Benefits Of Custom Orthotics

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Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. I want to talk about custom orthotics. These are inserts that go in your shoe to help with flat feet. So, when patients, when people have flat arches, it puts a lot of stress on the arch of the foot, the ankles, the knees and the lower back and on up.

So, if you think about arches like a stone bridge. So, a stone bridge looks like this. All the weight of that stone gets held up by the arch. So, the arches is the strongest structure that we see in architecture. When that, when that gets flat in the foot or in the case of the bridge, all that stone falls because that arch isn’t there to support it.

So, there’s a lot of structural issues that start from the feet being flat. And, there’s a whole industry around solving this problem. From Good Feet, there’s Dr. Scholl’s, there’s a million different options of different prices and different quality and, there are custom orthotics. Most custom orthotics are not that great I’ve found. Because, the way that they’re cast is really kind of simplified. Here’s what I mean. Let’s say a patient has a really flat foot. You have to step into a foam mold or plaster, but it’s primarily foam. What you’ll get is a really flat pancake mold and the company that fabricates does, you know, they fabricate an orthotic, an arch all of that. And, they do so usually really conservatively because they don’t want to do too big of an arch and they don’t really know how much arch that foot will really sustain.

So, case in point. Here’s an orthotic that was done about six months ago. You see how flat this is? I mean it’s got a little bit of an arch here, but these arches really weren’t taking care of the patient’s problem. He got these from a podiatrist. These are the arches that we cast with Sole Supports. This brand is called Sole Supports and it’s the only brand that we use.

You see how the arch is much more dramatic here? This is because the patients arch, this is what it does, and the way that we cast allows for that art to be retained in the casting. So, that we see a real true, custom orthotic. The different, the other difference is, this was $600 and this one is $300. This is so much better of a product for this patient structurally and it’s cheaper. So this is really why we use this product, Sole Supports and why we’ve been so happy with it. It has a big effect on the foot, you know, patients will have Bunyan’s, will have plantar fasciitis. As this arch goes down, it stretches the plantar fascia, which is tissue in between the ball of your foot up here on the heel. It also causes stress here and, on the toes, and throughout.

But, the real difference is structurally biomechanically up in the lower back and the knees as I said it up higher in the back and to the base of the neck. So, this is a really mechanical advantage for patient who has flat feet. And it has a big impact on their health.

This is Dr. Steve Battaglino, with Battaglino Chiropractic and this has been your Health Minute.

Can Chiropractic Care Remove Stress?

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Hi Dr. Steve Battaglino here. Can chiropractic remove stress from my life?

Well no it can’t. We’re always going to have stress in our lives and we have a lot of different types. We’ve got physical stress, chemical stress and emotional stress. And they are surrounding us both in our external environment and our internal environment all the time.

What we can do is maximize the ability of the nervous system to deal with this stress. The nervous system, if you recall, lives inside the spine. Most of it does and exits through there through these nerves at each level. This is important because structurally when things are out of place whether it’s a disc or other structure, when it’s out of place it can put pressure on these nerves and that hampers the nervous systems ability to deal with stress.

Now when we’re stressed we’re typically in sympathetic dominance. What that means is we’re a fighter flight mode. Our nervous system has a mode that it goes into where it’s ready to run or fight. Let’s say there’s a tiger or you hear a noise down a dark alley. A lot of times even though we don’t have a tiger or a dark alley around us we still are in that fight or flight mode. And we know because we’re stressed about deadlines or all the different things in our lives, or we’re drinking too much coffee, it kind of wires us out. It simulates that fight or flight response.

And so, what we can do in chiropractic is help the body restore proper balance to the nervous system so that it can be more adaptable and less prone to being in fight or flight mode, by restoring proper structural alignment. And we do this with a series of specific corrections that will really take a lot of stress off of the nervous system and that will allow your body to work better and adapt better to those stresses of life.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic. And this has been your Health Minute.

Chiropractic Care Beyond Pain

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Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractor. Everybody knows that chiropractor is great for getting rid of pain. back pain, neck pain, headaches, things like that.

But, what chiropractors constantly try to educate your patients about is the benefit of chiropractic care beyond just pain and other symptoms like that.

So, it all boils down to the nervous system. We have different types of nerves in our nervous system. Some that our sensory nerves down here. These are the nerves that communicate pain, temperature, vibration, things like that sensation. These are really only a small part of the nerves and our nerve bundles that exit the spine. And keep in mind where nerves are coming out of the spine is where they can get compressed if alignment of the spine is incorrect. Disks and other structures can push on these nerves where they’re coming out of the spine. So that can cause pain but it’s really only one part of the puzzle.

