Just about everyone will experience depression at some point in their life. Depression affects about 10 percent of the US population each year, which amounts to 18.8 million people. The World Health Organization indicates that by 2020 depression will be the second leading cause of death after heart disease. Therefore, it is important to recognize the possible signs of depression as early as possible so effective treatment options can be found.

There are three different classifications for clinical depression. These include: Major depression, which interferes with your ability to perform normal daily activities such as eating, sleeping, working and your ability to enjoy activities; Dysthymia, which symptoms are not as severe, but persist on a chronic low-level for extended periods of time and interfere with normal enjoyment of life; and Bipolar Disorder, in which depression alternates with feelings of elation and increased activity.

There are many symptoms of depression, which may be expressed not only a psychological level, but on a physical and social level as well. Some of the most common symptoms are:

Psychological

• Losing interest in things you previously enjoyed

• Feeling anxious and irritable

• Feelings of hopelessness

• Overwhelming feelings of sadness

• Suicidal thoughts

• Reduced interest in sex

• Frequent crying

• Difficulty concentrating

• Feelings of inadequacy or self-loathing

Physical

• Insomnia or frequent waking (can also sometimes be sleeping excessively)

• Lack of energy

• Decreased appetite and weight (though could sometimes be an increase)

• Constipation

• Aches and pains of unknown origin

• Frequent headaches and/or flu-like symptoms

• Stomach or digestive upset

Social

• Lack of interest in socializing

• Problems with coworkers or boss

• Problems with partner or family members

Feeling sad or depressed is a normal expression in times of increased stress or bereavement and does not require the same treatment. Feelings of stress or sadness after you have lost a job or your relationship has ended is quite normal. However, if these feelings or any of the symptoms listed above persist for two weeks or longer, you may be clinically depressed and should seek help from a mental health professional.

Depression can strike anyone, regardless of their gender, age or socioeconomic status. Women tend to suffer from it more than men (12% and 7%, respectively), and surprisingly, even children are increasingly found to be suffering from depression. A study conducted by Harvard University found the rate of depression among children was increasing by 23% annually, the greatest increase of any age group.

There are a number of effective treatments, and if you suffer from depression you are not alone. A good mental health professional can help you choose the right treatment that can make your depression a thing of the past.

Depression will have a negative affect on the immune system response, which is one of the reasons that people who are suffering emotionally will also often get physically sick.

Chiropractic care has been shown to increase the activity of the immune system.  While it does not cure the depression, it can help that depression from causing a cascade from emotional psychological  damage to more physical effects.

Your hips and legs support your entire body. They provide stability, strength, mobility, and flexibility. Misalignment or subluxation of the spine can cause both hip and leg pain by irritating the nerves and creating muscle spasms. As these areas of the body receive nearly continuous usage, they can suffer a great deal of stress. In fact, hip pain may be mistaken for back pain, due to the connections between the pelvis and the spine. A chiropractor is likely to be able to treat your hip pain if it is the result of a misalignment in your spine.

The thighbone (or femur) connects with the hipbone (pelvis) in a ball and socket joint. There is a cushion of cartilage between the bones that helps prevent wear. However, eventually the cartilage itself wears down, which can lead to swelling and pain. Arthritis is the typical result. Pain can also occur due to sprains or fractures, which usually only happen to older people who have osteoporosis. Sprains and fractures result in limited mobility, stiffness and swelling.

Another common cause of hip pain is sitting for long periods of time, as well as poor posture. Sitting and posture problems can lead to a slipped intervertebral disc or leakage of the contents of the disc through small cracks, resulting in pressure on the tissues. This usually leads to pain in the hips and legs. Sciatica can occur when the disc presses against the spinal nerve, and can lead to weakness and numbness in the legs. In severe cases, surgery is required to remove the leaked disc material and relieve the pressure.

