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Choosing To Live A Healthier Life


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Choosing To Live A Healthier Life

A few years ago, I realized that I needed to get healthy for my kids. I weighed around three hundred pounds, and it was really difficult for me to get around comfortably. I was even having problems with things like sleeping and driving, which is why I shifted my focus to a healthier lifestyle. I started eating right and exercising daily, and I quickly realized that my life was improving day after day. One day, after losing about a hundred pounds, I realized that I could run faster than I had ever been able to before. This blog is all about choosing to live a healthier life and doing it with style.

Chiropractic Care And Adolescents: Making The Case For Regular Care

Many adults understand the benefits of chiropractic care as it relates to the relief of back pain. Sedentary lifestyles and stressful work environments often cause adults to experience chronic pain, so it's no surprise that approximately 18 million adults receive chiropractic care in a typical year. However, the number of children who receive a similar level of care is much lower. 

This is a critical oversight. Children can benefit from chiropractic care in many of the same ways as adults. On top of that, there are a number of circumstances unique to adolescent children that make regular chiropractic adjustments critical to their health and well-being. It's important, then, that parents understand the factors unique to adolescence that make chiropractic care so important.

Factor #1--School

Even in progressive, active schools, children are required to sit for prolonged periods of time. While it's true that children tend to be flexible and resilient, they are also subjected to classrooms that aren't built to their unique specifications. Since children in the same classroom can have major differences in age, height, and weight, there's no feasible way to have desks and chairs that are suited to everyone.

Also, backpacks that are loaded down with textbooks, projects, and other items cause chronic problems with a student's back and spine. Even though most backpacks are made with two shoulder straps, it's common for students to sling them over an individual shoulder--exacerbating imbalances and pressure on the spine.

The result of these factors is back pain. Regular chiropractic adjustments can help mitigate the effects of these factors, leading to a happy, pain-free school experience for your child. This will allow them to have the best chance at success in the important work of learning.

Factor #2--Growth Spurts

Everyone who's had a teenager can attest to the existence of growth spurts. These events occur at some point during puberty for most children, causing them to grow as much as nine centimeters in a single year. Along with this increase in height, children typically experience weight gain as well.

With all of these changes in posture, it's possible for a child's spine to experience misalignments. These inconsistencies can cause pain and reduced nervous system functioning. They're also the type of problems that chiropractic adjustments are perfectly suited to remedy. With regular adjustments, you can be sure that your child will navigate the physical changes of puberty with a minimum of discomfort.

Factor #3--Sports

Families with athletic children are likely well aware of the injuries and soreness that goes along with competition. Also, in most school settings, every student is required to take physical education courses. This ensures that your child gets important exercise on a regular basis and helps keep their mind focused when they're attending to lessons in the classroom. 

For children who are used to sporting activity, the motions of running, throwing, and jumping are not a problem. For the untrained children, though, these movements can create minor injuries rather easily. Strains and sprains, which are injuries to the muscle and ligament tissue in our bodies, are common among skeletally immature children--particularly those who don't often play sports.

Chiropractic care helps keep the body in alignment. When a child's body is working as intended, the risk of sprains and strains goes down significantly. Furthermore, if an injury still presents itself, adjustments help with the pain that comes from the body compensating for the injury. They will weather any injuries more effectively and bounce back to full strength quicker as well.

Don't fall into the trap of thinking that chiropractic care is solely for adults. Children experience many of the same environmental stressors as adults do, and their unique experiences with both school and puberty make them benefit greatly from regular chiropractic adjustment. For more information, talk with a chiropractor in your area.