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Proudly Announcing the Renewal of our Award for Excellence in Patient Partnership

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PPQM 2016

Here it is, all shiney and bright, and lovely!  Our PPQM renewal!

PPQM stands for Patient Partnership Quality Mark.  It’s awarded to clinics that meet the Royal College of Chiropractor’s strict standards of excellence in meeting patient expectations.

We work really hard towards being the best that we can be, and to provide the best care that we possiblty can to each and every individual patient.

It makes us very proud to achieve recognition for this from the RCC, and to be able to give you that extra bit of peace of mind.

Well done team.

Leah Rose

PS – apologies for the dreadful photography, it was my best effort!!

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Award Winning Clinic and Chiropractors – That’s Us!!!

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It’s exciting times for the Longlevens Chiropractic & Sports Injury Clinic!  On 30th January 2013 we will be awarded the prestigious Patient Partnership Quality Mark (PPQM) 2013 – 2015 by the College of Chiropractor’s, who were themselves recently awarded Chartered status by the Queen.

The College of Chiropractor’s states: “The College of Chiropractors believes that chiropractic services should be centred on the users of those services. The College supports the delivery of services that are flexible and responsive to the needs of patients, acknowledging them as partners in their own care.” (Tim Jay DC FCC, President)

The award recognises the achievement of outstanding levels of care and service provided to patients, in areas including cleanliness and safety, communication and patient education, privacy, accessibility and record keeping.  More information will follow and of course pictures, after the 30th January ceremony!

In addition to the PPQM award, one of the Longlevens Chiropractic & Sports Injury Clinic’s Chiropractors, Danny Adams, will be presented with an award identifying him as Outstanding PRT Chiropractor of the Year on the College of Chiropractor’s postgraduate Training Scheme, under Mentor and Clinic Director, Simon Rose.

Congratulations also to Danny (who has been busy!) for recently achieving his International Chiropractic Sports Science Diploma, awarded by the International Federation of Sports Chiropractic.  This post doctoral qualification ensures extremely high standards of theoretical and practical competency in treating sports injuries and qualifies him to participate in major national and international events such as the Olympic Games.

More information will follow soon about all of the above.

 

 

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Chiropractor Danny Explains Why You Should Get Back and Neck Pain Treated Sooner Rather Than Later

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Within this post I’ll explain why seeking treatment for your back pain earlier will potentially save you a lot of money.

Take a quick look at these well researched statistics:

 

 

  1. 80% of the population will experience back pain at some time
  2. 40% of the population are affected by back pain currently (16 million)
  3. 2.5 million people have back pain every day of the year
  4. 119 million working days are lost
  5. 1.2 million people are affected by musculo-skeletal pain and 500.000 by work related stress

The Hard Working Citizen

The sooner a person with back pain sees a well trained therapist such as a Chiropractor, the sooner they will get better, simple. Recently I and my colleagues have noticed how patients are presenting with incredibly chronic (>3weeks) back pain. People seem to be putting up with pain without seeking help for longer than ever before, we think this may be due to the recent recession (or double dip recession as it is for us Brits). People are really feeling the pinch, but if you think you are saving money by not getting your back pain treated now, you are very mistaken. In fact, it’s not cost effective at all! Its actually uneconomical! I’ll explain why.

Scary but (potentially) true

I’m going to use a common lower back problem as an example, a lower back disc bulge, a disc bulge usually occurs because the underlying supportive back structures are working incorrectly. The forces within the lower back are therefore repeatedly falling upon structures that cannot cope with the increase in load (the discs, among other things). This leads to failure, if the bulge is not correctly managed and the forces continue to be incurred in a region that has already failed then its ability to heal is diminished. It may take months or years to get better with a very high chance that it will recur in the future due to the mechanism of micro tearing in the outer layers which heals incredibly slowly, if at all (Read more here on disc bulges). Disc bulges can progress and in a lot of cases may even lead to surgery, the likelihood of this increases if you do not seek effective advice and treatment. The earlier you seek treatment, the quicker your disc bulge will resolve itself and with the correct prevention strategy provided you will have a lower back that will be less susceptible to having disc bulges in the future.

“And financially this affects me how?”