We also have what are called motor nerves that run on our muscles in our body. We typically have pain nerves inside motor nerves inside of muscles rather. So that, you know pain, muscles get injured we can feel them. But, the motor nerves are totally separate from the sensory nerves. In other words, the nerves that run the muscles in your legs say, they don’t have any nerve supply that can give you the sensation of pain.

Likewise, for the autonomic nervous. These are nerves that go and run all of your internal organs, your systems like your digestive system and cardiovascular system. These are nerves that go all throughout your entire body. And again, they don’t deliver that sensation of pain.

So, if we have compression of nerves here in the spine we need to get that pressure off not just so that you can get out of pain which is important, obviously. But we also want to take pressure off that nerve so that it can function at its optimum for all the functions that it’s doing. Not just the sensation of pain. So, we want to boost up the nerves going to all three of these areas. The motor nerves go into the muscles. Autonomic nerves going to all the internal organs and systems. Also knowing where your body is in space. All those nerves are really important.

Chiropractic is not just about getting you out of pain, although it’s excellent at doing that. But, the way that we have success in chiropractic is all based on the same principles. So, it all comes back to taking pressure off of these nerves by restoring proper alignment.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with that Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this is your Health Minute

Benefits of Chiropractic Care After Car Accident (Long Term)

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Dr. Steve Battaglino here. I wanted to share with you some x-rays on a patient that came in after a car accident. She had some neck pain. The neck pain went away pretty quickly, even though you could tell there were some injury there. And we can see it on X-ray, I’ll show you in a second. But, the pain went away fairly quickly after like three visits and she discontinued care. Then shortly after that she ended up moving away and moving back five years later.

So, I started seeing her five years ago after an accident. She was in her early 20s. The pain went away real quickly. She moved away, five years go by and she moves back. So, she came back recently she’s having neck pain again. It’s kind of getting worse and we took another X-ray. So, we see the comparative study between the before and after x rays, called pre and post x-rays, we can see some changes. The pre or the before is on the left-hand side of your screen. So, this is the jaw here on the curve here is actually supposed to go the other way. It’s supposed to go like this. You see she had a whiplash injury where those ligaments that hold the neck get stretched a little bit. It’s like a sprain injury and there’s some injury to the discs when that happens. Disks are in-between the bones here, here, up here.

And so, like I said, the pain went away pretty quickly but then she discontinued care right after that and it wasn’t completely healed. How do we know that? Well, when we took an x, another x-ray this is just last week. This is the post x-ray or the after x-ray. We can see the same areas. If you look here, look at the disk here, looks nice in fat in the back. And, we look at it here and you can see that there is bone spurring. The disc has gotten much thinner. It looks like these bones are getting really close together.

So, what’s happened in that five years is that disk wore down and became dehydrated and smaller and the wear and tear caused these bone spurs to form. The problem was that the bone didn’t really get back into its proper position completely in a way that the thing could heal up completely. So the pain went away. The patient unfortunately soon that was healed up completely because the pain wasn’t there, and you know, we’re just human. So, you know, something else comes onto your plate and you start thinking about a million other things that are more present in your awareness.

So, she failed to get that fixed completely. So, now she’s in her late 20s and we’re trying to get this area fixed. Which it’ll heal to a point where it won’t bother her, but it won’t heal completely. Because, you see now you got these bone spurs that are going to be there for the duration and it becomes more of, you know, the goal becomes more just getting this to heal the best that it can. And, kind of just maintaining it at that level trying to keep those bones first from get worse. So, just a little tip for you to continue care a little bit past where is the pain goes away. Because, that doesn’t, you know the pain goes away. Taking that, that thorn out of your your foot It doesn’t mean that it’s healed completely, it needs time to heal up after that initial pain goes away.

This is Dr. Steve battling this is your health minutes, probably more than a minute. Have a great day.

Why Do I Have Back Pain When I Sleep?

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This is a good question. It seems like when you’re sleeping, you’re laying down, you’re resting, that pain and those kind of symptoms would be less. But in some patients, they have worse back pain when they’re sleeping. So let’s take a moment to look at the final structure. This is the spine. You can see here you have disks in between the bones. These disks are really important because they act like shock absorbers, they allow for movement, and they can get injured. When they get injured, it’s like a sprained ankle. So what happens when you sprain your ankle? It swells up, right? Same thing happens to the disks. That swelling can be kept in check by moving around and by going through your day.

And then when you lay down at night to go to sleep, that pressure of you being in gravity and your weight kinda goes away. And that pressure’s been keeping the swelling in check. So you lay down and it just swells up. That swelling causes a lot of pain, and it causes a lot of pressure on the nerves that live right next to the disks. It’s really common to see that patients who have more pain while they’re sleeping, part of it has to do with the sleeping position, too. This is definitely a factor.

