Living A Full Life

The Path to Pain-Free Motion

• Full Life Chiropractic • Season 3 • Episode 11

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Unlock the secrets to preserving youthful energy and preventing sports injuries with insights from Dr. Enrico Dolcecore. Could the key to staying injury-free be more movement, not less? Discover how chiropractic care and physical therapy can transform your active lifestyle by enhancing biomechanics and joint alignment. From embracing the natural movement of our youth to the benefits of regular stretching and rest, this episode explores essential strategies for athletes at every level, offering a new perspective on injury prevention and recovery.

Join us as Dr. Dolcecore reveals the surprising power of continuous care and movement, especially for those dealing with leg swelling or chronic inflammation. Explore the holistic approach of chiropractic adjustments—not just for treating injuries but for optimizing overall body function and even the nervous system. With major sports leagues like the NFL and NHL integrating chiropractic care into their medical teams, we discuss how this approach is proving invaluable in reducing sports injuries and enhancing athlete longevity.

This episode also dives into practical applications of chiropractic treatment for common injuries, like shoulder impingement and hip misalignments, and how tailored care can maximize athletic performance. Dr. Dolcecore shares how specialized chiropractic assessments can be a game-changer for athletes in sports such as golf, tennis, and cycling. Learn essential tips for injury prevention, including maintaining flexibility, staying hydrated, and keeping the body in motion, ensuring that both athletes and non-athletes can thrive.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another podcast of Living a Full Life. I'm Dr Enrico Dolcecori. This week we're going through sports injuries and, more importantly, happening, and it's not just because we're getting old. I hear that all the time in my office when I'm helping patients. They're like I don't know what happened. I think I'm just getting old and I went to go play pickleball and hurt my shoulder or hurt my knee and there's really a reason for this.

Speaker 1:

We got to go back and think about when we were kids, growing up, we were doing handstands and cartwheels and flipping up and watching TV upside down on the couch on our heads. I don't know if you have kids that's what my kids do. They just constantly want to move. It's almost innate for them to just not sit still and if they do sit still for too long or sit around, they get agitated and irritated. They just are naturally made to move. If you've got boys, you know what I'm talking about. But even my three girls, they want to move. They naturally just want to move. So that's their young years and they become teenagers and social behavior becomes more of an important thing to them and they may slow down unless they're part of sports and they keep going and at that time they can even be more athletic than any other time, because now they're going to swim practice four times a week, they're going to baseball three times a week, they're playing hockey four times a week, whatever it is, they might be doing a lot of it during those years. So you got to go back and think about that. That may have been you growing up playing all the sports, doing all the things. Then you signed up for college. Maybe you played collegiate sports, maybe that's where it ended. That's where it stopped. Then you start. Maybe took on the gym in your 20s and then family, and then the gym stopped. So really it's not aging, it's that we stop and we slow down the constant movement. We were training ourselves four days a week, three hours each time at the gym, doing gymnastics or swim or dance or whatever it was. Then we're 28 years old and we're doing nothing. We're going to the gym whenever we get a chance to just try and pick heavy weights up and put them back down, which is okay, it's better than nothing. But our body starts to break down when we do that over time.

Speaker 1:

So chiropractic care or just any care let's just use the word care Caring for yourself is vital for any athlete at any age, especially young athletes. We take care. We take care of so many athletes in our office at a professional level as well NHL, nfl, mlb, all the way up to the to the top and there's something in common between the 14 year old high school football player to the 28 year old NHL hockey player. There's something uniquely the same. They are constantly training, they're constantly moving, and where things start to deteriorate is when we don't do the preventative stuff to help us, like stretching, resting, taking time and getting flexible. Those are the things that help prevent things, and that's what we're going to dive into in this podcast is all the things we can do.

Speaker 1:

Whether you're a weekend warrior or just don't want to say you're getting old, this podcast is for you. We're going to talk about how to prevent this stuff and how you know the role of chiropractic and how it's worked in sports over the years as well. It simply enhances biomechanics and aligns for optimal performance. That's really how it works. Chiropractors and physical therapists as well they're great at this as well are trained to look at every muscle in the body, so we know every muscle and every joints. Chiropractors come from mobility aspect, specifically each and every joint in the body, so making sure that the joints move properly. Physical therapists then take that motion into full performance and recovery, which move the entire mechanism of that so we may adjust the shoulder and the clavicle to restore proper motion in that joint. And a physical therapist or physical therapy in general which can be done in a chiropractor office as well goes through the range of motion and strengthening and stretching of that entire joint and all the muscles that work around it to help restore its proper function. That's what prevents injury.