The financial implications of this are simple, by letting your back pain progress and possibly worsen it may end with you requiring surgery and months off work with no guarantee it won’t recur. Due to the reasons above you may even require multiple surgeries in the future. Therefore, costing you even more in lost wages with time off work and possibly even your job! This is all theoretical of course and I’m not trying to scare you well, maybe a little lol… as more than likely if it is your first episode of back pain it may be nothing serious but for the price of a consultation fee it’s still best to get it checked out now to be better safe than sorry. The best way to treat the problem and find out the cause is to seek help from a well trained manual therapist such as a Chiropractor. A good therapist will offer you a variety of treatment and prevention options (or referral if required) and an insight into how your problem could progress if left untreated. So what I would recommend is to save yourself money and seek help now rather than later, trust me, your future pain free self will be thanking me in the long run.

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Sciatica…

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…It can be such a pain in the bum… literally! ‘Sciatica’ is the term used to describe any pain that is originating from irritation of the Sciatic Nerve. This pain can be felt anywhere down a leg, from the bottom to the feet.

The Sciatic Nerve is the longest and thickest nerve in the human body, running from your lower back all the way in to your foot, with its thickest part being around 2cm in width! As you can imagine, a lot can happen to that nerve along its route and exactly what can happen is the subject of this post. The Sciatic Nerve originates as individual spinal nerves known as L4,L5,S1,S2 and S3, these nerves exit the spine individually but then converge to create the Sciatic Nerve. Bear this in mind when we discuss problems that can occur to the Sciatic nerve that lead to what we all know as ‘Sciatica’.

Disc Bulges

The most common cause of Sciatica is what is known as a Disc Bulge (Click here for a complete description of what a disc bulge is). A disc bulge between the vertebrae of L4 and L5 or between the vertebrae of L5 and S1 can lead to ‘Sciatica’.

A disc bulge essentially only affects the nerve at which level the bulge is occurring, this therefore would affect the path of the Sciatic Nerve but particularly at the points at which the original nerve supplies the body. For example, a backwards and to the side (postero-lateral) Disc Bulge at L5/S1 usually causes pain/tingling/numbness/pins and needles at the sole and outside edge of the foot on the same side as the bulge. This is because the nerve exiting between the spinal segments of L5 and S1 is what is known as the S1 nerve root (like a tree a nerve has a root, another word for where it starts). The S1 nerve supplies both muscles (a Myotome) and skin sensation (a Dermatome). So as you can see the S1 nerve supplies sensation to the sole and outer edge of the foot which is why pain is felt here. This applies to all nerves exiting the spine. If one level has a bulge then the skin it supplies may have a change in sensation. The muscles that each affected nerve innervates may also not work correctly or may even begin to decrease in size and become flaccid, seen in severe cases. For example, The S1 nerve supplies lots of muscles in the lower leg and foot so it would be quite clear if there was something affecting its innervation severely as all these signs would be present. Chiropractors treat disc bulges all the time, worst case scenario is surgery for a disc but your Chiropractor or manual therapist will let you know if this is necessary.

Foraminal Stenosis

The word ‘Foramen’ basically means ‘a hole’, where the L4, L5, S1, S2, S3 nerves leave the spine between each vertebral segment is a hole called the ‘Intervertebral Foramen’. If anything decreases space at this Foramen then Sciatica can occur, problems such as bony spurs, inflammation, a Spondylolisthesis or a Tumor can all cause a decrease in space here and irritate the nerve as it exits. This can therefore be one of the causes that lead to irritation of the Sciatic nerve and the symptoms associated to it.

Piriformis Syndrome

In a nutshell ‘Piriformis Syndrome’ occurs as a result of the Sciatic nerve being irritated by the Piriformis Muscle. Though it’s not always simple to treat for the following reasons:

The Sciatic nerve’s relationship with the Piriformis Muscle in the general population differs from person to person. As you can see, most commonly it passes beneath the Piriformis Muscle, however in the minority of the population the Sciatic Nerve can actually pass through the Piriformis Muscle entirely, or even stay split around it and connect after.