Chiropractors can treat some kinds of hip pain without surgery or medications.  They cannot reverse age-related arthritis, but they can help slow the progress of the disease and delay possible surgeries. The first thing your chiropractor will do is determine the reasons for your hip pain, because some conditions, such as fractures or metastatic disease, will need to be referred to another kind of health care professional. Most other kinds of hip pain can be treated through manipulations and spinal adjustments. In addition to adjustments, your chiropractor will recommend appropriate exercises to help rehabilitate the hip joint and stabilize the misaligned components. He or she will also work with you on posture, work habits (such as sitting posture and ergonomic office furniture), and perhaps even diet to resolve the root causes of your hip pain.

Cold laser therapy (also called Low Level Laser Therapy or LLLT) involves the use of light (a specific wavelength and frequency of coherent light, generated from a low-wattage therapeutic laser) to stimulate the body’s cells and cause them to accelerate the healing process. The therapeutic use of lasers (LASER is an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) is not a new idea; they have been used to stimulate healing since 1967.

The term “cold laser” refers to the specific wavelength of light used, which is usually in the 630 nm to 980 nm ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum. This wavelength allows for the least energy to be absorbed by surface tissue (meaning that the patient does not experience any sensation of heat or warming), while allowing the healing properties of the light to facilitate wound and tissue healing. Low-level laser therapy has been shown to reduce inflammation and accelerate the body’s own healing mechanisms. When cells are exposed to laser light, cell functions are stimulated, improving immune system function, increasing collagen synthesis and enhancing tissue regeneration.

In chiropractic practice, cold laser therapy has been show to be effective in treating inflammatory conditions such as arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and bursitis. The use of laser therapy also accelerates the healing of connective tissue disorders such as sprains, strains and tendonitis, and has proven effective in reducing or managing chronic or acute pain in the neck, thoracic regions or lower back. Lasers have also been used to effectively treat muscle injuries or bruises, and neurological injuries such as herniated or ruptured discs. Chiropractors also commonly use laser therapy to increase the patient’s range of motion, and to build or increase the strength of damaged muscle tissue. In many cases the use of cold laser therapy has cut rehabilitation time following an injury in half.

Obvious benefits of cold laser therapy over drugs or surgery are that it is safe, pain- and drug- free, non-invasive, and has no known side effects. The results are quickly perceived by patients, and laser therapy can be used immediately after an injury. Cold laser therapy has also been studied in over 3000 clinical trials, with proven clinical results. If you are interested in finding out whether it could be of benefit to treat your conditions, consult with your chiropractor.

Resources:

• http://www.acatoday.org/content_css.cfm?CID=4124
• http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=41529

As autumn turns to winter and the days become shorter, do you find yourself suffering from symptoms of depression that mysteriously seem to disappear once the days have become longer? Do you feel like you would just like to hibernate until spring? If so, you may have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), which is estimated to affect around seven percent of the population, though the number can be higher, particularly among those who live greater than 30 degrees north or south of the equator.

Symptoms appear slowly as the autumn begins, and build up as the winter progresses. These symptoms include:

• Low energy

• Tiredness
• Trouble getting up in the morning
• Difficulty concentrating
• Increased appetite, particularly for carbohydrates
• Increased weight gain
• Increased feelings of depression
• Decreased sex drive

The more darkness the brain’s pineal gland receives, the more the hormone melatonin is produced. Melatonin is responsible for helping regulate the body’s hormones and maintaining its circadian rhythm. It particularly affects hormones produced by the pituitary gland, which is the main regulator of the entire endocrine system, including the thyroid gland, the gland responsible for producing the energy regulating hormones cortisol and adrenaline.

Melatonin is called the “sleep hormone,” as the pineal gland produces it when it gets dark to lower our body temperature and induce us to sleep, but as soon as sunlight hits our eyes in the morning the melatonin switch is turned off and is replaced by a surge in serotonin, which wakes us up and provides us with feelings of happiness and calm.

Though SAD can mimic the symptoms of depression, they are two different things. The symptoms of depression usually include insomnia and decreased appetite, while the opposite is the case in those with SAD. SAD also tends to occur primarily in the autumn and winter, whereas depression is experienced year-round.

