Welcome to Van Dam Chiropractic's Office News Archive. Here you can learn more about Van Dam Chiropractic, Chiropractic, and Dr. Scott Van Dam, today's choice for Chiropractors in Fargo, ND. Read Dr. Scott Van Dam's Chiropractic Office News for the health of it.
We look forward to serving you! Call - (701) 532-5320.
You won’t find the carpal tunnel on any map—it’s in your wrist. Your carpal (wrist) bones form a tunnel-like structure—the carpal tunnel— through which pass tendons and the median nerve.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) is the occupational disease of the 21st century. Sufferers experience tingling and numbness in the hands, fingers, and wrists; blanching (whitening upon pressure) of the hand; pain so intense that it awakens you at night and more. (1-2)
Who Gets CTS?
Years ago, telegraph operators, seamstresses, carpenters, and meat cutters were the CTS sufferers. Today office workers, computer operators, musicians, and assembly line workers are more prone to it.
You have discs – spongy pads found between most of your vertebrae (spinal bones), in your jaw joint (TMJ) and between your pubic bones (in women, they separate a little during the birth process).
The discs help give your spine its curves and flexibility and make it better able to withstand stress. Discs also prevent your vertebrae from crashing into each other (that would hurt a lot!). And they also help create spaces (foramina) through which your nerves travel on their way to your internal organs.
But there are times your discs can cause you pain. If your discs flatten out, are twisted or bulge or are otherwise distorted, you can suffer from a lot of neck, back, leg and other pain.
Do You Have a “Slipped” Disc?
A disc cannot “slip” since it is knitted into the vertebrae from both above and below. What sometimes do slip are the vertebrae, which may stress the disc and contribute to its damage. Many “slipped discs” would be more accurately called slipped vertebrae or subluxations.
Disc Damage
Disc damage may be due to an accident or fall (called macro-trauma) or from doing the same thing over and over (called micro-trauma). In addition, long-standing subluxations (tiny spinal distortions) can cause disc damage.
Disc damage may cause pain. The pain can get so bad people have resorted to surgery. But there’s another approach to disc problems – chiropractic!
Your immune system keeps you 100% natural, organic, unadulterated you! It recognizes and destroys anything not supposed to be in you: bacteria, viri, pollutants, dust, pollen, drugs, tumor, and even artificial hearts and donor organs. (Metal and plastic, however, don’t trigger an immune reaction.)
The most common immune system disorder is an allergy. That occurs when the immune system overreacts to an allergen (dust, pollen, milk, dog or cat dander, strawberries, etc.) and produces too many neutralizing chemicals (especially histamines) to counteract it.
The Medical Approach
Because runny eyes, irritation, redness, fullness in the sinuses and other allergy symptoms are caused by chemicals we produce known as histamines, antihistamines are often prescribed to counteract the symptoms caused by histamines. However, antihistamines can cause serious heart problems and should not be used with alcohol, sedatives or tranquilizers. Antihistamines do not get to the cause but only deal with the symptoms of allergies.
The Chiropractic Approach
The cause of the allergies, the over-acting immune system, needs to be addressed and that is why allergy sufferers have praised chiropractic care for over a century. The goal of chiropractic care is to locate and correct a serious type of spine and nervous system stress called the vertebral subluxation complex (VSC). By releasing stress on the nervous system, chiropractic permits the immune system to function more effectively–something all allergy sufferers need. A nervous system with less stress improves immune system function.
To keep your internal drugstore working you need your information channels functioning without subluxations and you also need good raw ingredients. With great nutrition, your internal pharmacy will create the best quality drugs.
There are many “superfoods” in nature. An excellent one for your body chemistry is coconut oil. In addition to having many nutrients that are good for many organs, especially your brain, cooking with and adding coconut oil to your foods will ensure that your internal pharmacy gets excellent raw materials to make the best drugs possible.
For example, coconut oil is shown to balance your hormones, aid detoxification, make your skin look younger, help you lose weight, control your appetite, increase muscle mass, combat yeast infections, protect your heart, manage diabetes, strengthen bones, maintain healthy teeth, fight (and prevent) kidney infections, fight inflammation, boost your immune system, protect against cancer as well as alleviate age-related cognitive deficits and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s. (1)
Chiropractic is a healthcare profession – a profession whose goal is to help you regain and maintain health. How does it do that? First, we need to explain what health is all about.
Health is your body functioning at 100% efficiency on every level. That means you have lots of energy, you can digest foods to obtain nutrients, your immune system is keeping you free from invaders and toxins, your muscles and joints are balanced and your brain is working to keep you awake, alive and happy and communicating with all your body parts.
Communication is important. Your brain sends nerve messages to coordinate the function of every muscle, gland, bone, joint, and body part. Your body parts also send messages to your brain so everything knows how things are going.
Does getting old really have to mean getting frail and forgetful? Is that a reality or a bias? Ellen Langer, Ph.D., a Harvard psychologist, performed a fascinating experiment to find out.
This is what she did. She brought eight men in their 70’s to stay in a converted monastery for five days. Unbeknownst to them when they passed through the doors they entered another time.
Everything inside — including the books on the shelves and the magazines left out to read — were designed to bring on the feeling of actually living in 1959 – Perry Como and other singers came from a vintage radio. Ed Sullivan chatted away to his TV audience on a black-and-white television, and everything there was from 22 years ago.