Speaker 1:

We get injured because, aside from high performing athletes in professional sports that are going 20 miles an hour and hitting each other, that's, you know, that's a trauma. What we're talking about is why do I go to the gym, do my normal workouts and then one day my shoulder hurts me for like three weeks afterwards because I did something or I felt a pop or I felt something sting or something sharp in my elbow or my knee? Why does that happen? Because of range of motion, biomechanics that were slowly creeping up and becoming stiff. We hear this all the time oh, my hamstrings are tight, my calves are tight. These are signs that the joints are now going to be under more stress and more susceptible to injury from just even going for a slight jog. So we want to reduce the risk of overuse injuries and compensatory muscle movement patterns by keeping the joints and the muscles moving properly. That's the key to preventing injury, and chiropractic care helps accelerate recovery by improving circulation and reducing inflammation. That's what motion does so.

Speaker 1:

Whenever we have swelling or maybe edema in the legs, what's the best way to get that to come out of the legs? Movement. Keep walking, keep going up and down stairs, keep pumping the venous, return back to the heart to pump inflammation back. That's it. Movement's always the answer. It's never just sitting down and doing nothing. An acute injury you can rest it and ice it to help reduce inflammation in that moment. But chronic inflammation we got to keep the things moving. That's why adjustments work so well. So looking at this from a holistic athletic approach is that we focus on the whole body, not just the injury site.

Speaker 1:

So we have athletes that come in for regular maintenance chiropractic care. We have maintenance programs for families to come on in at a heavy discount so that's affordable for the whole family to do this stuff and they can come in twice a month or once a month. We recommend twice a month just because of how much they do each week. Sometimes they even come in weekly and they keep this up and it's that frequency of continuous care that prevents injury and keeps people well over time. You see these people with very minimal injuries over time and take care of them for years. They avoid a lot of things and if they do feel anything that may have been injured or roll an ankle or twist a wrist or anything happens, they're at the office within a few days to have it checked immediately. Anything happens, they're at the office within a few days to have it checked immediately. So they get immediate care which gets them the rehab and rehabilitation that they need immediately and gets them back to playing. That's how the value of continuous care works.

Speaker 1:

It's the only modality out there where you perpetually, continually see the chiropractor forever. Everyone else has these short, acute programs. Your medical doctor will just you know, if you call them hey say I'm doing well, can I come see you? They'll be like why? I don't, you know, unless it's a wellness check. They don't know what to do. And then same thing with all the other things I'm well, can I come see you? They'll be like yeah, we can do like a wellness assessment one time and you're good for a while, but they don't have any type of continuous wellness care. It's a very unique thing to chiropractic to have that constant care and that constant touch with your doctor all the time. That's where prevention works. That's where great healthcare works over time.

Speaker 1:

So when we're looking at it from an athletic perspective, it makes sense. People are moving, they're performing, they are agile, they are competing. It makes sense for them. But what about the rest of us, the working warriors as well? So it restores nervous system function as well, which maximizes coordination and reflexes. So there's tons of studies out there showing that people, athletes that get adjusted versus not. They have quicker reflex times, which is great for sports, especially team sports, where you're passing a ball or a puck or a football around. Reflexes play a huge role in martial arts as well, and it helps athletes adapt to training demands more effectively as well, so their body rests and recovers better than the ones.

Speaker 1:

Theb, nhl, nfl, each and every sports team has a chiropractor on the sidelines or on the bench or on the medical staff, across all platforms. This just happened recently, but the NFL has been doing it for decades. The MLB has had it for a long time. The NHL has had it for a long time. The NHL's had it for a long time, but now they are literally part of every medical team because of these studies that come out, showing the longevity and injury prevention by having chiropractors on staff to do this Very cool stuff.

Speaker 1:

So the common sports injuries that we see that chiropractic can prevent are number one overuse injuries, tendonitis, stress, fractures and shin splints. People get adjusted. This is one of the rarest things I see in our maintenance care patients. The patients that come in regularly Now regularly can be any frequency, whether they come in once a month, whether they come in three times a year for a checkup, whether they come in every week doesn't matter, but they have this routine. They're like I see the chiropractor six times a year. That's what they do. That's their routine. I see the chiropractor twice a month. That's their routine. It's that constant frequency that works for them. This is the least that I see tendonitis, stress, fractures and shin splints in those people. We do help people with this, but they're typically a new patient to the office. They're like listen, my elbow has been hurting me for like six weeks. It's not getting better. We diagnosed it it's tendonitis or they have a shin splint or they have a stress fracture in their foot that they didn't know about. We take an x-ray like, ooh, look at that, that's what happened three months ago, that's why you're not getting better. And then we can help those patients. But there very rarely are maintenance patients that come in and say, hey, I have a stress fracture in my foot. It doesn't happen with them very, very much. Even our triathletes, our Ironman, even them with constant chiropractic care, I don't see that. But I do see other things with them. We'll get into that in a second.