If you have SAD, there are a number of treatments that can help ease your symptoms. These include light therapy, medication and/or timed melatonin supplementation.

Light therapy involves regular sessions of sitting before a bright white “full-spectrum” lightbox from 30 to 60 minutes. Studies have shown that 92 percent of those suffering from SAD experienced relief from their symptoms after this therapy.

The administration of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) has also proved to be helpful to some, with an effectiveness rate of 67 percent.

Supplementation with melatonin, administered at particular times of day, has also been shown to be effective in some cases, as it re-synchronizes the person’s circadian rhythms, affecting the timely release of the body’s other metabolic hormones.

So don’t suffer in silence! Consult with your health care provider if you feel you have symptoms of SAD, as effective treatment is easily available.

No. While all certified Doctors of Chiropractic have undergone the same basic training, how and what they practice is as varied as the number of individual chiropractors. Different chiropractic colleges have different philosophies or approaches, and so naturally their students do as well.

One basic distinction you may find is whether the individual chiropractor or chiropractic office is more “straight,” meaning adhering to the basic description and philosophy of Chiropractic developed by its founder D.D. Palmer in  the 1890s. Such an approach tends to focus on spinal adjustments as the primary mode of treatment. Far more common these days is a more “mixed” approach, meaning that the practitioners are open to advances in conventional medical techniques. The latter practitioners are more open to working hand-in-hand with medical doctors or practitioners of other healing techniques, and may expand their practice to include recommendations on exercise, proper diet, and other therapies that promote holistic health.

Another distinction is that many Doctors of Chiropractic have gone on to advanced studies, and have taken courses to become certified in chiropractic specialties. Doctors who have received post-doctoral certification as a CCEP (Certified Chiropractic Extremity Practitioner), for example, specialize in the treatment of displacements of the arms, legs, shoulders, feet, ankles, or the soft tissue surrounding these extremities. A Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner (CCWP) may focus more on the overall health of his or her patients, and on helping them to adopt healthy lifestyle changes. Similar post-doctoral certifications exist for Certified Chiropractic Rehabilitation Doctors (CCSD), Chiropractic Certification in Spinal Trauma (CCST), and Certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner (CCSP). The latter tend to focus on sports-related injuries and on performance enhancement therapies for athletes. So there is a wide variation in the training that individual chiropractors may have received.

In addition, although many of the basic techniques of spinal manipulation are the same, there are many specialized treatment methodologies that individual chiropractors may offer. For example, the Active Release Treatment (ART) developed and patented by P. Micheal Leahy, or the Cox Flexion Distraction Technique developed by Dr. James M. Cox, or the Sacro-Occipital Technique (SOT) developed by osteopath and chiropractor Major Bertrand DeJarnette. All of these specialized approaches may be of benefit when dealing with specific disorders, and not every chiropractor is trained in all of them. Many clinics either specialize in one or one set of these treatment methodologies, or provide a balance of them by hiring several chiropractors, each of whom specializes in one or more of them.

In general it is best, when looking for a chiropractor to help you either regain your health after an injury or maintain a high a level of good health, to research the individual chiropractor or their clinics by reading their websites or asking for referrals from other health practitioners you trust. Every chiropractor can help you to achieve the more balanced state of natural health you seek, but some may have specialized training or approaches that can help you to achieve it more quickly.

Resources:

• http://www.chiropractic.org
• http://www.palmer.edu
• http://www.chiro.org
• http://www.yourhealthmatters.com.au/chiropractic.html

Approximately 65% of the 15 million tennis players in the United States sustain at least one injury per year. Tennis is a sport that involves repetitive motions and ballistic movements. As such, the sport can create both local and systemic stresses on the body. For example, hard foot plants are associated with foot, ankle, and knee stress, but can also affect one entire side of the body, because of side-to-side forces and twisting motions. Continuous start and stop motions, accelerating and decelerating, overhead serves, and ground strokes can put significant stress on the knees, back, ankles, elbows and shoulders.