The Piriformis is an external rotator of the the leg, if it gets too tight (common in a lot of people) it can become irritated, this leads to inflammation at the muscle and surrounding tissues, which in some cases includes the Sciatic Nerve. This irritation can cause symptoms down the leg that are often misdiagnosed as disc bulges due to their similar presentation.

If you have further questions or would like to know more about this topic please ring us on 01452309372 or email contact@longlevenschiro.com

 

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Why Do I Need to Use Ice?

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Its amazing… amazing how many times I have asked patients during our first meeting and consultation if they have iced their injury before coming in to see me. The answer 90% of the time is, “I haven’t” or “I have been using heat but not ice”. In mine and a lot of others opinions, Icing is by far and away the best thing you can do to get yourself back on the road to recovery as fast as possible in the early stages of a muscle or joint injury. Here in this post I explain why…

Probably your whole life you have been told if you have burned or bruised yourself that “you need to put ice or ice cold water on it to stop the swelling”. Well the same rule applies for your muscles and skeleton, this includes your spine by the way!, they all respond to ice in the same way as if you bruise your arm. Let’s take back pain for example, a similar thing is occurring with an episode of back pain that occurs with a bruise. Something in your back has been damaged as a result of weakness or poor function and the body is reacting by trying to protect itself using inflammation. The same as if you had bumped and subsequently bruised yourself.

Inflammation has 5 components; pain, heat, redness, swelling and loss of function. All five are reduced as a result of icing. Ok, now think about what I have just told you and consider this: If you just bruised your arm, would you put heat on it to try to make it better while it is still sore and hurting? (oh dear god, please say no…) Remember the 5 components of inflammation??, that’s right, heat was one of them!, therefore you would be encouraging inflammation if you used it, not good. This again also applies to your back, if your back is in pain it is usually due to inflammation, so don’t use heat!. The only time I recommend the use of heat is during a warm up before performing strenuous exercise and certainly not for someone in pain. Once a person is out of pain and functioning correctly I only encourage heat in the form of giving your muscles a good rub to make them more pliable if you know they are noticeably tight.

Right, now I want you to apply what I have just told you to your day-to-day life. If you had just suffered an episode of back pain, would you now consider it a good idea to have a hot bath?? or a hot shower??, or go in the hot jacuzzi down at you leisure club??. I hope you can see what I am saying here (and no, I am not saying don’t wash, that wouldn’t help any of us!). What I am trying to say is that you may be applying heat to your back pain without realising it, by performing day-to-day activities like those I just mentioned. What I would like you to consider when in an episode of back pain is turning down the temperature. When you have a shower or bath, reduce the temperature a bit (not too much!) and make sure you ice your back straight after for 10-15 minutes or find a cooler alternative to cleaning yourself, like using wash towels.

To conclude, wrap up some ice cubes in a damp cloth or wrap an ice pack in damp paper towels or a cloth and apply to the problem area. Perform 10-15 minutes of icing every 2 hours, five times a day or as close to that as possible. This is the perfect routine to help get yourself through the early stages of injury. I would also recommend seeing your Chiropractor or other manual therapist as there are some instances where the pain may in fact not be coming from the parts of the body you suspect. In which case your Chiropractor or other manual therapist will help you identify the correct place to apply your ice pack whilst also providing treatment, information, advice and guidance to aid the healing process and help prevent it happening again!.

When to use ice: Acute sprains and strains, Acute inflammatory processes: arthritis, bursitis, tendonitis myositis, and neuritis, Acute trauma, Acute and chronic muscle spasm.

When not to use ice: Cold hypersensitivity (test a small non-painful area first if worried), a vasospastic disorder (Vasospastic disorders are conditions in which the vessels of the extremities do not dilate properly.), Systemic complications, Raynaud’s Phenomenon or Certain malignancies (seek advice). Do not apply if you are a weakened individual; Old age, Infancy, Cachexic. Or if you have severe varicose veins, myocardial weakness or high blood pressure.

I hope this has helped you understand a bit more about your body and Chiropractic, If you have any questions on this topic send me an e-mail at danny@longlevenschiro.com

If you live in Gloucester or surrounding areas and are interested my Chiropractic services and what I can do to help you, then book an appointment to see Danny at the Longlevens Chiropractic and Sports Injury Clinic on 01452 309372

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