Speaker 1:

Joint issues. So shoulder impingement, acl sprains, hip misalignments this is probably one of the most common things we see and again, this is from building up of loss of range of motion in the shoulder and hip. Those are the two most dynamic joints in the body. They have 360 motion. It's pretty amazing joint which gives it a lot of room for things to go wrong once things get tight. Some people have really tight quadriceps and not so tight hamstrings or vice versa, and that can lead the hip to go into malposition and increases the risk of tendinosis, tendinitis of the hip. That's just one example.

Speaker 1:

Soft tissue strains. Now this happens more common where muscles get pulled, ligaments get strained, fascial restrictions, fascial adhesions this stuff happens. It can happen from going camping for two nights and sleeping on the wrong you know air ligaments get strained, fascial restrictions, fascial adhesions this stuff happens. It can happen from going camping for two nights and sleeping on the wrong air mattress or right on the ground for a couple of nights, not getting the neck support and kink or pull a muscle. Those muscle strains can happen. They're in on Monday morning. We address it quickly and they get better.

Speaker 1:

And spinal conditions as well. Probably the number one thing we see back pain, back muscle pain, herniated discs, strains and sciatica. These are probably the most common things that we see. Again, this is because of not doing the right thing sitting for too long, driving for too long and then all of a sudden deciding hey, I'm going to pull all the weeds today out of our yard and I haven't done this in three years and I'm going to go out there for two and a half hours and bend 477 times to pull weeds out of the ground and now you've got a sharp pain going down your right leg. It's not because you're herniated at this, it's because you've straightened the muscle, probably a QL or multifidi or something. That's the most common things we see and that's why we have the sports therapies in the office. As far as cold, laser therapy, decompression, active release therapy, graston all the soft tissue work that we do and chiropractic manipulation as well All of these things work together to help people restore function and reduce pain and inflammation as quickly as possible.

Speaker 1:

So injuries chiropractic can treat, and if you have friends or family and they experience any one of these, these are the best referrals to a good chiropractor. If you're in our area, you refer them to us. Neck injuries involving any type of whiplash, cervical strain or nerve impingement chiropractic care has the best longitudinal studies showing the fastest and most effective way of treating these conditions. So you will save these people so much time and effort by going straight to the chiropractor. They will get better within days, rather than going down the orthopedic route where they have to book an appointment, get in with the orthopedic and then now their only options are injections and pain blockers, which may not solve the issue with the pain or the underlying condition, but it can prolong the recovery of this because we're not getting any therapy on it. So that's number one.

Speaker 1:

Number two shoulder injuries rotator cuff injuries and frozen shoulder need to start immediately getting movement fast. And this is great with physical therapists as well, so you can refer to they have the longitudinal studies between chiropractic and physical therapy. Both show very neck and neck that fast recoveries can happen with this, because the shoulder just needs to start moving and strengthening as fast as possible. To help with those types of injuries Elbow and wrist issues, tennis elbow, golfer's elbow, carpal tunnel this is class four laser. Anyone that has one of these physical therapy chiropractic can help you with this immediately. It's the fastest way to reduce inflammation in these and then you can use some kt taping or some banding or just wrapping the joint and within days people get relief and within weeks they're back to playing tennis and golf and all that great stuff.

Speaker 1:

Lower body injuries like plantar fasciitis, knee pain, it band syndrome and ankle sprains Again, the quicker they get the referral to the chiropractor on this, the fastest recovery times are because of that. Hence why chiropractors are on the sidelines of all these medical staff for these sports teams. The medical team is there for fractures, tears, meniscus tears, tendon tears, achilles ruptures. I mean medical conditions that need to be evaluated right there, mri'd and then scheduled for surgery. That's the medical team's job is to diagnose major things. Everything else is like, okay, guys, go, you know, chiropractor, go, do it, go, help them out because it's not torn. How do we reduce the inflammation? How do we reduce the pain? How do we reduce, improve the motion of the joint immediately so that athlete can get back on the field right away. Same, you can treat yourself the same way. You may not need to get back on the field tomorrow morning, but you can come to the chiropractor, feel better by this week and then be back to pickleball next weekend by doing these things.

Speaker 1:

And the last one which shouldn't be overseen is concussions. This needs to be seen immediately. Concussion is a trauma to the head causing some type of brain injury. This needs to be seen right away. Most chiropractors are trained in neurology. They'll check the eyes, they'll do a quick assessment. If it looks like a concussion, they can refer out right away. Or ones with the training like functional neurology can actually start the treatment right there in the office for concussions. That's your best bet with any type of head trauma. Don't mess around with that. If there's serious symptoms after you know, passing out bloodshot eyes, a slurred speech, anything where you think it's big enough trauma. You need to go straight to the ER for that and get a CT scan of the head immediately and straight into neurology for that.

