Posts by Espinosa

For anyone involved in a sport or job that involves repetitive lifting or overhead activity of the arms, stretching the shoulders and arms must be an indelible prerequisite to activity. At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we believe that NO injury is the right type of injury: prevention is as much a part of our practice as rehabilitation.

Keep in mind that 5 minutes of stretching before work out could save you 5 weeks of recovery time from an avoidable injury. 

For those involved in baseball, weight lifting, construction and other shoulder-heavy activities, we encourage you to avoid shoulder injury by focusing on strengthening the rotator cuff muscles. Because the rotator cuff is a collection of small muscles, we generally advise low resistance exercises with more repetitions, thereby gradually strengthening the region as a whole.

At our practice, we teach people how to stretch and strengthen their rotator cuff muscles: internal and external rotation exercises are simple enough to learn but they impart strength to the muscles that is indispensable for people who rely on their shoulders for activity. For people who suffer an injury to the rotator cuff, we advise resisting activity until the muscles can repair themselves. We perform range of motion assessments to determine how limited your shoulders really are as a result of injury. Frequent massage will encourage more active blood flow in the rotator cuff region, bringing oxygen and healing nutrients. Cycling between heat and ice reduces inflammation and allows the region to heal quicker.

Call our office in Sacramento at (916) 457-8825 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C.

The rotator cuff is a region synonymous with baseball: because of the yanking motion and high arm speed involved in throwing a baseball, the shoulder muscles are consistently exposed to a repetitive stress. This group of muscles includes:

• Supraspinatus: elevation of the arm
• Infraspinatus: external rotation
• Teres minor: outward turning of the arm
• Subscapularis: internal rotation

These are the four muscles whose tendons connect the upper arm to the shoulder and stabilize the upper arm bone. They are also responsible for the wide range of motion in the shoulder and thus, are the most vulnerable to injury. 

Any injury sustained by this group of muscles can fall under the umbrella of rotator cuff syndrome. Here are a few tasks that regularly rotate the shoulder:

• Painting
• Weight lifting
• Gardening
• Boxing
• Rowing
• Swimming
• Overhead motions

Injuries to the rotator cuff usually involve a tear to the muscle that results from one of two causes: traumatic injury or repetitive stress injury, which is the more common of the two. Pain is most often felt around the shoulder, intensifying when overhead motions are performed. Because they hinder athletic performance, rotator cuffs can be treated with surgery. 

At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we believe that given enough time, patience and proactive rehabilitation, the injury can heal itself to a point of comparative strength to pre-injury without the use of surgery. Damaged muscles and tendons benefit from massage therapy, which facilitates enhanced blood circulation: this brings healing nutrients and oxygen in greater amounts. Chiropractic adjustment to the shoulder joints allows the muscles to settle into a state of balance which helps them heal quicker.

Call our office in Sacramento at (916) 457-8825 and schedule an appointment today to find out how we can restore strength and flexibility to your damaged shoulder. 

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C.

Athletic pubalgia is the scientific term for sports hernia, an injury that involves a strain or tear to the soft tissue in the lower abdomen. This is your core we’re talking about: an injury to this region is going to hurt and affect your performance, whether it involves kicking a soccer ball in the backyard or swinging for the fences in a professional baseball game. For many athletes looking to bounce back quickly, surgery is a consideration.

At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we believe that we can effect a full recovery and strengthening of the region with a more conservative approach: surgery should be a last recourse rather than a method of first resort.

The actual muscles that are responsible for sports hernia are the lower abdominals and adductors: the tendons that attach the thigh to the pubic bone. These tissues can be damaged by a traumatic incident (a tackle to the lower stomach), but more commonly are worn to a tipping point by repetitive stress.

A quick example: imagine the average strain that is placed on these same tissues when you kick a soccer ball 100 times in practice: this is a motion that twists the core while the foot is planted. Multiply that by 5 days a week for an entire soccer season and, at a certain point, the tissues may reach a breaking point and tear, creating a sports hernia.

At our office in Sacramento, we focus on muscular balance as a key to rehabilitating sports hernias. We relieve pain with hands-on treatment that enhances blood flow to the injured region, bringing key nutrients and oxygen that help the muscles repair. Once the pain is gone and the tissue repaired, we introduce strengthening modalities to prevent recurrence of the injury moving forward. You will emerge from our office feeling stronger and more confident in your core muscles. 

If you are suffering from sports hernia, call our office in Sacramento at (916) 457-8825 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C. 

Chiropractic ensures your body’s ability to reap 100% of the muscle building reward you set out to achieve.

The quickest and healthiest path to more muscle is to work out with a properly aligned body. One thing we would like to see more of is stretching: to imbue the body with flexibility and inoculate it against injury. Your specific work out routine requires a specific set of stretches to be sure

Through practiced application of chiropractic adjustment, stretching and nutrition, we optimize the power of your work out routine. Here are three ways you can benefit from our expertise at Espinosa Family Chiropractic:

1. Align your body for ultimate efficiency. Chiropractic corrects imbalances of the joints and bones in the back, making all forms of physical activity less stressful to the body. When joints are misaligned, the muscles do not contract properly, meaning that you do not get the most out of every lift, pump and thrust.  Proper alignment means increased strength.
2. Injury prevention: Pushing your body to its limits leaves muscles vulnerable to strain and tear. If damage is sustained to the tissues during extraneous exercise, we provide hands-on treatment that will repair your muscles by encouraging enhanced blood flow that brings oxygen and nutrients.
3. Bounce back quicker: Chiropractic helps to make your rest and rebuild period in between workouts more productive. Gone will be the days of being too sore to exercise.

