Seattle Chiropractor for Low Back Pain

Chronic lower back pain is a leading cause of job related disability and a leading contributor to missed work. Back pain is so common that the condition is often times considered "normal". For those whose pain doesn't go away with time, the pain can be unbearable and disabling. Activities and quality of daily life are diminished leading to fear avoidance behavior and depression.

Self care advice, physical therapy and medications while helpful to some are not always successful. For those who fail to respond the choice is between chronic mediacation usage and surgical procedures.

Evidence based research has shown chiropractic management of chronic pain to be effective in a short period of time, safe and cost effective. The results from the study highlighted above illustrate that patients can have faster relief of symptoms and disability without the use of medication. This chart illustrates the benefits of chiropractic management for chronic lower back pain.

Feel free to contact Dr. Jason Silliker or Dr. Paul Early at Sound Chiropractic Center to find out if chiropractic could help you. We are located 2 blocks east of Northgate Mall in Seattle on NE Northgate Way. We look forward to helping you soon.

Seattle Chiropractor for pregnancy

Chiropractic has great results with pregnancy related pain when performed by a licensed, professional chiropractor at Sound Chiropractic Center of Seattle. Dr. Jason Silliker remembers one of his first chiropractic miracles involving a young lady in her 3rd trimester suffering severely from low back pain. He recalls, "the pain was so bad she could hardly walk." Of course, she did not want to take any pills because she didn't want to damage the baby.

How can chiropractors help? Well, not only is there a tremendous amount of structural changes such as added weight to the uterus and breast tissue, but there is also a release of a hormone called "relaxin". It's job is to loosen the ligaments of the pelvic outlet during the birthing process, but can also cause subluxations of the sacroiliac joints between the sacrum and pelvic bones. Also, due to increased breast size, the mid-back regions can also become painful. This can all be helped using gentle spinal manipulation to restore normal function and position of the spinal joints.

How do you adjust people during pregnancy?

Well, obviously we cannot have you lay on your stomach or take x-rays. Instead, we use motion palpation to feel joint restrictions and use modified techniques to accomplish the same results to mobilize the joints. At Sound Chiropractic Center, Dr. Jason Silliker is trained to treat pregnancy related back pains to help keep you feeling great and drug free during this monumental time in your life. If you are having pregnancy related back pain, call Dr. Jason Silliker and schedule an appointment at Sound Chiropractic Center of Seattle now! We look forward to helping you and your family soon.

Whiplash and Chiropractic in Seattle

Capsular Ligament Stretching May Perpetuate Chronic Whiplash Pain Whiplash, defined as an injury caused by stretching of the tissue beyond its physiological limit, but less than its failure point, can cause a variety of symptoms and severity. Understanding the structures that can cause pain has been a topic of debate and the focus of many previous studies. Involvement of the facet joint and the surrounding capsular involvement have been documented. The focus of this research brief is to review literature that extends this knowledge of the damage to the capsular ligament to provide a biomechanical mechanism of chronic whiplash pain. __________________________________________________________________ Whiplash causes increased laxity of cervical capsular ligament Paul C. Ivancic,a, Shigeki Ito b, Yasuhiro Tominaga b, Wolfgang Rubin a, Marcus P. Coe c, Anthony B. Ndu a, Erik J. Carlson a, Manohar M. Panjabi a, a Biomechanics Research Laboratory, Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA b Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, St. Marianna University School of Medicine, Kanagawa, Japan c Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH, USA Received 7 May 2007; accepted 10 September 2007 Goal of the Study: To determine whether whiplash caused increased capsular ligament laxity by applying quasi-static loading to whiplash-exposed and control capsular ligaments.

Chiropractic care: Chiropractors have long studied these same effects, describing them as the vertebral subluxation complex. Research has illustrated that the altered mechanoreceptive afferent driven motor mismatch can be corrected by the firing of the mechanoreceptors of the facet joint capsules which are activated by means of a chiropractic adjustment (Indahl, Spine 1997).

