chiropractor Archives - Center for Holistic Medicine

Did you know that according to a recent Gallup poll, one in four Americans sought care for neck and back pain in 2018 alone? Yet despite the fact that many Americans are suffering from pain, there are still many who are reluctant to seek out help from a chiropractor.

And that’s really too bad, because according to Dr. Mitchell Katz, DC, a chiropractor who served as the official chiropractor for the Chicago Bears from 1991 to 2004 and now serves as a chiropractor at the Center for Holistic Medicine, many people have misconceptions about chiropractic care and are simply unaware of how it can help.

“Not only are chiropractors licensed, credited medical professionals who study at four-year schools and have to undergo extensive training to treat patients, but they also are often able to help people live pain-free without undergoing surgery or taking pain medication,” Dr. Katz explains. “What could be better than that?”

Here are five of the most common misconceptions that Dr. Katz often hears people say about chiropractic care:

Myth #1: Pain Is Inevitable As You Get Older
If you’re avoiding going to the chiropractor because you believe that being in pain is just a natural part of aging, Dr. Katz says you should think again. “There are plenty of people who age gracefully and are doing great,” he says.

He says back pain, neck pain and other muscoskeletal problems may be influenced by a variety of factors such as genetics, repetitive behaviors, lifestyle habits and more. And often, chiropractic care can either help rectify a situation completely or can help reduce pain significantly.

Myth #2: Once You Start Seeing a Chiropractor, You Have to Go Forever
Although there are some unscrupulous chiropractors who tell patients they need to see a chiropractor forever, Dr. Katz says most honest chiropractors will only have you continue treatment as long as necessary to alleviate your pain. He says for many patients, he is able to reduce or eliminate their pain over the course of several weeks, and there are others where he gives them exercises that they can do at home to keep their pain from returning. “But there are some patients that have pain because they have strenuous jobs, repeating behaviors and/or an underlying condition and may need maintenance care. This is a case by case decision,” he explains.

Katz says it’s important to note that insurance will only cover treatment that is designed to alleviate active pain, not ongoing maintenance, so once your immediate pain has been resolved, you cannot bill insurance for additional treatment.

Myth #3: Chiropractic Adjustments Are Painful
“Adjustments are not meant to be painful,” Dr. Katz says. He says is an area is too injured to work on, he may have to work on the areas surrounding the problem area first, in order to address the injured spot in a less painful way.

Myth #4: Arthritis Always Causes Pain
As we age, it becomes more and more likely that we will wear down the cartilage between our joints, so the space between our joints becomes less than it was before. This process is called degenerative joint disease — commonly referred to as osteoarthritis. But just because the space between our joints gets smaller doesn’t necessarily mean that we will have pain. He says the pain, instead, results from other related factors, such as when a bone is pressing on a nerve.

Osteoarthritis advances in stages. People tend to feel the most pain when it’s in the middle stages, as joint loses height and thus becomes less stable and the bone begins to rub on bone. But in the most advanced stages, your joints become more stable, too stable and may fuse together, which reduces your mobility and range of motion, but also eliminates the pain. So it’s the joints that still have a lot of range of motion and are just beginning to lose cartilage that can be the most painful. “The irony is that joints that are typically the most painful are the ones that are the least arthritic,” Katz explains.

Myth #5: Back Pain Starts in Your Back
Did you know that your lower back pain or hip pain may actually have more to do with your feet than your back? Dr. Katz says often, people start to lose the arches in their feet, which causes their hips to be out of alignment and that, in turn, causes undo stress on their lower back. “When one foot is more collapsed than the other, it pulls everything down on that side,” he says.

When Dr. Katz first evaluates a patient, he always examines their feet and arches first to determine if they may be the source of the problem. “You wouldn’t believe the number of people who are practically walking on their ankles,” he says.

Dr. Katz says he recently saw a patient who has so much degenerative problems in his spine that there was no way for Dr. Katz to adjust him. But after examining his body, Dr. Katz realized that much of the patient’s pain was actually being caused by a misalignment of his hips due to his fallen arches. “We’re making him a pair of orthotics that I will make his hips line up and reduce lower back stress thereby lessening his pain,” he says.