We believe that a healthy nervous system is the base of a healthy, productive body: at our office in Sacramento, we apply this principle to the realm of strength training.  Call our office at (916) 457-8825 and schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C. 

A wise body builder once said: muscles do not grow on trees. They do, however, grow from a commitment to healthy training habits, including a period of rest and recovery.  At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we want to optimize your effort to grow stronger by providing support for the nervous system, a key piece of the muscle growing process.

The muscle building process begins with a signal from motor neuron to muscle, telling it to contract. Efficient muscle builders are those who can easily control muscle contraction; to this end, keeping the signaling pathways clear is a critical component of efficient muscle building. If subluxations impinge on the nerves that exit from the spine and communicate with muscles, the signal could be lost or jumbled, making each lift less impactful.  Chiropractic identifies and corrects subluxations, ensuring that the path from brain to muscle is crystal clear.

Another pitfall of weight lifting is the potential for overstraining muscles. By the very nature of weight lifting, muscles are exposed to strain which breaks up muscle fibers, leading the body into hypertrophy: the cellular process by which muscles repair and regrow stronger. When muscles are strained and not enough rest or nutrition is incorporated, they may suffer damage.

Often times, injury during muscle building occurs because shearing forces are applied to imbalanced muscles. At our office in Sacramento, we monitor the shifting mosaic of your back’s health, identifying and correcting muscular imbalances that could lead to potential injury.

There is a reason why many of the country’s top athletes include chiropractic as an indelible component of their athletic arsenal. To ensure you maximum muscle building potential, call our office at (916) 457-8825 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C. 

Range of motion and flexibility are age related considerations: when we are young, we take it for granted that if we drop any innocent item, it can be retrieved without the slightest thought. But as we grow, older, lazier with our posture, vulnerable to injury, and repetitive strain finally catches up to us, dropping a pen becomes a quandary.

At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we define essential flexibility as the range of motion you need to perform daily tasks free of pain: this excludes extraneous motion, the kind required for sports and physical activity. What if reaching for the cereal, as part of your morning routine, was a challenge: how could you then face the prospect of tying shoes on your feet to take on the day? It is a perilous cycle: as your range of motion decreases, you naturally attempt to do less, which accelerates the loss of flexibility. We want to reverse this process.

At our practice in Sacramento, we view range of motion as integral to your wellness: if we can get you moving, happiness will follow.

Chiropractic helps improve your range of motion by correcting misalignment, addressing injury and instilling healthy habits.

Call our office at to (916) 457-8825 to schedule an appointment today.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C. 

A conscious 21^st century citizen wants to avoid the kind of chronic neck, shoulder and back pain that is onset by excessive cell phone use. The pain is a derivative of posture: texting and browsing increases the amount of time you spend stooping over your phone, multiplying the weight of your head in relation to the spine for every further degree forward. Over time, this position creates imbalance as muscles compensate to make up for the increased weight, becoming strained in the process. Here is some minute, yet significant adjustments you can make to your lifestyle to prevent these injuries.

Utilize the eye muscles! Rather than moving your entire head forward to interact with the phone, practice this posture: keep the elbows anchored to your side and raise the phone ever so slightly, then lower your eyes, keeping the neck straight and the head forward. Though it may feel awkward at first, your neck will thank you!

Be cognizant and take breaks when texting and browsing for long periods of time. If you can remember, incorporate simple stretches into your breaks to relieve the accumulating tension in your neck:

Gently rotating your neck left and right, forward and backward is effective for giving static muscles a break.

Move the neck from side to side, touching ears to shoulders a few times. This keeps the joints in your neck supple. Remember, it is your head moving to the shoulder, rather than the opposite.

Forward flexion: move the chin downward until you feel muscles in the back of the neck kick in, telling you to go no further. Hold this position for about 30 seconds.

The goal is to keep the muscles limber and increase their strength, making them more resistant to injury.

Do not stretch until you feel pain! Practice these exercises slowly and within your comfort range. At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we offer expertise on proper stretching techniques for many injuries. These exercises can be used to prevent and relieve neck pain caused by any number of conditions.

If your texting habit has created a literal pain in your neck, call our office in Sacramento at (916) 457-8825.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C.

The cell phone is a 21^st century tool that occupies a variety of roles in our lives: social secretary, business builder and information insider. How convenient that such a tool should fit in our pocket, and how sad for our spines: when text messaging or e-mailing, most people are sending from the hip. In order to see the screen, we lurch and loom, craning the neck at a damaging angle- something about it just feels right.

In a certain respect, humans are lazy creatures, gormlessly sacrificing good posture for comfort. Cell phone posture is in the vein of most human-screen interaction: bad for the spine. The problem is that heavy cell phone use expedites the spinal degradation caused by poor posture: when you stare down at that phone, you are increasing the weight of your head, as it is burdening the spine, by 6-10 times. The muscles of the neck and shoulders are straining themselves to support this weight, creating imbalances that can lead to serious spinal problems.

There are ways to avoid the dreaded Text Neck. At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we offer an awareness of the problem, expertise and counseling on improving posture, and chiropractic adjustment to reverse the damage that may have already been done. Call our office in Sacramento at (916) 457-8825 if you are interested in reducing the net effect of cell phone use on your body.

Dr. Raymond Espinosa, D.C.