1. Neural Tension
   • a) When you sit with your legs straight out in front of you while your head is looking down, you are placing the maximum amount of tension on your spinal cord and sciatica nerve
   • b) Nerves do not like to be stretched or placed on tension and the reading in bed posture promotes exactly this so you can end up having symptoms like numbness and tingling and not realize that the reading in bed posture is the cause of your problem
2. Poor Digestion
   • a) When you sit with your legs straight out in front of you while your head is looking down, you are increasing pressure on your abdomen and squeezing your stomach
   • b) This increases the likelihood of poor digestion and acid reflux issues – especially if you eat right before you go to bed
3. Poor Sleep Habits
   • a) The bedroom should be reserved for sleeping and intimacy – not reading, watching television, playing games on a tablet, or checking your smartphone
   • b) When your brain...

This is one of the most common questions I am asked in my office.

Let’s break it down based on injury type and pain type.

Use ICE for the following:

• Within the first 72 hours following injury
• When visible swelling and inflammation are present
• If pain is sharp, shooting, and/or has a deep ache
• If you are experiencing pain at night that wakes you up because it is aches deep within your joint

Benefits of ice are:

• Decrease pain
• Decrease swelling and inflammation
• Decrease secondary injury to surrounding tissues of the primary injured area

Use HEAT for the following:

• After 72 hours if there is NO visible swelling or inflammation or redness present in the area
• If pain is dull, achy, sore, or stiff
• If you are experiencing pain at night that wakes you because it feels tight and sore

AVOID heat if:

• Inflammation and swelling are visible
• Redness is present
• Possible infection or you have a visible open wound

Benefits of heat are:

• Increase blood flow and...

Have you ever:

• Experienced spinning when you change positions like rolling in bed or getting out of bed?
• Feel nauseated when you stand up or change directions while walking?
• Experienced a pit in your stomach when the elevator stops and then feel a bit unsteady when you step out?
• Stood at the top of a staircase looking down and felt like you might fall?
• Walked and felt like the floor came up and tripped you?
• Had a sinus infection or ear infection?
• Leaned your head back at the hair salon and felt the room spinning when they tried to wash your hair?

Does any of this sound familiar?

Or, are you concerned for someone you know who experiences these situations?

These situations ARE NOT NORMAL.

You or someone you know should NOT experience dizziness or a sense of disorientation doing everyday things like rolling in bed, standing in the shower, walking across the room, or kneeling to pick up an object dropped on the floor.

If you are, then you may be suffering from Benign...

If that makes you want to crawl under the covers, then you need some tips to defend yourself and your family from all the muck and yuck that might enter your doors.

1. Wash your hands. Seriously, the best line of defense is keeping your hands clean. Wash your hands for 20 seconds and lather the soap in between your fingers. To remind the little ones in your life, sing the “ABC” song or “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to make a game out of handwashing. For extra protection, use dōTERRA’s On Guard Foaming Hand Wash – a NATURAL alternative to other soaps that can dry out your hands with a bunch of chemicals or rubbing alcohol.
2. Drink plenty of water. Drinking water keeps you hydrated and good hydration leads to healthy skin. If your skin is dry and cracking, then germs can have multiple ways to infect your body. If you want to avoid the harsh chemicals that can irritate your skin, try NATURAL plant-based lotions like dōTERRA Hand & Body Lotion or...

Most people have heard about what causes back pain: poor lifting technique, poor posture, sports or work injury… but did you know that you could be doing 3 things every day that encourage back pain?

Seriously, you might be surprised by what I am about to say but the reality is that these 3 things could play a huge role in reducing the likelihood of ever getting back pain.

#1: Horrible Diet.

When you choose donuts, chips, and soda over fruits, vegetables, and water, you are making the choice to add hundreds – even thousands – of calories per day to your diet which can lead to obesity.

And, in case you didn’t know this, for every 1 pound you gain, you actually gain 3 pounds of force on your joints and spine. I learned this from an orthopedist 17 years ago who encouraged all his patients to lose weight first BEFORE he did surgery. Why did he do this?

