What Is Inflammation And What Can I Do About It.
A 45-year-old runner walks into a chiropractic office with pain in her hip. She’s been diagnosed with bursitis and tendonitis and wants to manage her pain.
She recently began running longer distances, and due to changes at work, she spends more time sitting. The two factors have exacerbated injuries to the tissues in her hip.
This is a textbook example of inflammation – the body’s natural way of protecting itself.
Chiropractors manage inflammation the same way they manage other issues – by looking for the cause and identifying ways to manage symptoms.
In the above case, maybe too much too soon after a long cold (COVID) winter resulted in overtraining? Or maybe the shoes that worked well last year have seen better days. The point is whenever there is inflammation, there is likely a reason for it. Getting to the bottom of that is a key piece in the puzzle to helping you recover quickly.
Chiropractic treatment for inflammation can include increasing flexibility and strength, adjusting form, and increasing the body’s resilience to workday stressors. For example, in the case of the 45-year-old runner, we might recommend ways to reduce the distance she was running every day, as well as her sitting time at work. We would likely manually treat the injured muscles in her hip and introduced hip strengthening exercises, along with evaluating her feet, knees, hips and spine for movement and adjusting those areas that were not functioning well.
This type of inflammation has a mechanical source. You can use ice, creams and medications, but that doesn’t change the mechanical load on the body. You can’t easily change a mechanical problem with a chemical solution. Increasing your hip strength and joint function to smoothly absorb each step meant safer loading on those tendons, less damage and less inflammation.
Chiropractic treatments for inflammation
Chiropractors start by looking for swelling, redness, heat, pain, and sometimes loss of function (such as difficulty walking) in these cases. Treatment options they could recommend could include one or more of the following:
Low Level (cold) Laser, which can have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect on joints.
Interferential Current (IFC) involves applying a low strength electrical current to a particular area to relieve acute and chronic pain such as osteoarthritis.
Spinal and extremity adjustments, which can reduce inflammation and increase the motion and function of the joints of the spine that may cause pain.
If the inflammation comes from an underlying condition such as rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis, our chiropractors can consult with or refer you to other professionals. While chiropractors are trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of these conditions, you sometimes need special blood tests or images to diagnose them. However, once diagnosed, a chiropractor can help manage pain or disability that may result from such inflammatory conditions.
If you are struggling to get back into your spring activities now that the weather is nicer, give us a call, we can help keep you moving and feeling better as you increase your activity.
A version of this blog was originally published by the Canadian Chiropractic Association
