It’s inevitable that we work out less during the holiday season.

Our schedule is simply too full with social engagements, marathon cooking and baking sessions, and last-minute gift shopping to even think about exercise. With such a happy maelstrom, it can be easy to drop your exercise routine completely; unfortunately, few of us can afford to put our fitness on hold for a month as we stuff ourselves full of the excesses of Christmas dinners and New Years Eve parties. Here are some ideas for indulging in holiday cheer without sacrificing your 2017 health gains. 

Adjust your expectations to maintain fitness during the holiday season

Don’t be alarmed if you come out at the end with an extra pound; instead, change your definition of success. Begin by realizing that this is a time of indulgence. 

• Don’t focus on weight loss: this is probably the wrong time. Instead focus on maintaining the health threshold that you have built over the years.
• Don’t hold yourself to impossible standards: if all your time is taken up elsewhere, try to fit in exercise wherever you can. 20 minutes of vigorous cardio 3 times a week is a more reasonable target. 
• Sneak in core conditioning: practice sucking your belly button in toward your spine and holding it for as long as is comfortable. This kind of cheat-exercising can be done anywhere at anytime! 
• Drink plenty of water: it will help regulate your appetite by making you feel more full; not to mention hydration is good for spinal health!
• Focus on bodyweight exercise: chances are you aren’t going to make it to the gym as frequently, if at all. Instead, perform bodyweight exercises from home or on the road to achieve the same effect. 

After the storm, check in at your Sacramento chiropractor! 

We help you take stock of your body in the aftermath of a hectic holiday schedule. If overindulging and laying around on the couch has taken its toll on your spine, give our office in Sacramento a call to schedule an appointment. We can help correct spinal misalignment and get you back on track to achieve all your fitness goals this New Year. Happy Holidays Sacramento!

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The holiday season is a time of renewal for your muscles

 Many of us will be sitting at home around Christmas time, watching our kids running around the tree and wondering, “how did I become so stiff?” The answer to that question is complex, and it takes into account every action (and inaction) that you’ve taken up to this point in your life. But the important thing to remember is that no matter how stiff you are, it’s never too late to start making improvements. Your muscles have been working hard all year long- the holiday season is a time to thank them and take stock of how you can help them out.

Treating yourself this holiday season

Treating yourself means treating your body right. If you are experiencing pain in the muscles of the back, stop ignoring it! Draw yourself a bath on Christmas day and let the hot water relax your muscles and loosen your stiff joints. Once you get out of the bath, perform a few gentle stretches to elongate the muscles and further alleviate tension. If you are still feeeling out of sorts, give us a call to schedule an appointment so we can address muscle stiffness on a deeper level. 

 At our office in Sacramento, we combine all-natural modalities to effect a dynamic approach toward overcoming stiffness and pain.

Chiropractic adjustment focuses on restoring spinal alignment, improving circulation and range of motion in the spinal joints. This helps to balance the muscles of the back. From here we focus on improving muscle elasticity through deep tissue therapy and targeted stretching. Further techniques involve using heat to penetrate deep into the muscles and facilitate the healing process. 

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How mobile are you?

You are made of joints and your joints were made to move! Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard that being sedentary isn’t good for humans. It takes us out of our natural element- movement helps all of our major systems function better.  In this respect, range of motion is the measure of the movement a particular joint can perform. As we grow older, we become less flexible; this is the first step toward losing range of motion. Unless we take steps to maintain our flexibility through stretching and strengthening, we are setting a course for stiffness and disability in old age. So how does chiropractic help us maintain range of motion?

Simple: chiropractic adjustment directly addresses mobility issues in your spinal joints 

Movement starts and ends with the spine. From birth, our spine is constantly struggling to maintain alignment and balance between the vertebrae and its supporting structures and musculature. As we grow older, the weight increases, the level of activity tapers off and the forces conspiring against our spines are able to tip the balance. As joints move out of alignment, nerves are pressurized, muscles are over- or underused, the first thing that goes is mobility. You know this because the last thing you want to do to a painful region is move it! 

Chiropractic for maintaining range of motion

At our office in Sacramento, maintaining your mobility is a primary priority. Using targeted chiropractic adjustment, we focus on restoring mobility to restricted spinal joints. Using deep tissue therapy and corrective exercise, we can improve circulation to an injurious region to start the healing process. As you move forward in life toward seniority, your ability to maintain range of motion will be an influential factor in maintaining independence. If this is something you are interested in protecting, give our office in Sacramento a call to schedule an appointment today. 

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Non-specific chronic back pain: what gives? 