Because he knew that surgery would be more effective if the patient wasn’t carrying excess weight to...

Did you know that in 2014, seven million injuries were caused by older Americans experiencing 29 million falls?

Did you know that these falls contributed to approximately $31 billion in annual Medicare costs?

It is absolutely TRUE that standing like a stork on 1 leg is critical to your health!

If you cannot stand on 1 leg for more than 15-30 seconds, then you have a balance problem.

If you cannot stand on 1 leg for more than 15-30 seconds, then you are at risk for falling which makes you at risk for injury.

Even if you don’t consider yourself an “older adult” who belongs in some statistical group, you will want to consider practicing standing on one leg so that as you age you don’t lose this strength and balance skill.

When I see patients of all ages fail to be able to stand on 1 leg for 15-30 seconds, I immediately ask myself, “why?”

• Is their hip weak and causing them to drop their pelvis?
• Have they suffered multiple ankle sprains and...

A few years ago, a middle-aged gentleman came to his physical therapy session because he was having back pain. After evaluating him, I learned that his back pain also created frequent “zinger-like” sharp shooting pain down his left leg. After about 3 sessions, his pain in his back and left leg were getting better and he was progressing exactly as I had predicted. This is great, right?

WRONG! He had no idea what had caused his back problem in the first place – which meant it was difficult for me to figure out the root cause of the problem so that I could really help his problem go away and not come back again.

During his 4th session, I was providing a special hands-on nerve treatment technique to his left leg while he was laying on his stomach. This technique, called the Myokinesthetic System™ was working very well in reducing the number of episodes of sharp shooting left leg pain. He was just chatting about how 2 years prior his right shoulder...

Chances are you’ve come across the old dental health adage: “Floss the teeth you want to keep.” The first time you spotted this sign in a dental office or heard the phrase uttered word-for-word by the dentist probably elicited a giggle or a snarky remark. But once the humor of it washed away, you more than likely had an a-ha moment. It just makes so much sense, doesn’t it?

Let’s try to apply this principle to other parts of the human body: What if you only stretched the muscles you wanted to keep? What if you performed weight-bearing exercises to maintain the strength of just a few of your more than 200 muscles? This is an extreme example, of course, but without the guidance of a physical therapist, it’s possible that some parts of your musculoskeletal system may be inadvertently neglected.

Physical therapists are trained to identify and treat a wide range of movement disorders including sports injuries such as sprains and strains as well as...

Imagine carrying a bowling ball
in your hand all day.

Do you think you would get a little tired of doing that?

Well, that’s exactly what your neck muscles are doing all day.

And, if your posture is poor then your neck muscles could be doing even extra lifting!

I see this all the time in my office. A patient arrives with complaints like “my neck hurts”, “my head feels heavy”, “it hurts to lift my head out of the wash basin at the salon – I have to use my hand to help lift my head”, or even “I feel like I sleep on my neck wrong every morning”

The “neck hurts” or the “I slept on my neck wrong” is typically associated with muscle or joint issues where the muscles are tight and the joints are often stuck. Either way, you can’t move your head the way you want.

The heavy head is often a result of poor posture over time. For example, we live in a very technological society. We lean over our...

This is a common question I hear from patients who arrive in my office having just visited the physician and learned that they have a herniated disc. They see the x-ray of the spine. They see the MRI or may be the CT-scan. Then get inundated with a lot of information where they don’t understand all the big words AND all of that combined can seem pretty scary and confusing. They often leave not the physician office not really knowing what to do next.

What exactly is a herniated disc?

Rather than get all fancy with big medical words, the best way to describe a herniated disc is to think of a jelly donut. The outer donut part is the outer portion of your disc and the jelly part of the donut is the gel-like substance in the inner part of the disc.

A herniated disc has different levels of complexity. Less complex means that the jelly is starting to bulge into the donut part but you can’t see the jelly yet. Moderately complex means that the jelly is bulging more and...