The best position I could recommend if patients can adhere to it, because everybody has a sleeping position that they have ingrained in their routine and it’s really hard to break that sometimes. But sleeping on your side with a pillow between your knees, and a pillow on your head, that keeps your head in the middle instead of doing this. The pillow between the knees kinda acts like a kickstand. It keeps you from rolling and twisting at night. That twisting, the disk does not like the twisting, especially with the swelling, so that helps a lot. Typically, we’ll see a big improvement in these symptoms with chiropractic care, and also with a change in the sleeping position. Pain usually will abate in the morning gradually as you move around, and it kinda pumps that inflammation, that fluid away from that area. But we wanna see a more sustained, a more long-term healing and fix for this problem. And chiropractic care can definitely help with rehabbing these disks that have been injured.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA), and this has been your Health Minute.

Can Chiropractic Care With Migraine Headaches?

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Yes, it can. Let’s talk first about what migraine headaches are. Migraine headaches, they’re really debilitating. In addition to having pain and a headache, it’s usually accompanied by prodromal symptoms. This means that, before the headache comes on. You get a little bit of an aura, it’s called, an aura where you get some visual lights, some sounds, or even smells that kinda let you know that you’re gonna have a real migraine headache. They’re debilitating. Sometimes the patients can’t get out of bed, they can’t stand the light, they’re very photosensitive, meaning the light is really bothersome. What’s happening here is the nervous system gets out of balance. The nervous system, particularly the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight-or-flight response part of your nervous system, gets stimulated to a point where the blood vessels, the cranial blood vessels, in your head dilate and start to swell and that causes headaches, but it also causes a stimulation of the trigeminal nerve which is one of the main nerves coming out of the brain down into the face, and this causes migraine. There’s also, the nervous system is out of balance, but also the endocrine system can get out of balance through the same process. Endocrine system is your hormonal system, and so we see a correlation between menstrual cycles, for example, and the incidence of migraine because of that hormonal shift.

Chiropractic care works by restoring proper balance to the nervous system. You have two main sides of your nervous system. One is fight-or-flight, called sympathetic. The other is rest and digest, growth and repair, which is called your parasympathetic nervous system. So typically, you wanna have a balance in there. If there is pressure on the nervous system in the spinal level, it can make it really difficult for the body to get that, to restore that balance on its own. That’s where chiropractic care comes in. It’s really great for removing pressure and stress on the nervous system which can cause this kinda ailments. And then the body just restores balance on its own and heals on its own, which is what it’s designed to do.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA), urging you to get your spine checked. Especially if you suffer from migraines, it can be a huge help. I’ve seen patients myself that had been on expensive toxic medications for years and just basically suffer and try to muddle through for years before discovering that chiropractic care has a huge effect and a huge impact on migraines.

Your Pain Is Not Your Problem

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Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. Your pain isn’t the problem, your pain is a signal that your body has a problem. So, it’s like a fire alarm in your house. Your body is designed to heal completely, provided the nervous system is functioning right. So, if you cut your arm you don’t really have to think about it too much, or do anything other than just give it a little time, make sure it’s clean, make sure the bleeding is stopped. And your body does the rest; it heals it up completely. Just like anything else in the body, this requires the coordination and the control of the nervous system. So, if your body is able to heal it completely, it removes the cause of that problem. If it’s not able do that, it heals incompletely.

Or a lot of times, in allopathic medical model in Western medicine, we see covering up symptoms with medication. This is very prevalent and it’s really just like taking the batteries out of the smoke alarm and doing nothing about the fire. Nobody likes to be in pain, I get that. It is very debilitating. If you live in chronic pain, it really changes your life. So the goal is really to get rid of the pain, but it’s to do so by removing the cause of the problem. Healing is the body’s natural state as long as the nervous system’s functioning right. Spinal mis-alignments put pressure on the nervous system and it inhibits the body’s ability to heal. So it either causes a malfunction, in the nerves functioning too much or not enough.
So, chiropractic care is a great solution for addressing the cause of the problem and allow the body to heal properly.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA), and this has been your “Health Minute.”

How Does Stress Affect Your Health?

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Well, it’s having an effect on your health. How much depends on how adaptable your body is, how much it’s able to resist the stress of your life. Now, stress is broken down into different kinds. There’s physical stress, which we all know, you have an accident or a fall. There’s chemical stress, you’re not getting enough nutrients from your food, or you drink too much coffee, or you’re taking too much medication. And then there’s emotional stress, you have grief, or worry, or all the different emotions that can affect your body in a negative way are collectively stress, and then it gets broken down further. You have stress which is external environmental stress, and then internal stress. But essentially, it all has the same effect on your body, which it stimulates your nervous system, specifically the part of your nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system.

