16 Sep 8 Ways to Boost Athletic Performance with Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care can have surprising, positive results on athletic performance when athletes regularly seek treatment. Chiropractic practitioners are trained to help keep your body and spine mobile, flexible, balanced, tuned, and protected. When you enlist an expert to be part of your training and athletic performance team, you are planning for success. After a thorough evaluation of your body’s individual strengths and weaknesses the chiropractic physicians at Mile High Spine & Pain Center can create a treatment plan that focuses on boosting your athletic performance while preventing you from injury. Consider the following eight ways our providers can help you reach your athletic goals.
Spinal Adjustments for Athletic Performance
Misalignment of the spine can cause unnecessary tension on one particular body part and prevent equal distribution of pressure. If these misalignments are ignored, injury and/or chronic problems are inevitable. Improper alignments of the spine and pelvis are most commonly related to repetitive movements on unvarying surfaces. If you are a runner, for example, and your spine is not in alignment, you can cause serious damage to tissues, nerves, and joints that are distributing weight improperly. Change up what you do and where you do it to help those improper alignments from occurring. Improper alignments can also occur with sitting in the same position–such as at work–for a long period of time. Varying your posture and getting up to move around at least every 30 minutes is a good way to help avoid improper alignments. Regular adjustments to your spine is one of the best ways to prevent common injuries of the body.
Injury Prevention
At Mile High Spine & Pain Center, we are experts in providing chiropractic care for the treatment of injuries, but we also specialize in providing our patients with preventative care and treatment. As we work with you and your fitness goals, we will discuss the following topics to aid you in injury prevention:
- Receiving Spinal adjustments
- Developing muscle balance
- Ensuring pelvic alignment
- Warming up the right muscle groups
- Using the proper equipment
- Knowing when to rest your body
- Stopping when you feel pain
- Increasing range of motion
- Incorporating exercises for flexibility and strength
- Understanding dynamic vs. static stretching
- Respecting muscle stiffness–what it means and what to do about it
Being educated on these issues that contribute to injuries empowers you with the knowledge you need to avoid injury. Your body’s specific needs can be identified by a member of our Mile High Spine & Pain Center team so that a tailored injury prevention plan can be created for you.
Dry Needle Therapy
If you are an athlete that is working to push your body to new levels of athletic performance, you will experience times of muscle tightness as they work for you, break down and build up again. Sometimes these muscle activity sessions can cause a knot in a muscle that can cause you pain. Dry needle therapy, sometimes called trigger point dry needling (TDN) or intramuscular stimulation (IMS), is the practice of inserting and manipulating needles into the muscle to relieve pain. It is similar, but not identical, to acupuncture. Dry needle therapy is an effective treatment for the muscular tension and spasm that accompany a variety of conditions such as arthritis, muscle and ligament strain, and nerve irritation.
Trigger Point Therapy
Your body has over 620 different trigger points all through your body with a concentration in your back and neck. These trigger points house tension and can cause pain and dysfunction. As the study of the nervous system developed, many researchers noticed that manipulation of these points caused effects throughout the body. This led to the development of the practice known as trigger point therapy. If you are interested in releasing pain throughout the body, a set of therapy sessions at Mile High Spine & Pain Center could make a big difference.
Massage Therapy
Since our Mile High Spine & Pain Center team includes a medical doctor, chiropractor, and experienced massage therapists, we can provide a full range of services without sending you out of the office. If you have been struggling with inflammation and tenderness that doesn’t have a clear cause, we may be able to pinpoint the muscles involved and relax the tension through massage therapy. Massage therapy is great for athletes because it helps to rid the body of lactic acid that builds up from engaging those muscles. The lactic acid is what makes you sore. Massage works that lactic acid out of your muscles and exits your body through its lymphatic system. Massage therapy is also a great injury prevention tool since it helps your muscles to relax and lengthen. A relaxed muscle vs. a tight muscle is much less prone to injury.
Stem Cell Therapy
Serious athletes are familiar with some bouts of arthritis because of the repetitive use of certain tendons and joints overtime in their chosen sport. Current treatments for the painful and debilitating effects of arthritis or joint pain rely on early intervention with synthetic drugs and, in severe cases, surgery. The pharmaceutical approach to these conditions is still not effective for some 20% to 40% of those suffering from arthritis or other degenerative joint conditions. According to the National Institute of Health, Stem Cell Therapy provides a promising alternative to surgery by promoting safe and natural healing. The less invasive approach Stem Cell Therapy offers attracts thousands each year. Mile High Spine & Pain Center is one of the few clinics in the country to offer Amniotic Stem Cell Therapy. With convenient locations near Westminster and Broomfield, we are ready to get you back to the activity levels you desire.
Vibration Exercises and Rehabilitation
When a serious spinal injury leaves you waiting on a slow recovery process, vibration treatment could help. The shaking increases blood flow throughout the body, which could speed up healing time according to the clinical research completed by the Rehabilitation Sciences Research Centre. However, too much vibration could also make the injury worse. We will use imaging to ensure your injuries are healing without further damage due to any treatment methods. Other benefits of vibration include:
- Improved balance for older adults
- Greater flexibility and a wider range of movement due to reduced tension and inflammation
- Improved mineral density in the bones, which can prevent breaks in the hip or shoulder
Anti-Inflammatory Joint Injections
When inflammation strikes, we seek to offer you relief as naturally as we can. Anti-inflammatory joint injections get to the heart of the pain your are experiencing eliminating chronic and life altering pain. The right injections can offer relief from nerve, joint, muscle, and spinal pain in just hours. At our Westminister area clinic, we combine joint injections with other treatments that repair the cause of the inflammation for permanent results. Anti-inflammatory joint injections offer our patients:
- Fast, localized pain relief with long-lasting results. (One injection can last weeks.)
- Restored range of motion – relieving inflamed muscles and nerves could help you move more freely.
- Dependability – these injections usually work even for patients that do not respond to other pain killers.
Call for an Athletic Performance Consultation
Take your body to the next level with the help of our team of providers at Mile High Spine & Pain Center. We want you to enjoy all that your body is able to do and to be free to do as you wish. With proper prevention and regular maintenance, you can be assured that you are doing your part to stay injury free. Mile High Spine & Pain Center provides our athletes treatment plans that boost athletic performance and prevent injuries. Call (720) 507-0080 today to schedule your free consultation!