As you can imagine, injuries are common, even with highly-trained players. The most common injuries in tennis players occur in the lower extremities, such as twisted ankles, Achilles tendonitis, “tennis leg”, which affects the gastrocnemius or calf muscle, and infrapatellar tendonitis, or “jumper’s knee”. One of the greatest causes of these injuries is rapid deceleration during the game. Tennis players put great force in one direction, and they suddenly have to stop it. That effort can lead to injury, in part because most tennis training techniques focus on acceleration, not deceleration. Tennis elbow is another common tennis injury, as well as injuries to the rotator cuff of the shoulder, and lower back pain. The tennis racquet can travel at up to 300 miles per hour over a very short distance. Throwing the racquet overhead extends and stretches the shoulder muscles excessively over time, causing an imbalance in the shoulders.

Chiropractic treatment for tennis players focuses on both prevention and treatment of these injuries. Chiropractic care is an excellent choice for tennis players. Adjustments can be made regularly to prevent injury and are effective in treating problems as well. These adjustments may include manipulations of the neck, knee, spine, shoulder, ankle, and elbow. Additional treatments might include stretching exercises, laser therapy, massage, ultrasound, hot/cold treatments, and light therapy.

A chiropractor can also provide advice on proper shoes, movement mechanics, racquet size and selection, playing surfaces and support braces. A qualified practitioner can help tennis players play the game better, prevent injury, rehabilitate an existing injury, and get back on the court again.

We all want to look young and beautiful, no matter what our age, and keeping your skin in good condition goes a long way toward that goal. There are a number of things you can do to keep your skin looking supple and glowing that don’t involve expensive treatments or surgery!

1) Drink more water­– This may be the number one tip in achieving healthy-looking skin. Controlled climates such as homes and offices with heat and air conditioning tend to be very drying to the skin. Most people are actually chronically dehydrated, and this leads to an increased in lines and wrinkles, much as a grape becomes a raisin! Optimally, you should drink between 2 and 3 liters of water every day, which will make your tissues more plump and resilient, reducing fine lines and wrinkles. If you can’t stomach that much water, other beverages are fine, but beware of any that contain lots of sugar or caffeine, as an excess of these substances is not good for your health.

2) Cleanse and exfoliate – At the end of the day, after being subjected to the elements, including sun, wind, climate, etc. (not to mention makeup), you need to give your skin a good cleanse. Dead cells can accumulate on the skin’s surface, making it look dull and lifeless. Start by removing all makeup with a gentle cleanser, such as a little plain yogurt on a cotton ball, which removes makeup without the use of harsh chemicals. Then treat it to a light apricot kernel scrub, which can remove those dead cells and expose the fresh ones underneath.

3) Eat healthy – A diet high in fruits and vegetables, particularly the ones with high amounts of antioxidants such as Vitamin C, and low in sugar, unhealthy fats and processed foods, has been shown to promote younger looking skin. Red peppers, strawberries and avocados are among the foods highest in antioxidants and healthy fats.

4) Wear protective clothing – We all know that too much sun exposure is bad, exposing our skin to damage from free radicals. Chemicals in some commercial sunscreens can be almost as bad for you as too much sun and keep you from getting an adequate amount of vitamin D to boot! The best option is to wear protective clothing as much as possible. This includes long-sleeved shirts and hats with wide brims.

5) Moisturize – One way to keep your skin from drying out is to apply a good moisturizer once in the morning and again before bed, after your cleansing routine. Look for a moisturizer that does not contain any SLS (sodium lauryl/lauryth sulfate) or parabens, neither of which are good for you. The best are those containing olive oil, aloe or vitamin E.

6) Quit Smoking – The increased number of wrinkles that appear on the faces of smokers is yet another reason to quit. Smoking constricts the tiny blood vessels that supply oxygen and important nutrients that nourish the skin. It also damages the collagen and elastin that keep skin strong and elastic.

Here are some basic tips for shoveling type activities in proper body mechanics. We may not have snow, but soon we will be preparing gardens and moving dirt.