Sound Chiropractic Center 820 NE Northgate Way Seattle, WA 98125 206-440-7700 info@soundchiropractic.com • http://www.soundchiropractic.com/

Conditions Likely to Respond to Chiropractic Care:

 Back Pain  Neck Pain  Headaches  Herniated/bulging Discs  Spinal Stenosis  Sciatica  Auto Accidents  Pregnancy-Related Pain  Muscle Tightness/Weakness/Imbalance  Some types of radiculopathy  Sports Injuries  Thoracic Outlet Syndrome  Whiplash  Plantar Fascitis (Foot and Arch Pain)  Shoulder Pain (Rotator Cuff Pain)  TMJ Pain  Elbow Pain (Tennis/Golfer Elbow)  Wrist Pain  Finger/Toe Pain  Hip Pain  Carpal Tunnel Syndrome  Ankle Pain  Knee Pain  Iliotibial Band Syndrome  Quadriceps Pain/Tightness  Other Acute and Chronic Injuries Therapies Offered in Our Clinic:  Spinal Manipulation  Spinal Rehabilitation  Extremity Manipulation  Injury Prevention  Sports Conditioning  Core Strengthening  Postural Correction  Stability Training  Nutritional Counseling  Advanced Myofascial Release We Accept with the Following Insurance Plans:  PI  Labor & Industries  Premera  First Choice  Regence  Aetna  Cigna  ACN (now Optum Health)  Plus many more, please call to inquire. Map to our office: Clinic Hours:

Chiropractic As Part Of A "Get Healthy" Program

If you're like many people, you'd love to be a healthy person. If you already feel pretty healthy, that's great. However, I've noticed more and more people are searching the internet for ways to get healthy. They want to be healthy, they just don't necessarily want to have to take any difficult action steps in order to make it happen.

Getting healthy usually means all the normal steps. Eating better, getting some regular exercise, and addressing various ailments and symptoms that have begun to show up. Still, most people are going to take a passive approach to their health. They want to do things and go places where things will be "done to them" rather than them having to "do stuff."

Let's take eating better for example. There's no real mystery any more for you in which foods are good for you. Fast food is usually bad (even the stuff they try to make seem like it's good for you), and vegetables are good. When you are snacking on potato chips, you can't honestly be telling yourself "I sure am eating healthy."

Eating healthy things, putting only healthy things in your shopping cart, and worse, planning your meals ahead of time so you don't get caught starving and nothing to eat but fast food requires effort.

Exercise is the same thing. Remember those belts that people used to strap around their waist and get shaken into better health? You don't see them anymore because exercise really is not a passive thing. You've got to get out of your chair and regularly move around to make anything happen. After awhile, just walking around is not really going to get you the results you want either. You'll have to put in more effort to increase the intensity of your exercise to hit the next level.

Here's the good news for those people that want to do something healthy, but don't want to put forth a ton of effort. Get a chiropractic adjustment. You don't have to wait for headaches, neck pain, or back pain to decide to visit a chiropractor (even though that's what a lot of people do). Getting a chiropractic adjustment is one of the easiest things to do, and one of the healthiest.

It's an insidious thing. You don't see that your spine is breaking down. You don't see the degeneration process start to occur in your spine and the spinal discs. You just know that things aren't quite right. I've had patients that never complained of anything more than low back stiffness, before coming in for their first chiropractic visit.

However, their x-rays showed advanced spinal degeneration something that simply could not happen overnight. The best part of all in starting this type of program is that the only "action" you have to take is to show up. The chiropractor will do the rest, and you get to just sit back and feel better about taking a healthy step toward a better you.

What If You Can't Afford Treatment?

With all the debate going on about government-sponsored healthcare and keeping costs down, chiropractic care remains one of the cheapest methods of solving many different health conditions.

For less than the price of a round of steroid injections, you can get weeks to months of chiropractic treatment that will typically have longer lasting and more beneficial effects — without the side effects.

Now, I understand that many people can have difficulty with starting a treatment plan that may include multiple visits in a week. That’s at least a co-pay every time they walk through the door. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, but I know that people waste so much money on things that are harmful to their health while putting their health issues on the back burner that could easily be solved now.

Is it really that you can’t afford treatment? Or is it that you just don’t see it as a priority? Every situation is different and your situation may be that you truly cannot afford it, but I’ve encountered many patients that just don’t see their health as a priority and that’s unfortunate.

At our office, we bend over backwards to offer discounts and alternate payment options in an effort to help you afford care, so it’s always surprising when people don’t choose to take advantage. Others are thrilled that we offer choices and ways for them to get all the care they need now and then pay for it over time.

