Posts by Dr. Mark Holland

We come across a good deal of sports injuries in our North St. Louis, MO office, and Dr. Holland is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital reports that more than 3.5 million children of the ages 14 and younger are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the nearly 2 million adults hurt every year while engaged in sports-related activities, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the importance of minimizing these types of widespread injuries. One approach to potentially realize that goal, according to a study published in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, frequently sidelining the players and impacting their team's chance at winning. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see how well chiropractic could reduce these injuries and help keep them playing.

For this study in particular, all of the players was given medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic sessions at the rate of one session each week for the first six weeks, biweekly treatments for the next three months, and one treatment per month for the remaining three months of the study. The other participants were given no chiropractic intervention at all and were used as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following 24 matches, researchers noticed a lessened amount of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had been given chiropractic care. Furthermore, that very group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to conclude that chiropractic should be added to sports training programs to dramatically reduce the quantity of leg injuries.

If you or your child plays sports and you would like to make sure greater time is spent on the field versus on the sidelines, call our North St. Louis, MO office at (314) 588-9100 and schedule an appointment today. We will do our best to keep you in the game!

References

• Hoskins, W, & Pollard, H. (2010, April 8). The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 11(64), doi:10.1186/1471-2474-11-64
• Misra, A. (2014, March 17). Common sports injuries: Incidence and average charges. Department of Health & Human Services.
• Stanford Children’s Hospital. (n.d.). Sports injury statistics.

According to experts, about 5 percent of the population will suffer from painful disorders like frozen shoulder syndrome at some point in their lives. That makes shoulder-related pain a common problem and one that Dr. Holland sees in our North St. Louis, MO practice on a regular basis.

Generally, this condition is more prevalent for people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and it tends to affect women more often than men. While ice, heat, and gentle stretching can often times help relieve the pain, so too can chiropractic.

For example, a study released in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine looked at 50 patients with frozen shoulder who were given chiropractic care. The duration of care ranged from 11 days to 51 days, with 28 days being the average.

The doctors found that nearly all of the study participants fared very well with chiropractic care. The authors found:

• 8 of the subjects reported 50-75 percent improvement
• 25 indicated improvement ranging from 75- 90 percent
• 1 participant had complete resolution of their frozen shoulder pain

Only one patient reported an improvement of 50 percent or less, so reports like this demonstrate just how beneficial chiropractic can be when it comes to decreasing shoulder pain and increasing quality of life.

Let Dr. Holland help you decrease your pain by contacting our North St. Louis, MO office and scheduling your appointment today.

Resources

Murphy F et al. (2012, December). Chiropractic management of frozen shoulder syndrome using a novel technique: a retrospective case series of 50 patients. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine;11(4):267-272

Dr. Holland works with many sciatica patients here in our North St. Louis, MO office, and quite a few of these patients were concerned that they might require surgery to relieve their pain. The most recent research shows that many people don't need surgery for this prevalent problem, and that chiropractic is more effective at solving sciatic nerve pain.

A popular surgery for sciatica is microdiscectomy, and in a 2010 study, specialists looked at 80 individuals with sciatica who were referred for this operation.

Forty patients were then randomly placed in one of two groups. The first group received surgical microdiscectomy and the second group was given chiropractic care.

Both groups got better; however, no noticeable difference in results was reported one year post-treatment between the surgery group and the chiropractic group. Furthermore, about 60 percent of the participating patients who could not find assistance from any other treatment approach "benefited from spinal manipulation to the same degree as if they underwent surgical intervention."

Simply put, chiropractic offered the same positive advantages as surgery without having to undergo the higher amounts of surgery-based pain or suffer through extended recovery times often affiliated with that specific treatment choice. Plus, you also don't run the risks associated with surgical microdiscectomy, such as nerve root damage, bowel or bladder incontinence, bleeding, or infection.

