live, residents are abusing 2 times the number of opioids as compared to the rest of the state of Colorado. 

According to the last study referenced above, “Male athletes use alcohol, marijuana, and prescription pain relievers more frequently than non-competitors,” and “Female athletes use substances more frequently than non-competitors.” ⁶  

By taking minerals, Cal-Mag, taking a baking soda bath, consuming Protease enzymes, and hydrating the body you can help your body to heal and recover.  These alternative methods are safe and effective.  These are not taught on highway billboards and TV commercials. Drug companies advertise on every possible medium there is, and it is not the only way to live life.   We must think and take responsibility for how we want our bodies cared for.

It should be noted that the drugs most used by teens are not the typical street drugs you might imagine.  These days, they are taking drugs like methadone, opium, morphine and codeine, under the brand names of Demerol, Vicodin, Oxycontin and Percocet.

Things have changed greatly. In my day, most of the athletes knew what beer or whiskey tasted like, but most had never taken and drugs or medications; now the reverse is true, and most athletes have been prescribed a medication or taken street substance.

Better chemistry has not brought our nation better health.  We sit low on the charts of other industrial nations, our World Health Score is about 37^th from the top.

I will talk to you about how your body functions.  You will understand basic physiology and you will learn about safe foods, a better diet, rest and exercise programs that care for the human frame and nervous system. Chiropractic and nutrition are safe and effective.  We are the doctors of the future.

 

September 24, 2014

This lawsuit is about opioids and about the damage they cause in our community. Take a moment and think about how many zeroes are in $1,000.

In $1,000, we have one, two, three. Three is correct.  If I were to take $10,000 dollars and walk down Main Street and hand out ten $1,000 bills to ten people and asked them each to go to City Market and buy a watermelon, I bet City Market would sell ten watermelons.  

How many zeroes are in a million?  One, two, three, four, five, six.  Six is correct.  If I handed out 999,000 $1,000 bills in town and asked each person to go and purchase a watermelon from City Market, I bet they would sell out of watermelons very fast.

Now for the magnitude of what is actually going on with drug manufacturers, how many zeroes are there in one billion?  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.  Nine is correct.  If I took 999,999,000 $1,000 bills and handed them out in town, well, you get the picture.  This is just a fraction of what the drug companies have done to make opioids accepted, marketable, and sold to the public.

This shows a lack of ethics.

A definition of the word “ethics” would go like this:  “Ethics consists of rationality toward the highest level of survival for the individual, the future race, the group and for mankind.”  The whole subject of ethics is one that has become almost lost in society in its current state.

Our nation is heavily involved in drug use, both legal and illegal.  Last year, and continuing today, our valley had high level of use of prescription drugs.  Law enforcement officials have stated that the level of prescription drug use in the San Luis Valley was twice that of the state level.

This spring at the Summer Fest on the Rio I was speaking with an EMT driver, and he stated that he made fifty calls that week to homes where someone overdosed on drugs.  Social services is going into homes and gathering children and placing them into foster care because of the parents’ drug problems.

I'm looking at an article that shows how drug companies want to monopolize pain relief by expanding the opioid market.  It is a Tale of Gross Deception.   It is becoming very common to see drug companies negotiate “false claims” settlements for millions and billions of dollars.  

Wikipedia lists that the top twenty legal settlements were worth more than $17 billion in criminal and civil penalties between 2001-2012.  Add in the Johnson & Johnson settlement from last year and the number is closer to $20 billion or about $1.5 billion a year.

Looking at these violations and the insidious nature of the drug company marketing tactics, one wonders if these penalties are accepted by the pharmaceutical industry as a cost of doing business.  With annual sales well over $330 billion and estimated marketing budgets of $72 billion, a few billion in annual fines is not likely to make much of an impact, regardless of their PR rhetoric when “agreeing” to pay the fines.

A difference maker is on the dockets of the California courts.   A new lawsuit brought forth by Orange County and Santa Clara County is directed at nine manufacturers of opioids. These are drugs that have been over-marketed to the point that “in 2009, there were more than twice as many deaths from prescription opioid overdoses (15,597) than from cocaine (4,350) and heroin (3,278) put together.”

One of the attributes that makes this lawsuit so interesting is the detail regarding the well-crafted facade allegedly designed by the defendants.