Curious about how a chiropractor could help you? Contact Dr. Katz to schedule an appointment today!

Have you ever been stressed about going on a job interview and felt butterflies in your stomach? Or felt so worried about relationship problems or financial fears that you start to feel nauseous?

It’s no secret that our mental health can have a direct impact on our physical health, yet many people don’t realize just how much anxiety and stress can make our physical pain even worse.

“Stress, fear and anxiety definitely have an impact on someone’s physical health,” says Dr. Mitchell Katz, a chiropractor at the Center for Holistic Medicine. “Stress is that hidden factor that sometimes is difficult to identify but is always lurking in the shadows.”

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, people with anxiety often also suffer from chronic pain disorders, such as fibromyalgia, migraines, back pain, and arthritis.

And a 2008 study published in the journal Depression and Anxiety said that patients who complained of muscle pain, headache or stomach pain were 2.5 to 10 times more likely to screen positively for generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder or major depression disorder.

But why, exactly, does stress and anxiety lead to physical pain?

The reason is two-fold: muscle tension and hormones.

According to the American Institute of Stress, when we are stressed, our muscles tense up, causing tension headaches and migraines as well as pain in the neck, back and shoulders.

Stress and anxiety also triggers our hormones to have a stress response, causing them to pump more adrenaline and cortisol into our blood stream. And this leads to inflammation, which has been linked to everything from irritable bowel syndrome to increased risk of heart attacks, strokes, fibromyalgia, arthritis and more.

Sometimes, having physical pain can actually be the cause of people’s anxiety as well, especially when they’re worried about how bad the pain will be, how long it will last and how much it may cost them in medical bills.

That’s one of the reasons Dr. Katz says he always tries to be positive with his patients and focus on how they will be able to get better, rather than amping up their fear.

“Doctors can create anxiety in a patient without even realizing it,” he says.

For example, Dr. Katz says he remembers one time when a teenage girl came into his office who had been told she had a bad case of scoliosis. “She came in hunched over with her shoulders rounded. Her body language basically screamed, ‘I have scoliosis. I’m ruined,’” he said.

Dr. Katz examined her spine, and then said, “I gotta tell you, just looking at you visually, whatever the degree of curvature you might have, I suspect that the x-rays will show it to be extremely minor.”

As soon as she heard the good news, it seemed like her pain miraculously disappeared, all because she wasn’t filled with anxiety anymore. “She left the office a completely different person,” he said.

That’s what made Katz realize how powerful an affect fears can have on our bodies.

“The mind is a very powerful instrument and it can be very helpful and it can be very problematic,” he says.

Want to relieve your pain by reducing your anxiety? Here are a few things to try:

Deep Breathing
Learning how to breathe deeply from your diaphragm and how to slowly and methodically count your inhales and exhales is a wonderful way of calming the body and reducing stress. Try breathing in for four and breathing out for a count of four, repeating until you feel very relaxed.
Mindfulness Meditation
Meditation is free, easy to do and you can do it pretty much anywhere, so there’s no excuse not to try it. Simply sit upright on a chair and set your timer for a few minutes. Try to empty your mind of its normal worry and chatter and instead focus on what is going on in the present moment – the sound of a car going by, the sound of the air conditioner, the feeling of your feet on the ground.
Yoga
Stretching doesn’t just feel good – it is beneficial, too. Stretching helps increase blood flow throughout the body and can help release toxins and reduce inflammation that may be causing pain. Read more about the benefits of yoga.
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
To do this technique, focus on one part of your body and try to squeeze it as much as you can. Then release it until it is fully relaxed. Then repeat with all of the other parts of your body until you feel completely relaxed.
Schedule an Appointment with a Therapist
Often, our worries can loom large in our heads, but when we share them with others, we can get a new perspective and feel less anxiety. Talking with a therapist one-on-one is a great way of feeling more grounded and can help relieve both physical and mental pain.

Tag: chiropractor

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