Surgery should be the last option for sciatica pain. If you live in North St. Louis, MO and you're being affected by back pain or sciatica, give Dr. Holland a call today at (314) 588-9100. We'll help pinpoint the source of your pain and work hard to get you relief.

References

• McMorland, G et al. Manipulation or microdiskectomy for sciatica? A prospective randomized clinical study. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2010;33(8):576-584.
• Solberg TK, Nygaard OP, Sjaavik K, Hofoss D, Ingebrigtsen T. The risk of "getting worse" after lumbar microdiscectomy. European Spine Journal 2005;14(1):49-54.
  

We see a large number of individuals with headaches in our North St. Louis, MO office, and Dr. Holland has been able to aid many of them. Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 50% of all adults have a problem with some kind of headache disorder, so this really isn’t surprising. One of the most typical types of headaches that our patients are afflicted by is cervicogenic headache which, luckily, chiropractic can usually help.

Cervicogenic Headaches Explained

A cervicogenic headache is one that comes from an issue in the cervical spine. It could be as a result of a problem with either the spine itself (particularly, the vertebrae, joints, or discs), or it could be a result of a problem in the muscles and tendons of your neck. This dysfunction in your spine creates squeezing or aggravation of the spinal nerves, which can contribute to headache pain.

How do you distinguish if the headache you are enduring is a cervicogenic headache? Apart from obtaining a diagnosis from a healthcare specialist, a common symptom of cervicogenic headaches is tenderness or discomfort in your neck. This is sometimes associated with pain in the back of your head or between your shoulder blades.

Headache Relief with Chiropractic

Seeing that cervicogenic headaches will not subside until whatever issue is causing them is remedied, it is important to receive treatment instead of just trying to "wait it out." Chiropractic care is an excellent approach, and one that provides a considerable amount of headache pain relief.

In one study released in Chiropractic & Osteopathy, experts evaluated 80 people who had repeated cervicogenic headaches. Fifty percent received chiropractic care and the other fifty percent underwent light massage therapy. Each participant was examined 12 and 24 weeks after the procedures and it was found that chiropractic provided the most beneficial outcomes.

Specifically, this study found that chiropractic adjustments gave patients more pain relief and decreased the number of headaches that occurred. In addition to that, it also diminished the disability that resulted from these painful headaches.

To find out what Dr. Holland can do for you and your headache pain, call us today. We'll do our best to get you the pain relief you need!

References

• Haas M, Schneider M, Vavrek D. Illustrating risk difference and number needed to treat from a randomized controlled trial of spinal manipulation for cervicogenic headache. Chiropractic & Osteopathy 2010 18(9).
• World Health Organization. (2012, October). Headache disorders. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs277/en/

Unfortunately, a large number of our North St. Louis, MO patients know the pain associated with a herniated disc all too well. On a positive note, Dr. Holland has helped many people with disc pain, and a number of research studies have verified that chiropractic can help patients recover from this kind of problem.

Research on Chiropractic for Disc Herniations

In one report, doctors from Switzerland selected 148 patients who were coping with pain in their low back and legs due to a herniated disc (which was confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI). Each person then received chiropractic adjustments that focused on the area of his or her disc herniation.

Results were collected after the first treatment session at set intervals--namely, 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 months, and 1 year--to ascertain what type of short-term and long-term effects, if any, chiropractic care offers when it comes to resolving this particular condition. Among the information obtained was the person's self-reported changes in both low back and leg pain.

Researchers found that, as a whole, the study participants reported "significant improvement" for both types of pain every time the results were collected. In fact, over 90% of the study participants reported that their pain "improved" within the first three months, with 88% still citing improvement one year after their first treatment session.

Even those test subjects who were defined as "chronic" still claimed an improvement in pain at a rate of 89 percent one year beyond when treatment first began. This is the same positive effect that was found in the following case study.

Case Study Results

In this paper, a 26-year-old man had presented with disc herniation symptoms such as pain in the low back, left leg, and left groin area, along with left foot drop and muscle weakness. He had suffered with these symptoms for more than two years after sustaining an athletic injury, and his herniated disc was confirmed via MRI.