I can sleep at night knowing that people that really want the help will always get the help at our office. If you need chiropractic care and wonder how in the world you can afford it, know that there are offices out there that will give you the payment assistance you need to make it happen.

Why Don't More People See Chiropractors?

According to various polls and questions asked of the public, more than 50% (sometimes 60%) of the population indicate they would consider visiting a chiropractor. For the last forty years, the percentage of people that actually do so has remained the same. While more people are seeing chiropractors than ever before, consistently only 10% of the population does so.

Why? If so many people would consider chiropractic as an alternative to other medical choices, why don’t they actually do it when the need arises?

They don’t know what to expect.

Most people have gone to see a medical doctor. They have an overall understanding of what they can expect when they walk in the office. They expect a little window, to be handed some paperwork to fill out, and then eventually get a chance to visit the doctor and tell them where it hurts. They also know that they’ll likely be handed a prescription that will help their symptoms and they can be on their way.

What happens when they go to see a chiropractor? That’s just it. They don’t really know. They assume it’s similar to a visit to an MD, except that instead of a prescription the chiropractor is likely to “pop” something. Do they really need something “popped”? They’re not sure so they go with what they know.

They don’t know if their condition can be helped with chiropractic care.

They think of chiropractors as helping with auto accidents and low back pain (if you just go by the most common advertisements seen), but they don’t have that. They have headaches, or neck pain, or shoulder pain. Can a chiropractor help with that? They look at a couple of yellow page ads or run through some websites. Some say they do, some don’t say anything about it.

Can they get help by seeing the chiropractor? Again, they’re not sure so they just go back to what they know. They want relief and they want it fast. They’ve gotten relief before by getting a prescription so once again they find themselves at their physician’s office.

They don’t know who to see.

All the chiropractic ads say different things. Activator Methods? Gonstead? Palmer Graduate? Do I need that? Is one really better than the other? This guy seems okay, he’s wearing a white coat and advertising “decompression.” Do I need to be decompressed? All of the chiropractors seem to be advertising slightly different things, while the medical doctor offices all seem to be closer to the same.

There can be a lot of confusion about visiting a chiropractor. While many chiropractors offer an initial no-charge consultation, most people just aren’t going to sit through a consultation when what they really want is pain relief as quickly as possible. It’s really up to the chiropractic profession to continue to educate and get a consistent message out there so people will know what to expect, which conditions are regularly treated, and understand some of the terminology that is out there when it comes time to make their choice.

Back Pain: It Isn't Always What It Used To Be

If you ignore a back problem, it will likely not go away on its own. Sometimes you can get through an episode when it’s early in the condition with some over the counter medications and rest. So you’d think. If the underlying problem is never addressed, the back pain problem is there to resurface again at a later date.

Usually when the pain returns, it hurts a little bit more and lasts a little bit longer. Over time, the episodes will start to show up more frequently until the person takes the actions necessary to create a more substantial healing. (Hopefully they go to see a chiropractor and get their spine in its proper alignment instead of relying on stronger and stronger medications.)

More often than not, the person dealing with the back pain follows their doctor’s orders and concern themselves with their back only when the pain shows up. Then they return to doing all the same things that led them to the the problem in the first place. Then the symptoms return and they show back up to their doctor.

“I know what I’ve got, doc. Last time you told me it was my L5 disc.” They then expect you to do what you did last time, give them the relief in the same time frame you gave it to them last time and they can get on with their lives. Sometimes it happens just like that, sometimes the episode takes a couple of extra days to return back to normal.

Eventually, they’ll get the same condition, they’ll show back up to your office, expect the same results… and they won’t happen. The doctor will end up doing more tests and discover that they don’t just have an “L5 disc” problem anymore. They now have L4 and L5 and the sciatic nerve is being compressed. The previously minor disc bulge at L5 has turned into a full blown disc herniation with potentially more invasive treatment needed to alleviate the pain.

How could this have been avoided? Once you’ve been notified that you have a back problem, seek relief from the pain first. Once the pain is gone, you must distinguish that your “pain” and your “problem” are two different things. Celebrate the relief of your pain, but evaluate what may have led to the problem in the first place.

Are you strengthening your back muscles? Are you getting enough exercise? How are your daily activities contributing to the problem and how can they be modified. Don’t accept your back condition and assume it will never change or get worse. Most of them can and do get worse over time.