Activating Your Glutes Post-Sitting

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After you sit for an extended period of time, be sure to wake up the muscles that matter

Everyone knows that sitting too much is bad for our health. But for those of us that sit for a living, it is hardly to be avoided. Which means that we must pay special attention to the muscles which suffer when we sit. For the purpose of this blog, we will focus on the three most endangered:

  • Glutes 
  • Hamstrings
  • Hip flexors

After a long day of sitting, you need to wake up your butt to reactive its ability to support your spine and biomechanical movement. How do you go about this?

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When to Choose Flexion-Based Exercise

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Flexion-based exercises are useful if you know how to use them 

Depending on the type of back pain you are experiencing, flexion may be the right choice for you. Flexion refers to bending forward, and incorporates a number of stretches, exercises and modalities that can help relieve pain, especially for people suffering from exaggerated curvature of the lower back, anterior pelvic tilt and weakness in the core. These three factors are present in people who spend all day in a single position, especially standing. With this posture (essentially: butt and belly stuck out in opposite directions), the spine is suffering from a lack of support at its very base. Flexion seeks to retrain your body into a more healthy posture, while strengthening the muscles that matter for maintaining this position. 

You should not perform flexion if you are suffering from:

  • Severe acute or chronic back pain
  • Sciatica-like symptoms
  • Herniated discs

It is likely that the bending-forward motion could actually worsen your condition. Otherwise, read on to find out how flexion could benefit you. 

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Avoiding the Muscle Fatigue of Standing All Day

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Standing = muscle fatigue

It’s undeniable. Anyone who has had to stand, maintaining more or less the same position, for hours on end can attest to it: standing simply hurts. The human body detests static posture- even if you were able to maintain “perfect,” neutral posture while you stood, your spine would still suffer from lack of circulation and compression, while your muscles would weaken and give in to fatigue. This potent combination then diminishes your body’s capacity to maintain good posture in the first place, which is why many of us give in to leaning, stretching, sitting or just about any other position to find relief for those muscles. So what if you do have to stand all day, for a living say? Make sure you take steps to look out for your spine:

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Using Yoga for Spinal Decompression

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No matter who you are…

…your spine undergoes a whole lot of compression on a daily basis. Whether you stand or sit for a living, whether you consider your posture excellent or poor; all of this is immaterial because gravity never stops pushing down upon us! Therefore the onus is upon us to do everything we can to mitigate the constant compression by lengthening our spines. This process, known as spinal elongation, is essential for providing embattled spinal discs, vertebrae and facet joints with the relief they need to heal. Read on to find out how yoga supports decompression. 

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Shoulder Mobility Makes the Pain Go Away

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A pain in the shoulders…

Tension in the upper back, shoulders and neck are ubiquitous in the American adult population. Our lifestyles, from working, commuting and couchsurfing, are conducive to systemic tension in this region that includes the upper spine. It is likely that all the tension in these muscles is also causing some degree of spinal dysfunction; the alarming thing is that pain is likely the last symptom to emerge. That’s why so many of us are able to go along with our lives for years, ignoring all the tension we know is in our shoulders and upper back, until one day it all comes down on our head. Instead of waiting for this inevitable tipping point, we like to think that a bit of daily maintenance can prevent it from ever happening at all.

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Don’t Overlook the Power of Posture

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Posture is, quite possibly, the single most overlooked method for influencing health on a daily basis

It is something that we are performing all the time, whether we like it or not. That means that if you ignore posture, and let your body slip into poor postural habits, your body will suffer. Your muscles will train themselves into positions that support poor posture, and subsequently pull your spine out of alignment. Ignoring posture therefore propels you along the road toward back pain and vertebral degeneration. Let’s perform a simple test to determine whether you rest with good posture. 

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Chiropractic for Cervicogenic Headaches

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A lesser-known, but nonetheless potent form of headaches

The cervicogenic headache receives a smaller portion of the spotlight than migraines or tension headaches, which are thought to affect up to one out of every six adults in the United States. The American Migraine Foundation defines a cervicogenic headache as a secondary headache- that is, caused by another condition. In this case, the headache’s source is derived from a disorder in the cervical spinal segment, where there is a complex relationship between spinal bones, spinal nerves, intervertebral discs and soft tissues. Let’s dive a little deepr into the causes of cervicogenic headaches.

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The Power of Cervical Traction

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What is cervical traction?

Traction is a natural modality that affords your spine the opportunity to decompress at whatever level tension is accumulating. With cervical traction, we focus on releasing tension from neck muscles and alleviating the pinched nerves which cause so much stiffness and pain. At our office in Alameda, we use specialized tables to gently stretch the spine and provide a targeted decompressive effect. But you can reproduce a similar effect on a daily basis- if you find that you consistently leave work with a sore, stiff neck, then cervical traction should be the first thing you do when you get home. 

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Muscular and Fascial Tension Go Hand in Hand

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What’s all the buzz over this freaky word Fascia?

Have you ever wondered what keeps all your organs and muscles in place? Well, that’s the fascia- a thin layer of densely wound connective tissue, mostly collagen, that surrounds, stabilizes and connects every organ, muscle and structure in your body. It allows for the articulation of all the different moving parts in your body by reducing friction and preventing them from simply sliding into each other. The fascia has recently come into the spotlight as an area of focus for the medical community because of its role in systemic tension. The truth is, we can’t live without the fascia, but it causes problems and pain for many of us. 

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The Almighty Fetal Position

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Sleeping fetal feels right

No matter some estimates say that as many as 40% of adults in America prefer this position for sleeping each night. At least they aren’t sleeping on their stomachs- which most experts agree is the worst sleep position for the spine. On the flip side, sleeping on your back is recommended by most back care experts, including our office at Bay Area Spine Care Office. Chances are, no matter what anyone tells you, you are going to select the sleep position that feels the most comfortable, even if that happens to be on the stomach. But it is possible to train yourself into preferring a different position- it just takes a spark of awareness and a flame of discipline. So here’s the spark:

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