It’s that time of year, when we can wake up to find our sidewalks and driveways covered in inches or feet of the white stuff. The thought of shoveling that snow strikes fear in the hearts of many, because it is not only a lot of physical work to clear snow, it can be quite a strain on your back, legs, and arms.

Here are some suggestions for safe snow shoveling, even if you aren’t in Olympic physical condition:

1. Take a few minutes to warm up and stretch. Stretch your back, hamstrings, and shoulders to help prevent injury and ease soreness later on.
2. Do not bend from your back, but rather from your hips and knees. Think about how you position yourself when you squat or sit down in a chair. You lean your upper body forward from the hips, bend the knees, and balance your weight over the feet. Your butt reaches back towards the chair or the ground. This is exactly how you want to position yourself with snow shoveling.
3. Do not hold your breath. When we work hard there is sometimes the temptation to hold your breath, but this reduces the efficiency of your respiratory system – and you need all the oxygen you can get to effectively shovel snow.
4. Do not reach too far. Be sure to work with the snow that is closest to you. As you reach further out, you add strain to your lower back.
5. Keep your spine in a neutral position. Make an effort not to arch or bend beyond your mid-range comfort zone. You’ve probably seen people shoveling snow with a rounded back, and this is very hard on your body. Contract your abdominal muscles as you shovel to help keep your spine in proper position. Avoid twisting and keep your shoulders over your hips at all times.

1. Do not reach too far. Be sure to work with the snow that is closest to you. As you reach further out, you add strain to your lower back.
2. Keep your spine in a neutral position. Make an effort not to arch or bend beyond your mid-range comfort zone. You’ve probably seen people shoveling snow with a rounded back, and this is very hard on your body. Contract your abdominal muscles as you shovel to help keep your spine in proper position. Avoid twisting and keep your shoulders over your hips at all times.

Lift from the legs. Just as when hiring someone to shovel snow for you. If you have back problems or pre-existing health conditions that might preclude your ability to shovel snow safely, don’t be a hero – get some help!

Signs of Alzheimer’s disease may be confused with signs of dementia. The difference between the two is that dementia refers to a set of symptoms such as a loss of thinking, reasoning skills, and memory. Dementia may or may not be caused by Alzheimer’s, which is a disease in itself.

As we age it is normal to have some changes in memory. However these memory changes should not interfere with daily life. Some early signs of dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease include the following:

• Loss of memory. People may forget important dates or recent experiences to such a degree as to interfere with daily life. While we all may forget details of a conversation or event, people with Alzheimer’s may forget the whole thing.
• Problems with language. While most of us struggle with finding the right word at times, people with Alzheimer’s may forget how to use basic words or what basic words mean. For example, it’s normal to forget where your keys are. It is not normal to forget what keys are used for.
• Changes in personality. Sudden mood swings can be a sign of dementia caused by Alzheimer’s. People may become suddenly emotional, withdrawn, angry or euphoric for no reason. Uncharacteristic behavior, such as mistrusting family members or trusting strangers, is a sign to watch out for.
• Confusion and disorientation. A common sign of Alzheimer’s is that people get lost in places they are very familiar with. Confusion may also interfere with normal daily tasks such as cooking or bathing.
• Hygiene problems. People with Alzheimer’s may suddenly stop bathing and/or start wearing stained clothing.
• Strange behaviors. People may start putting things in the wrong places, such as food in the wardrobe or toothbrushes in the refrigerator.

If someone you know is exhibiting these signs, it is a good idea to set up an appointment with a doctor for an assessment. As yet there is no definitive test for Alzheimer’s, so your healthcare provider will make the diagnosis based on the constellation of symptoms as well as some tests, including the following:

• Blood and urine tests
• Neurological exams
• Mental status tests
• Imaging tests

You will also be asked to provide details about when the symptoms started, concurrent health conditions and medications, and any important changes in your loved one’s life, such as retirement, death of a spouse, etc.

It is very important that you feel comfortable working with your physician and other health care providers, because Alzheimer’s can go on for years. You’ll need to find a team of caregivers and service providers you can trust