fort collins chiropractor

All About Sleep: How to get to sleep and STAY asleep

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Sleep is essential to your health. Sleep plays an important role in your body’s healing process. It helps support brain function, keeps your emotions under control, and reduces the risk of disease, to name a few of the many ways sleep contributes to your health. Sleep recharges our bodies and gets us ready for the day ahead. It keeps our minds sharp, and it promotes physical and emotional health. There are many things you can do to get a great night’s sleep; here are just a few things you can do to get to sleep and stay asleep!

Winding Down

Creating a nighttime routine is one way to prepare yourself for a good night of sleep. Everyone has a different way of winding down, but everyone could benefit from finding a routine that works for them and sticking to it!

A few winding down tips:

  • Chamomile Tea: this tea has calming stress-soothing affects that promote relaxation
  • Turn Off Blue-Light: using the nightime mode on your cell phone will reduce the blue light exposure which can keep you up at night
  • Take an Epsom Salt Bath: epsom salt is a naturally occurring mineral salt also known as Magnesium Sulfate. Magnesium helps regulate meletonin in the body, promoting better sleep
  • Read before bed: reading is a great way to get your mind off of the day and relax before bed

Products for Better Sleep

For those nights where you really cannot seem to relax and you need a little extra support getting to sleep, try out some of these awesome products that promote deep and restful sleep.

  • Meletonin: meletonin is a naturally occurring hormone that controls our sleep-wake cycle; the dietary supplement is used as a short-term treatment for sleeping troubles helping you to get to sleep and stay asleep
  • Magnesium Glycinate: this supplement has calming properties that help relax the body and promote sleep
  • Namastay in Bed: this is a plant-based supplement currated with a collection of herbs that help you fall asleep and stay asleep

Chiropractic Care

Regular chiropractic adjustments are an incredible way for great sleep to become a part of your everyday. Chiropractic is all about getting to the root of the problem. This means that the goal is to get the body functioning at its best! Chiropractic adjustments shift your body from a sympathetic state (fight-flight mode) to a parasympathetic state (rest, digest, heal). Your body needs to be in a parasympathetic state in order to sleep, heal, and recharge. The body can get stuck in the sympathetic mode due to subluxations that interfere with the brain-body connection, dysregulating the parasympathetic system.

Chiropractic care works to relieve pain, relax the body, and correct subluxation in the spine. Chronic pain is one of the things that keep people up at night. Correcting this problem will help you to get to sleep and stay asleep!

If you struggle with sleep, try adding chiropractic care into your daily routine.

Invest in Good Bedding

Bedding plays a huge part in the quality of your sleep. Investing in good quality bedding can up your sleep game and lead to a better night’s sleep. For example, finding a really good pillow that supports you as you sleep. A cervical neck pillow is a great way to relieve and support tense neck and shoulder muscles and increase the blood flow to your head. It also helps to improve your posture while you sleep! We sell and recommend the Core-Product, D-Core brand at our office.

What is an Inside-Out Approach to Health?

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Chiropractic care is all about an inside-out approach to health. There is an emphasis on restoring our body’s ability to adapt, heal and grow. Our nervous system’s job is to be the command center for the body. It helps all other parts of the body communicate with each other. Keeping the nervous system functioning at its best is essential for our health. Feeling good on the inside translates to how we look on the outside. There is so much more value in how we feel rather than how we look! Taking an inside-out approach to health gets to the root of the problem and provides long-term solutions to pain and discomfort.

How Chiropractic Heals the Body from the Inside-Out

Chiropractic was founded on the belief that the body has the innate ability to heal itself. We are constantly exposed to external sources of healing whether that is medications, surgery, or quick fixes. While those things have value in certain circumstances, Chiropractic principles teach that the body is capable of incredible things when it is functioning at its best. The goal of chiropractic adjustments is to create balance in the body by removing interferences and restoring the nervous system’s functionality. We need proper structure in order to achieve proper function. Getting regular chiropractic adjustments aids in the restoration of our body’s innate ability to heal itself by focusing on the health of the spine and the nervous system.

Food and Inside-Out Health

In addition to consistent chiropractic care, the things we put into our body plays a big part in how well we function. Food is fuel for our bodies! Whole, nutrient-rich foods can impact our body’s ability to heal itself. On the other hand, when we constantly feed our body with sugar-filled, processed food, we are limiting the incredible things that our body can do. While it is important to treat ourselves and enjoy the food we eat, there is so much value in adding more fresh, whole foods into the mix.