While sympathetic sounds nice and warm and fuzzy, it’s actually the part of your nervous system that is the ‘fight or flight’ response. You are walking through the jungle, you hear a growl or something, your body instantly gets ready to fight or run away. Most people are in this state the majority of the time, unfortunately. Our lives have stress in them. We get tired and we drink coffee, which is another form of stress. You’re kinda stimulating the ‘fight or flight’ response with stimulants, hence the name.

This results over time in a suppressed immune system. Your immune system doesn’t flourish when you’re in fight or flight response. It’s kinda put on the back burner so you can run away from a threat. Studies show that chiropractic care reverses or inhibits the sympathetic response. So it turns off that fight or flight response in the nervous system. In chiropractic, the first goal is typically to improve the body’s adaptability, improve the function of the nervous system. And the second goal is usually pain relief or something, but the first goal is to get the body functioning properly. We can’t remove all the stress from our lives. You can do things like take walks in the forest, do meditation, yoga, go to bed early, and all the things that can help you deal with stress. Martial arts is really good in another way, but it can’t remove that stress. So the goal is to make the body as adaptable as it can be to deal with the stresses of life and to keep us on that balance where we’re still feeling good and our immune system is functioning well, despite all that stress.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this has been your Health Minute.

How Do Chiropractors Know Where To Adjust?

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Hi. I want to talk about diagnostic thermography. Kind of a fancy word, but essentially, it talks about instrumentation that the chiropractor uses to help do a better job in locating where the spine needs to be adjusted. We’ve talked in the past about x-ray, the importance of x-ray, and I’ve done previous videos on that. So if you’re curious about that, check them out. The importance of x-ray or the value of x-ray is that we can really see a roadmap of what the spine is doing. When we talk about thermography, there’s another element of information that the chiropractor uses to get information about where to adjust. When there’s pressure on nerves, when there’s pressure, especially on one of these big nerves that comes out of the spine, there’s going to be a heat signature on the skin directly above it. There are accessory nerve fibers, basically means like little branch, like a little twig that comes off of these big nerves and goes up to this skin right above it. So when we’re talking about thermography, let me show you what’s up.

This unit right here is an instrument for thermography. And basically, what it does, it kinda looks like a stud finder. So when you’re checking the skin, it’s real sensitive and the needle should be pretty much in the middle. If it goes like this really quickly, that indicates that there’s pressure on a nerve right below that area. This helps along with exam information and information from the x-rays helps the chiropractor determine where to adjust on that day. This is especially valuable information because as the spine heals and rehabs… So let’s say, you have a curvature in the spine and there are one, or two, or three disks there that are kinda sprained and need to be rehabbed and need to heal. As one of them begins to heal, we’ll probably start getting a reading at a different level, maybe one above there, or one below, or two up, something like that. It is because these bones are on… It’s a curve, it forms a curve, and so in that curve, all these bones and disks are sort of points along that curve. So if you start moving one, you’re going to move the whole rest of the curve too. As you rehab one area, it’ll become… The priority will shift to start rehabbing another one on either above or below that. So this instrument really helps a lot with that to tell where the nerve pressure is that day and where it needs to be adjusted.

So I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA). We do a technique of chiropractic called Gonstead chiropractic. Gonstead utilizes information from x-ray, from exam, from an instrument like this to do real specific adjusting to help patients get better quicker.

Is Back Pain Normal? A Response From A Petaluma Chiropractor

Is my back pain normal?

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Well no, it’s not normal in the sense that normal means your body’s functioning properly. I guess still that’s not entirely true because your body is functioning properly, giving you that signal of pain. So pain, back pain or any other symptom, is just a signal that something’s out of balance or something’s not working right in your body. It’s like an alarm system that goes off letting you know there’s something that needs to be addressed. I’ll just read a couple stats off about back pain. 31 million Americans experience low-back pain at any given time. There’s another fact. Low back pain is the single leading cause of disability worldwide, according to the Global Burden of Disease published in 2010. Back pain is the most common reason for missed work. One half of all Americans admit to having back pain symptoms each year.

There’s a whole lot of stats that go on and on. But it is a very prevalent problem. And so it’s obvious that for a lot of people back pain is normal, their normal experience. When we can figure out what’s causing that problem, instead of just giving painkillers, anti-inflammatories, injections and things like that to mask or cover up the symptom, we get really some results when we can remove that cause. Chiropractic is a great, safe, drug-free intervention that can help tremendously with back pain. And it does so without the use of opioids and all these other toxic drugs. I highly encourage you to seek out a qualified chiropractor to have your spine checked because there is something causing your pain. Whether that is something that can be fixed and that your body can heal from, a qualified chiropractor could tell you and can help you out with that. I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic, urging you to get your spine checked.