Gimmicks and other Spinal Products

Ask the Chiropractor- There are so many gimmicks and products online about your spine.  How does one know the good ones vs the bad ones-  #healthy815

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Good morning and welcome to another addition of"Ask the Chiropractor." I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus, chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a third generation chiropractor, proud graduate of Palmer Chiropractic of college. A (laughs) college of Chiropractic, excuse me. Um, so today I'm coming at you and you always use little episodes of "Ask the chiropractor." So, ask the chiropractor. You go out and you see cool stuff, you go out and you wanna ask a chiropractor about it. Or maybe you have a question about whether or not you are a chiropractic case or what's going on with a family or loved one is a chiropractic case. And all too often, when you see chiropractic in the news, they'll tell you about a chiropractic story, then they'll tell you before you go with a chiropractor, always check with your family doctor first. And I'm here because your family doctor doesn't really understand chiropractic or what's going on with a chiropractor. So when you have a question about your teeth, you ask a dentist. When you have a question about your feet, you ask a podiatrist. When you have a question about chiropractic, you ask the chiropractor. And so we do this little segment where people ask us questions. And today I was emailed a video of another little spinal, I call 'em gimmicks that people use to help their backs. And then you see these advertising all the time, and it's always, I was a chiropractor and I decided to put my myself out of business by inventing this gizmo, or this gizmo here is gonna destroy my profession. And this is why chiropractors don't like me and this and that. And um, I believe they're probably outta business'cause I know as a practicing chiropractor, I have no time to develop stuff like this. Um but, some of these, some of these are okay. Some of these are good as far as um, a good stretch or a good thing to do in between chiropractic visits. And then some of these are just straight up goofy. Um, for those of you who don't know, we have a TikTok page and I go on there and I critique different things I see, that people claim are chiropractic and whether they're chiropractic or not so, if you're ever looking for that, just look up Hulsebus Rockford, you'll see our TikTok page. But let's talk about some of these. The first one that was asked of me is about this giant wheel. You'll see these wheels are about 12 inches tall and they're hollow on the inside. And you'll see the people like took a yoga mat and they'll lay on 'em or they're looking up at the sky and they'll roll up and down on their back. And they'll hear little cracks and pops. And you know, they tell me, oh, this, this is invented by a chiropractor, it's the best spinal exercise ever. And um, I gotta, I gotta tell you, this is a lot like I tell about popping your own back. When you come in the chiropractor we lay you face down and we have you arch your back in certain ways on our chiropractic table because we wanna open the joints up. Like I told you about before when people criss-cross their arms and pick 'em up a bounce'em to make your spines pop. That's the exact opposite of the posture that we see people with. So what I see this posture, this wheel that people are laying on rolling back and forth across that, their whole thoracic spine, where your ribs are, they're doing at the wrong angle. They're pushing at it wrong. And uh, so I, I I can't endorse this product myself because of the angle. Now I imagine when you roll on it and you hear those little pops, whenever you little pop like that, there's an endorphin release. So things temporarily feel good. But I always remind people, uh, you know, good chocolate milkshake, makes you feel pretty good while you're eating it, but doesn't mean it's good for you. So when they're rolling up and down on these things, I, I don't find that they're that good for you because of the posture part of it. And again, they get those little endorphin releases cause they hear that. And what you find out is they, they keep going back and using this over and over and over again because they want that endorphin release again. Um, and all they're really doing is when you're making one or two, like "pop" extra, what you're finding out is that there's one in between us getting more and more stuck, more and more fixated. Cause you can't really release the fixated vertebrae by rolling on it with the wrong posture and the wrong angles. So I'm, I'm probably not a big fan of the wheel thing cause of the, the force thing. The other one I'm not a big fan of is I'm, I'm a huge, fan of posture, right? Posture's huge. Here in the clinic, we don't talk so much about neck exercises like we do posture for the shoulder and how much that changes and influences your neck posture. And then we talk about your hip exercises and hip strength and what that does for your lower back posture. So I'm really, really big on posture but they have these posture straps that people put on and they're forcing them into good posture. Um, the problem is like, what you have with those is that, even though I love the posture part of it, people will wear these posture straps all day long. And then when they go to take 'em off the muscle tone's not there to hold it in place. It's kind of like, I always talk about if you break your arm and you put it in a cast, when you take the cast off your arm's not stronger it's actually weaker cause the cast has been doing all the work. And I know 20, 30 years ago there used to be a lot of people with scoliosis. They used to put 'em in these full body harnesses to wear these things in order to help their scoliosis, and they took a off and just turned into mush because the musculature never really developed because the brace was always there. So these big posture straps, I'm not a big fan of at all. Now there are these other things that are also sold. They're like posture... I call 'em like plastic wedges. They um, people lay on 'em and they put 'em at different spots in their spine and they help get the curves back. Now these I do like, because this is actually the active treatment that you're actually doing to yourself. And what you really should do is go in and talk to your chiropractor and they can actually help you place those on your spine at the most beneficial spots for you. So these ones I, I do like I, I like these a lot. There's better ones and worse ones but not doing them is, is not a good idea. You know, if you have one it's better than doing nothing. So if you have one of these little posture wedges they're usually like foam rubbers bring 'em into your chiropractor, let the chiropractor see 'em, compare 'em to your x-rays. And they'll find a really good spot for them. And that'll actually give you some benefit. And again, they're not gonna replace your chiropractor. Cause if it's misaligned and fixated, you gotta get it fixed, only a chiropractor is trained to do that, but they can definitely make you go longer in between visits. They can definitely improve your posture. And if you improve your posture, you decrease the stress. If you decrease the stress, you make your spine more functional and you have less problems. So I'm a fan of these little plastic wedges that I see. Next one we get asked about all the time um, and