After receiving chiropractic, "The patient responded favorably and his multi-symptom complex resolved within 90 days of treatment." Furthermore, the patient was still enjoying relief one year after the chiropractic intervention.

Studies like these show how beneficial chiropractic can be when it comes to alleviating herniated disc pain and relieving the symptoms they bring about. So, if you are suffering from back pain caused by a herniated disc and want to find some relief, chiropractic might be an effective solution.

Don't suffer from chronic herniated disc pain. Give our North St. Louis, MO office a call today at (314) 588-9100 for a consultation or appointment.

References

• Leemann S, Peterson CK, Schmid C, Anklin B, Humphreys BK. Outcomes of acute and chronic patients with magnetic resonance imaging-confirmed symptomatic lumbar disc herniations receiving high-velocity, low-amplitude, spinal manipulative therapy: a prospective observational cohort study with one-year follow-up. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2014;37(3):155-163.
• Polkinghorn BS, Colloca CJ. Treatment of symptomatic lumbar disc herniation using activator methods chiropractic technique. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 1998;21(3):187-196.
  

We see a number of back pain patients in our North St. Louis, MO practice, and Dr. Holland has been able to provide a lot of them find relief through various chiropractic techniques. At the same time, dealing with back pain doesn't necessarily mean having to make a choice between chiropractic care and medical therapy, as many individuals utilize both types of care with great outcomes.

Study Confirms Chiropractic and Medical Treatment Work Well with One Another

In a report published by the medical journal Spine researchers¹ looked at a group of active-duty military personnel between the ages of 18 and 35 who were suffering from both acute pain and limited function due to back symptoms. Some of the patients engaged in treatment via standard medical therapy, while the rest received chiropractic adjustments together with standard medical care, as researchers wanted to determine which group fared better.

The authors observed that the group that got standard medical care in combination with chiropractic care scored "significantly better" than the patients who received medical care alone; 73 percent reported positive benefits in comparison to just 17% of the medical treatment only group who indicated the same amount of improvement. This was true regarding both pain and level of function at the two- and four-week marks.

Therefore, integrating these two forms of treatment can greatly benefit you--the patient--offering advantages when compared to medical care alone. However, while chiropractic and medical approaches can work together, chiropractic offers some unique strengths over medical treatment.

Where Chiropractic Wins

Although it may seem as if each approach plays a 50-50 role, there is one major advantage that chiropractic care has over medical treatment and that is in patient satisfaction. In fact, one bit of research from UCLA² that was printed in the American Journal of Public Health reports that, on average, chiropractic patients are generally more satisfied with their recovery than patients undergoing medical care.

According to the experts, the main aspects that patients liked over medical care were "self-care advice and explanation of treatment." This isn't unexpected, as chiropractors commonly spend much more time advising their patients as to how they can improve their health on their own, as well as explaining more thoroughly what to expect from chiropractic.

Chiropractic Is a Natural Approach to Wellness

Certainly, the techniques associated with chiropractic are very different than those available with medical care, but a large amount of the difference is the fact that chiropractic is a natural approach to health and well-being. Instead of focusing on only relieving the symptoms, chiropractic means searching for the primary cause of your pain, which often means greater improvement as you are addressing the problem at its source.

Furthermore, while medication is sometimes helpful for treating certain conditions, many health issues respond well to natural forms of treatment such as chiropractic care. This means fewer negative side effects from drugs and more permanent results.

You don't have to suffer from back pain or other health issues. Give our North St. Louis, MO clinic a call today at (314) 588-9100. We'll do our best to help you get and stay free from back pain.