Speaker 1:

But other concussions that happen. You know, maybe you've had a big soccer game. It was a great game, you scored two goals, but you also had five headers big headers and you just have a headache after the game. That could be a slight concussion. It should be checked. Simply, adjustments and rest can help with that as well.

Speaker 1:

So those are the most common injuries that chiropractic treats that have the highest success rate. There's more because we can talk all day about all the possible injuries that are out there. I'm giving you the best ones that if you do refer a friend or family member because they have something like that like hey, mike, you got to go see the chiropractor for that, that's 100% success rate. They're going to get better fast by doing that and they're going to thank you for that. Other types of injuries may be a little bit more complicated and may not have that 100% success rate. I omitted them from the podcast because I want to make sure that your referrals go a long way and change people's lives.

Speaker 1:

So the behind the scenes of chiropractic is that what it's really doing is restoring and improving biomechanics. So it restores joint alignment for optimal movement and it reduces compensatory stress on muscles and ligaments. So that's what we're working on is the biomechanics of the body, making sure that they move better first. The secondary thing that happens, incidentally, with every chiropractic adjustment is it enhances nervous system function by removing the nerve interference, especially through the peripheral nervous system, the spine, the neck, the low back, the sacrum. When you start to remove the interference in those areas, you get to improve coordination, strength and reaction time because the nerves are free to do and function at optimal strength, which is great. It facilitates communication between the brain and body for faster recovery as well. So it also reduces recovery time because you're in the office right away getting therapy immediately. You reduce and decrease inflammation and enhance blood flow to injured areas and you support faster healing of micro tears and soft tissue damage. Because of the soft tissue work that's done there as well, you may get some active release or some almost like massage techniques on those sort of trigger points and muscles immediately. It goes a long way as far as recovery and then preventative maintenance, which is the majority of how our practice works.

Speaker 1:

Regular adjustments ensure the spine and joints are functioning properly. They prevent chronic issues from developing due to repetitive stresses. And then it supports mental focus. And then it supports mental focus, believe it or not, when you reduce the spinal inflammation and you reduce the hyper tone in the body, in the nervous system, and it goes back to that normal, optimal tone. It promotes relaxation and reduces stress through nervous system balance, called homeostasis in the nervous system. And once you get that nice balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic, you get faster recovery times and ease of the body function.

Speaker 1:

So the benefits for specific types of athletes comes from high impact sports. We've talked about a bunch of them football, hockey, soccer, rugby. Preventing spinal compression and joint misalignments from physical collisions happens with good spinal motion, believe it or not. The better the spinal joints move, the better they can embrace impact Endurance sports like running and cycling, by getting regular care, improves joint mobility and reduces repetitive motion and stress in all the joints. And like precision sports like tennis or golf, you can optimize body mechanics for controlled and powerful movements.

Speaker 1:

Some chiropractors are specific in golf swings, in tennis swings. They've mastered this. I know a guy volleyball, cycling. They're specific. They will videotape you on a bike, see your motion for like five minutes, how you pedal slowly, how you pedal fast, all the movements of the knee, hip, ankle, low back. Uh, it can get so specific.

Speaker 1:

When you find these mechanical specialists that are out there too, and then youth and collegiate athletes, you know, supporting the growing bodies is just our bread and butter. This is what we do very well in our office, especially for kids is just supporting their growth and their neural tone so that they stay out of trouble physically and both mentally too. They stay out of trouble. They have better clarity in everything that's going on through there. So chiropractic prevents and treats a wide range of sports injuries. When we wrap this all up today, regular adjustments are key to maintaining peak performance and avoiding downtime. Regular adjustments are key to maintaining peak performance and avoiding downtime. This is just a great call to action podcast for you so that you have a greater understanding on how to refer and who to refer and how quickly they can actually get in.

Speaker 1:

Chiropractors are quite available health care facilities because of the way they structure their schedules. They're there longer hours. They usually have multidisciplinary people on staff like our office, we've got a bunch of doctors who are always available. We can almost get people in the same day, definitely tomorrow, but that's how fast we can get people is within 24 hours. That's access to healthcare. That's access to those things that chiropractic can help. So I hope this was educational to help you stay well and stay healthy and prevent injury by keeping your body moving, staying as flexible as you possibly can and hydrated. That is probably the three major things to preventing any types of muscle skeletal injuries that can happen as far as overuse, tendonitis, tendinopathies and stress Stress injuries that happen on the muscles and tendons so that's the best things. And stress injuries that happen on the muscles and tendons so that's the best things. And then, of course, all of our other podcasts are very much nutrition and all the other great topics and health and wellness. Stay well, stay healthy.

People on this episode

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Dr. Enrico Dolcecore

Host
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Dr. Christine Hafer

Co-host
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Dr. Crystal Corona

Co-host