Thursday, December 20, 2012

 
Elk Valley Family Chiropractic
 is pleased to Welcome Sheryl Hancher to our team.



Sheryl is originally from Calgary and has been living in Fernie now for 13 years.  It was the fishing and skiing that attracted her to the valley and like many, it is now her home!
Sheryl has seen a chiropractor since she was 4 years old and now working with Dr. Mike & Karen and looking forward to meeting everyone as they come in to get adjusted.
  When you meet Sheryl ask her about food texture.  So interesting.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Blown Ankle No More!


Blown Ankle No More

Over 25 years ago I experienced a particularly horrendous (& hideous) injury: while playing soccer, I was slide-tackled with all the force directed toward my cleated and firmly planted foot.  The result of this was an eversion sprain (rolled inwards, rather than the more common inversion ankle rolling outwards injury), tearing all the ligaments on the inside of my ankle so badly I had to be casted for 8 weeks.  Nasty, nasty, nasty…


This “bad” ankle has plagued me for years.  I have had an incredible amount of therapy on it consisting of chiropractic, physio, and massage which have helped it immensely but never fully restored its full balanced function.  Conventional dogma and traditional teaching led me to believe that because the ligamentous injury had been so severe it would never be fully healed and would always need to be just managed so as to avoid degenerative changes and related secondary injury to joints related to it (ie the knee, hip, SI-joint and upper neck).  Because I am a Chiropractor and believe absolutely in the incredible ability of the body to self-heal, I never was fully content with just managing my “bad” ankle…

 Along the way, I became interested in the bodies biomechanics: its overall ability to move, function and maintain proper posture.  In 2007 I invested in a very cool technology in my office to asses gait (the position and movement of the feet related to standing and walking).  Basically, a person both stands then walks across a very sensitive sensor pad that sends a lot of information to a computer which analyses gait patterns and weight distribution.  This allows me to interpret imbalances in the gait pattern.  If necessary and appropriate I can then send this information and other measurements to a laboratory in Toronto to manufacture state of the art orthotics based on dynamic motion (rather than a more dated approach of estimating an ankles proper position without considering gravity).  A picture of my gaitscan results are below (Figure 1) showing the pronation (rolling in) of my one ankle.  I did, for a 2 year period, wear orthotics to help accommodate this imbalance which did help the symptoms.  Repeat gaitscans did reveal the same degree of pronation, therefore, the problem was not being corrected, just managed.

 Then I read the book ‘Born To Run’ in 2009 and my mind was blown.  This book exposed concepts to me that in all my years of research I had never been exposed to.  Essentially, the book describes our design as humans to allow us to run, which we traditionally have done either bare-footed or with minimal footwear.  It also showed how most current footwear is weakening the muscles, ligaments and tendons in our feet causing pronation and injury.  The proposed solution was to return to running barefoot or with minimalist shoes to restore strength and function to the feet.  WOW….this blew my mind – I went for it!

I have been running with Vibram Five Fingers for 4 seasons and now wear them daily in my office while working (this raises both eyebrows and awareness!).  Recently we have hired a new Team member in our office and are training on all our procedures; as part of this we repeated my gaitscan last week.  The results AMAZED me (see Figure 2 below): my gait patterns were fully restored, perfectly balanced and completely healed!!!  This has shown me the power of the body to fully heal given the right conditions.  It also gives me the confidence, in spite of what much of the medical, physio, orthotic and corporate shoe communities are saying, to encourage everyone to take this approach.  Yes, injuries can occur, but it is a process that needs to be approached gradually over a long period of time similar to chiropractic corrective care – it will take at least a year, likely more, of slowly increasing micro-changes.

This is critical to address and vital to health because of the nervous system.  Any joint in the body has position sensors in it called proprioceptors.  Just as the motion of your car turns the alternator which charges the cars battery, the motion of any joint in the body stimulates these proprioceptors which literally charge your brain.  This increases brain energy and function: Movement is Life!  The highest concentration of proprioceptors occurs in four joints: the ankle, the SI-joints, the upper neck vertebrae, and the jaw.  Therefore, movement of these joints is critical to proper brain function and is also why stretching, exercise and a specific Chiropractic adjustment of these joints will improve your brain activity: Chiropractic is not about pain, it is about your brain!


So, get moving people!  Get into your Chiropractor to get checked for subluxations of these critical joints and have their motion restored through a specific adjustment.  Get out to our “Barefoot Running Workshop” to learn more (check www.elkvalleychiropractic.com for schedule)…kick it into action and get your brain ENERGISED!!!
2009

2012