References

1. Goertz CM, Long CR, Hondras MA, Petri R, Delgado R, Lawrence DJ, Owens EF, Meeker WC. Adding chiropractic manipulative therapy to standard medical care for patients with acute low back pain: results of a pragmatic randomized comparative effectiveness study. Spine 2013;38(8):627-634.
2. Hertzman-Miller RP1, Morgenstern H, Hurwitz EL, Yu F, Adams AH, Harber P, Kominski GF. Comparing the satisfaction of low back pain patients randomized to receive medical or chiropractic care: results from the UCLA low-back pain study. American Journal of Public Health 2002;92(10):1628-1633.

We treat many car accident cases in in our North St. Louis, MO office, and a widespread symptom we see in our patients is shoulder pain. The key to recovering from shoulder pain caused by a crash is to understand the root cause of the problem and how chiropractic care can help.

There are at least two ways that you can develop shoulder pain after a car crash: by direct injury to the shoulder or by radiating pain from the neck.

Direct damage can be caused by striking your shoulder on a hard object in the car during the crash, or can occur if you have a tight grip on the steering wheel during a rear end collision. With this type of injury, you'll often be aware of the pain shortly after the wreck.

More frequently, Dr. Holland finds that shoulder or arm pain doesn't immediately appear after a collision, but begins a few days or weeks after the accident. This type of shoulder discomfort actually starts in the cervical spine. Injured ligaments or muscles in your spine can tweak nerves in your neck, causing numbness, tingling, or soreness in your shoulder, elbow, or wrist.

We've worked with many types of shoulder pain in our North St. Louis, MO office. This treatment involves chiropractic adjustments to restore your spine's natural mobility and home exercises that strengthen your neck and shoulder.

You don't have to suffer from shoulder pain. Dr. Holland is conveniently located in North St. Louis, MO to help you recover, whether you've been in a car crash or not. First, we'll do a careful assessment to establish the root cause of your problem, and then decide how to restore your body's natural functioning. Give our office a call today at (314) 588-9100 to make an appointment.

We care for a large number of people in our North St. Louis, MO clinic, and Dr. Holland has helped many people overcome a wide array of health problems. Even so, a common worry that seems to prevent many people from seeking treatment is whether or not chiropractic care is safe. Fortunately, according to three separate studies (out of countless on the topic), the answer to this concern is a clear: "Yes! Chiropractic is safe!"

Chiropractic is Safe, According to Australian Study

The first research paper(1) was published in Spine and included 183 women and men. Each individual was affected by spine-related pain, and half of the individuals received real chiropractic adjustments while the remaining patients received two sham chiropractic treatment sessions. Information was gathered after each real or fake adjustment to discover if any unfavorable reactions occurred as a result of the actual chiropractic adjustments.

The doctors reported that no one documented any serious undesirable adverse reactions in any way after receiving one or two sessions of chiropractic. Some participants did report that they got a headache (just 9% of people) or muscle stiffness (37 percent) after treatment, but the results were not of a serious nature.

Nationwide Survey Reports that Chiropractic Care is Safe

A second study(2), also released in the influential journal, Spine, was performed in an effort to determine the safety of chiropractic care. The study group was much larger -- 20,000 individuals. Each participant received chiropractic adjustments of the cervical spine, with over 50,000 total adjustments for all study participants.

Again, the researchers found no serious negative side effects. The authors determined the risk of total side effects to be about six out of every 10,000 consultations or every 100,000 treatment sessions. Plus, just as with the first study, some participants did report non-serious, milder, side effects such as dizziness (16 out of every 1,000 treatment consultations and 15 out of every 1,000 treatment sessions) or a headache (4 out of every 100), and this caused the researchers to determine that "the risk of a serious adverse event, immediately or up to 7 days after treatment, was low to very low."

Chiropractic Is Safe for Your Children

The third study(3) is different from the previous two pieces of research, as it concentrates on the safety of chiropractic care for children. In this article, researchers analyzed data reported by both chiropractors and parents involving 816 children who participated in 7,173 chiropractic treatment sessions.