I'm not against these. They're called an inversion table. You'll see that you hang on an angle with your head down towards the ground and they'll kinda um, pull on you as, as gravity works. Right? And, and I, I think an inversion table is a great stretch in between visits. It's a good way to make your visit's stretch out longer too part of the fun there. But um, if you wanna spread out your visits more and you wanna do more positive things to keep yourself healthy. You see a lot of times... I was given the example one time by Dr Chestnut, he said, you put a backpack on and when you do something that's not healthy you make a bad choice health wise. You put a rock in your backpack. So having one cigarette probably isn't gonna give me lung cancer, but smoking for 20 years will. So every time I take a cigarette I put a pebble in my backpack. And the one, one or two pebbles didn't really hurt me. But after 20 years of putting pebbles in that backpack, it's a real problem. So this inversion table is a way to like, take some of those pebbles out to the gate, some of the bad. So I'm a big fan of inversion tables. But again, I would talk to your chiropractor because sometimes we put little pillows underneath people's lower backs depending on how the aversion table looks. Or we might put a, a, like a noodle, a pool noodle that you get from the swimming pools underneath your neck. So when you're laying on there, you address your posture too. Cause you know, everything we wanna do, we all talk about posture. So chiropractor, a lot of times can make this inversion table even better. So if you have one of these make sure you discuss it with your chiropractor who can probably find good ways to make it better. But yeah, I am a fan of inversion tables. There's definitely ways to do it better. Um, another one that we see is something that's gotten popular, especially on TikTok, is I know when I as a kid I used to watch these TV shows at movies and the car would get rear-ended, and some shady lawyer would jump out of the car with their full power, put around your neck and about how they're gonna sue and make this money. So nowadays, when I see these, these things they put on your neck and they inflate it. They, they um, they try to traction your neck out like that. And you know what? Um, that probably feels really good when you have a really acute neck and you can't turn your head and everything you do hurts. I think that's probably a decent product for that. But that's not something I want to use every night. I don't want to, I don't wanna use it all the time because again, like we talked about the posture braces. You're not gonna rebuild those joints and those musculature wearing, wearing an orthotic every time to help you all the time. So even though it probably feels good to wear for a little while and it would probably feel really really good when you hurt. Cause if you're a patient of mine, you can't turn your head and you're in so much neck pain. I often tell you to go over to Walgreens or CVS and get one of those little neck collars that you can have and sleep in it. I don't tell you to wear all 24/7. I just tell you to wear it when you're so miserable at two o'clock in the morning and you can't sleep, you put that on. It gives you some relief. Um, it doesn't fix anything. Just gives you some relief. So the idea of putting one of these inflatable collars on your neck every night to like sleep in or to watch TV and you probably have a really, if you have to do this, you probably have a really bad underlying condition that really needs to get checked. So if you're, if you're finding that you're using one of these all the time, you need to get in to see somebody because you really have a bad neck problem, and uh, you don't wanna see the arthritis grow on the cervical spine and neck, cause arthritis is permanent. So if you're, if you're one of these people who's using these all the time you get seen right away. So. I hope I answered your questions. Um, I hope I went through things. Other thing too, I wanna talk about too is one more last product Dr Davis brought to my attention. There are these things now, where people are laying on the ground and they're actually throwing themselves up against it, trying to get their back to pop. I knew a guy who had did a lot of research on this, a guy I really respect. Um, his name was Dr. Bob, also known as my grandfather. You see, my grandfather had a problem that he opened up practice in 1949 in Byron, Illinois. And there were no other chiropractors around. So he would tell you, hey, make sure you get your spine adjusted from time to time for wellness visits. And of course there's always that one old guy, you guys all know an old guy, just like this old guy. You look at him and say, well Dr. Bob, where do you go? If it's so important to get adjusted all the time. Who adjusts your spine? There's always that one smart Alec, the old guy looks at him and says that to him. So then my grandfather wanted to get adjusted, right? He knew how important it was. And his biggest struggle was finding out a way to adjust himself. So he actually took his x-rays and he put little blocks on the wall and he measured of it, put 'em all there. And he's trying to lean back and throw himself against his blocks. I asked my dad, if it ever worked, he said, no, it got your gramp in a really bad mood and put some holes in the wall, it never worked. Um, so, you know, I, I, that's not something that works. It's not something that, that does or changes. You know, when we adjust you, we don't just push. We do torque, we do different line of drives, different angles, um, and you really, really have a chance to really hurt yourself doing that. And this is another example where somebody does one of these things and they hurt themselves doing it. And they go in and hear the report, how a chiropractor hurt somebody, a chiropractor hurt somebody? And all was, was some guy trying to invent his own chiropractic machine, hurt himself and the chiropractor was never involved. But yet somehow or another our profession almost gets the blame. Um, so yeah. So if you have a question about a product or an event or something like that you see on the internet or something, you see a friend use or recommend you know, run it by your chiropractor. They'll tell you the pros and the cons. I hope this helped to give you some of the pros and the cons of stuff I've seen and learned about. Uh, there's a, I mean, I know, since I go to internet now, now that we talked about it, right, I'm gonna see all kinds of ads for stuff. And, and maybe I should always do a part two a week later after all the ads pop up uh, of stuff I haven't even seen yet. But if you have a question about something like that just bring it in, ask your chiropractor, ask 'em is this good or bad? Um, if you're not sure, you know, if you go to one of these things where you see chiropractor out talking to people at a marketing event or something like that that's a great question to go up and ask a chiropractor at one of these events. Um, you can always take a picture of it, email it to me. You know, you can go right to my website Rockforddc.com R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com You can always uh, leave a message below or leave a link below and I'll see it. This is on every media that you can think of, that I can think of, Um, other than that, have a great, great day. And if you have a question, remember always ask the chiropractor. Talk to you real soon.