Daily Movement’s Role in Inside-Out Health

Exercise routines can feel intimidating and impossible to keep up with. However, adding daily movement into your day does not need to be stressful or overwhelming. Going on a walk, stretching before bed, trying a new workout class with a friend, or even standing up throughout the day at work are all ways to get moving. An inside-out approach to health involves getting your heart rate up and prioritizing daily movement. The benefits of exercise are seemingly countless; increased circulation, better sleep, improved mood, and more energy are just a few. Once we begin to look at movement as a tool to help us feel our best rather than using it to look a certain way, it becomes even more powerful to our health.

How Mindfulness and Meditation Impact Inside- Out Health

The way your think affects your health. Whether you think about things in a positive or negative light makes a difference. Mindfulness is the practice of being present and aware of what is going on in the moment. Meditation is a great way to get into the practice of mindful thinking. Thinking in this way reduces anxiety, improves positivity, and promotes a healthy lifestyle. Our mental health and our physical health go hand and hand so it is important that we take our mental health seriously. How we think about ourselves, others, and the world around us is a huge part of inside-out health.

A Friendly Chiropractic Adjustment Reminder

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You can’t sleep, your energy levels are low and you’re finding it harder to make it through your day.  The specialists insist there’s nothing wrong, but you innately feel like something’s out of tune.  Maybe it’s time to get a chiropractic adjustment!

chiropractic adjustment fort collins

D.D. Palmer, the Father of Chiropractic, recognized that repetitive physical, chemical, and emotional stress can alter the normal ‘tone’ within a person’s Nervous System (a.k.a. Subluxation).  This persistent irritation can lead to poor physical, mental and emotional performance.  The solution?  Restore normal tone to the Nerve System with specific, Chiropractic adjustments and better health will naturally follow!

Health is the ‘music’ that plays when all your cells, tissues and organs vibrate perfectly in unison – orchestrated by a finely tuned Nerve System.  If you’re feeling sluggish, weak and tired, a trip to the Chiropractor may just be the thing YOU need to get back in key.

Today’s blog post is from the Weekly Sticky at theweeklysticky.com.  Click here to check out more articles about your health and well-being.

When your body isn’t feeling at its absolute best, there is no way that your body is functioning properly.  Our Fort Collins Chiropractors use specific adjustments, special to each individual’s body, to correct any subluxations that are present.  Make an appointment today for an adjustment for yourself, or your entire family!

What Actually Happens During A Chiropractic Adjustment?

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A chiropractic adjustment, also known as a manual manipulation, or spinal manipulation, is a common therapeutic treatment for neck, upper to mid-back, and lower back pain.  A chiropractic adjustment refers to a chiropractor applying a controlled thrust to the vertebrae that have abnormal movement patterns or fail to function normally. The objective of this chiropractic treatment is to reduce the subluxation while increasing range of motion, reducing nerve irritability and improving function. A chiropractic adjustment typically involves a high velocity, low amplitude thrust to a misaligned vertebra and can include an accompanying, audible release of gas (joint cavitation) that is caused by the release of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide which releases joint pressure. It should be known that joint cavitation (the sound) does not determine the success of an adjustment as the goal of the adjustment is to realign the vertebra not necessarily to release nitrogen and other gases from the joint.chiropractic adjustment fort collinsChiropractors adapt treatment plans to meet the specific needs of each patient. The most frequently used chiropractic technique, spinal manipulation, is the traditional high-velocity low-amplitude (HVLA) thrust. The manipulation can result in an audible “pop,” as chiropractors use their hands to apply a controlled sudden force to a joint while the body is positioned in a specific way. A more gentle approach is called a spinal mobilization which is a low force technique. Some conditions such as pathology, the patient’s size, comfort, preference or presence of osteoporosis can require this more gentle technique.

The most common reaction of a chiropractic adjustment is aching or soreness in the spinal joints or muscles. If aching or soreness occurs, it is usually within the first few hours post-treatment and does not last longer than 24 hours after the adjustment. Application of an ice pack in addition to drinking lots of water post adjustment often reduces the symptoms relatively quickly.

Seeing a chiropractor regularly maintains alignment in the vertebra and therefore keeps the nervous system in an overall healthy state. Make an appointment with our team at Impact Chiropractic to help get your spine and nervous system functioning at its best!