Out of 5,438 chiropractic visits made for the children, chiropractors responding to the survey reported only three cases where there were adverse side effects. When parents were questioned, they indicated only two adverse side effects out of 1,735 visits. Furthermore, both chiropractors and parents reported "a high rate of improvement with respect to the children's presenting complaints."

Based on studies like these, chiropractic care has been found to be safe and effective for everyone. To discover what chiropractic can do for you, call our North St. Louis, MO office and schedule an appointment today at (314) 588-9100.

References

1. Walker BF, Hebert JJ, Stomski NJ, Clarke BR, Bowden RS, Losco B, French SD. Outcomes of usual chiropractic. The OUCH randomized controlled trial of adverse events. Spine 2013;38(20):1723-9.
2. Thiel HW1, Bolton JE, Docherty S, Portlock JC. Safety of chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine: a prospective national survey. Spine 2007;32(21):2375-8.
3. Alcantara J, Ohm J, Kunz D. The safety and effectiveness of pediatric chiropractic: a survey of chiropractors and parents in a practice-based research network. Explore NY 2009;5(5): 290-5.

We treat a lot of people with back pain in our North St. Louis, MO office, and Dr. Holland has noticed that quite a few cases of back pain originate in the sacroiliac (SI) joint. Research has demonstrated that roughly one quarter of all back pain originates in the SI joint, and now fresh research ratifies what we have observed in our office: chiropractic is an effective method for treating this issue.

In the study released in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 32 women with sacroiliac joint dysfunction were split into two groups and asked to participate in one of two treatment methods. one group was given a chiropractic adjustment only at the sacroiliac joint, and the alternate group was given an adjustment to the sacroiliac joint as well as the lumbar spine.

Scientists found greater improvements in both pain and movement immediately following treatment, two days post-treatment, and 30 days later for the group who had been given high-velocity low-amplitude manipulation to both the sacroiliac joint and the lumbar spine. This demonstrates that chiropractic treatment applied to these two areas offers both prompt and lasting results for sacroiliac joint pain sufferers—even with just one treatment round.

Therefore, if you are having trouble with sacroiliac joint pain, or have back and leg pain and want to see if your sacroiliac joint is the source, a consultation at our North St. Louis, MO office could be the first—and best—step towards feeling better. Give our office a call today at (314) 588-9100.

Kamali F, Shokri E. The effect of two manipulative therapy techniques and their outcome in patients with sacroiliac joint syndrome. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies 2012;16(1):29-35.

With the Migraine Research Foundation reporting that migraines affect 38 million people in the United States (more than diabetes and asthma put together), it's no surprise that Dr. Holland sees a lot of headache patients in our North St. Louis, MO office. Although some people choose to relieve migraine pain with drugs, chiropractic is a great, all-natural approach that usually produces positive results.

For example, one report published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics involved 127 people ranging in age from 10 to 70-years-old who struggled with frequent (at least monthly) headaches. Each subject received up to 16 chiropractic sessions. The subjects noted that their headache frequency, duration, and disability two months before the study began, during the duration of the sessions (which was two months), and two months post-treatment.

What the investigators discovered is that chiropractic adjustments reduced the frequency, duration, and disability of the migraine headaches when compared with the control subjects who didn't receive chiropractic. Furthermore, this enabled them to take less medication for the pain, offering them an all-natural solution for a chronic problem.

Another article found that a combination of chiropractic and neck massage reduced migraine pain almost 68%.

If you have migraine pain and are looking for relief, call Dr. Holland today and request an appointment in our North St. Louis, MO chiropractic office. We'll do what we can to help you become pain-free!

Resources

Migraine Fact Sheet. Migraine Research Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.migraineresearchfoundation.org/fact-sheet.html on November 2, 2015
Noudeh Y et al. (2012). Reduction of current migraine headache pain following neck massage and spinal manipulation. International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork;5(1):5-13
Tuchin P et al. (2000, February). A randomized controlled trial of chiropractic spinal manipulative therapy for migraine. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics;23(2):91-5