Pregnancy and chiropractic!

Posted on by Valerie Lavigne

Hi everyone

It has been a long time since I wrote! I am not ignoring you guys but as most of you know I am busy working on my master. Since the last post, I have been back to England and came back with lots of ideas and work to do!! I am really back at school!!

I wanted to talk about pregnancy a little bit because lately I have had a number of pregnant patients come through the office. All have little  different aches and pain at various stages of pregnancy. Pregnancy brings many changes to your body physically and emotionally! It is a vey special time for  a women even if it is not the first pregnancy! The first thing I would like to mention is that moms should not think that because you are pregnant it is normal to have pain!! It is never normal to have pain !!!Chiropractic is a very safe and effective method of helping mothers with back pain during pregnancy.

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Another trip to England!!

Posted on by Valerie Lavigne

Hi everybody!!

Some of  you know that I have decided to enrol in a Master program. I attended one seminar in the fall and now I am back for another one. In 2012, I will be visiting the UK quite  a few times! It is such a nice spot so makes it easier to want to come to school!

This trip started with a little bit of stress because mother nature decided to send us a nice snow storm the one day I was suppose to fly out. The plane left  one hour and half  later then planned which meant that we landed and I only had about 45 minutes to go through customs and run the long corridor to the bus station. The best idea i had was that I managed to pack everything in a carry on! I  grabbed it in my arms and ran to the bus. I made it by 2 minutes when I sat down and looked at the clock it was 9h13 ouf it was scheduled to go at 9h15am!!!

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Posted on by Valerie Lavigne

Hi Everybody

I have just finished my last patient, I am now on holidays! Time sure seems to be going by so fast!! Hard to believe we are already there; a few days before Christmas! Lots of  people are still in the process of finalizing all their gifts.  So how are you doing? Are you a last minute shopper or everything is done and ready for Christmas?

I wanted to take the time to wish all my patients a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!  I also wanted to thank you for the confidence you have in my care! It is always a pleasure to see you and help you in my clinic!  I hope that you will have some time to relax and rest a little during this crazy time of year and enjoy time with your family! I sure will take a week with my family. I love seeing my kids face light up with the magic of Christmas. My family is really hoping for some snow so that we can ski and enjoy the fresh air of winter during that week off. What activities do you have planned for your family during the holidays?

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Great Research on the chiropractic Adjustment!

Posted on by Valerie Lavigne

Hi everybody

I was reading a chiropractic report and came across some interesting research that I thought would be worth sharing with you. The public in general is not aware of the research that is being done in chiropractic actually some people do not even think that chiropractic has any research!! When I am at conferences I am always impressed with all the amazing research that is actually being done in the field and wish some people from other fields would be there to listen!

One big name in our field is Dr.Greg Kawchuk Dc Phd. He is working with a multi-disciplicary team of prominent physical therapist and chiropractors from the US and Canada and they have been researching the Mechanisms of action of Manipulation in LBP patients. Here are the interesting facts of this research.  They wanted to  try  to explain some clinical results that we see when we use manipulation. They wanted to show the decrease in global stiffness and also show that a muscle called lumbar multifidus gets better recruitment. I will put the reference lower so if anybody is interested in learning exactly how they did it they will be able to find the article but for my blog I will simply go to the results section. The results did show that following manipulation “there is an immediate global stiffness change and enhancement of the multifidus recruitment”.  They also observed that manipulation may be superior to mobilization in reducing spinal stiffness. That is so exciting and would explain why some patients who don’t  get results with other therapies that mainly use mobilization suddenly start to get better after we start  using manipulation.  Therefore that  thrust or that little more force done quickly usually makes the difference in patients and they start to feel much better. Finally research that confirms what I had been saying and thinking all along!!!

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New mothers and sleeping!

Posted on by Valerie Lavigne

Hi everyone

I had not had much time to write since I have been back from my trip but today I wanted to touch on sleep when you are a new mother.  I had a long discussion at the clinic with a mother regarding sleep. This poor mom was so tired and exhausted she did not know what to do! This is a very sensitive subject for people. Is your baby sleeping through the night? Do you let your baby cry it out ? So many books have been written on the subject as well!

What is interesting is that one of the latest research actually says that moms that are exclusively breastfeeding actually have more sleep then non-breastfeeding mothers.  We had been saying this for a long time!  Mothers that are breastfeeding benefit from all the physiological aspects if breastfeeding. The hormones usually help you feel more rested! You can actually go read the explanation of this study if you are curious using this link: http://www.scienceandsensibility.org/?p=3618

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