Your pain has been nearly constant for three months and you keep telling yourself it will go away soon. You have been doing everything the doctor told you: eating well, stretching and exercising; you haven’t been sitting too much. But still the pain lingers, and at the six-month mark you start to wonder if it will ever go away. Such is the plight of many people affected by chronic pain, a condition little understood but certainly on the rise in our society. Traditional treatments such as surgery and medication often fall short because they fail to address the root cause of the pain. But what is this root, and how can we go about treating it?

Treating chronic pain holistically in Sacramento

Doctors are undecided on exactly why people experience chronic pain. But the most promising horizon is in the nervous system; many patients who suffer from chronic pain are undergoing nerve dysfunction at a very high degree. Regular muscle spasms tell us that your spine is misaligned and the muscles in your back out of balance. Our job as practitioners of chiropractic is to restore alignment to your spine and facilitate your body’s natural healing capabilities. Spinal adjustment itself releases painkilling endorphins in the body, while restoring the vertebral body to alignment frees the spinal nerve of impingement. Right away we have effected a positive change in your body’s perception of pain and helped to restore the function of an embattled nerve. 

Chronic pain treatment in Sacramento

From here, we focus on stretching and strengthening underworked and overworked muscles to return your body to a state of balance. By freeing your muscles from tension and reducing muscle spasm and contraction, we make positive improvements in your body’s nerve signalling. If you are interested in taking a natural, effective approach to dealing with your chronic pain, give our office in Sacramento a call to schedule an appointment today. 

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Are you a 21st century sitter?

For traditional office workers, tech-industry and start-up employees, freelancers and all other shades of worker that rely on their computer to make money, sitting is part and parcel of the job. But sitting is hardly a natural state for our spine; it puts our spines under more pressure than standing or laying supine. When you pile poor posture on top of this, you have a recipe for spinal degeneration that is affecting more of the population than ever. The demographic of people who spend most of their time sitting is getting younger every year, as both our jobs and entertainment options become more digitized. Overwhelming scientific opinion agrees that sedentary lifestyles are among the greatest new threats to our collective health. At Espinosa Family Chiropractic, we believe that reducing the amount of time spent sitting should be a primary health objective for any office worker. 

Focus on sitting less consecutively 

Even if you had access to a sit-stand desk, chances are you wouldn’t be able to stand comfortably for more than a few hours. That’s because our bodies, and in particular our spines, crave movement. So let’s start small: if sitting for large chunks of time is endemic to your job, take steps to break up the amount of consecutive time you spend sitting. Here’s how you can do that:

• Take a microbreak: you don’t even have to stand up for this one. Just take your hands off the keyboard and stretch up toward the ceiling, providing a gentle elongation for the spine. 
• Stand up at least once an hour: even if you don’t go anywhere. Just do some gentle upper body twists, or bend over slowly and let your arms hang down toward your feet 
• Take walks frequently- whether
• Take a brisk walk at lunch 
• Always use the stairs
• Choose face-to-face chats rather than a quick e-mail

Protecting your spine is imperative when you sit too much 

Treating your spine this way is proven to benefit both body and brain with upticks in performance. If you are a 21st century sitter, it’s time to get serious about protecting your spine against the ill-effects of your job. At our office in Sacramento, we are prepared to help- give us a call to schedule an appointment and start strengthening your spine against sitting today. 

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A healthier back begins with awareness

This is step one in any plan for improving your spinal health: simply being aware of your biomechanics and how every action directly contributes to the condition of your spine. Just as the spine is a depreciating asset,  our awareness of healthy spinal habits seems to deteriorate over time. Here are some of the greatest risk factors that are within our control: 

• Poor posture
• Poor diet
• Lack of exercise 
• Sitting too much 
• Lifting poorly 
• Smoking

Each of these factors interact with and influence each other; for example, lack of exercise reduces the efficacy of the postural muscles that support good posture. Helping you recognize risk factors and the way they influence your spinal health is one of primary goals at Espinosa Family Chiropractic. 

Unlearning the bad habits

Another objective of ours is to help you improve in the areas that are within your control. We want to make you appreciate how much better life can be with a healthy spine! By restoring alignment to your spine, we effect improvements in back pain and stiffness, improve range of motion and boost circulation. After proper alignment is established we can teach you the basics of good posture and how to maintain it throughout the day, we can show you simple ways to change your diet to account for back pain; we can demonstrate simple but effective body weight workouts and stretches that will tone the muscles that matter for keeping you upright and healthy. 

We want to motivate you to take control of your spinal health

Because in the end, it is the only spine you get. Give our office a call to schedule an appointment and find out how easy and rewarding it can be to take care of your back. 

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