June 2021

Welcome to Winter 2021!
• A reminder to please remove coats, jackets and hoodies if wearing before your adjustment. We also ask that you please check your shoes upon entering and if wet or muddy, please remove and leave on the shoe stand at the front door.
• Queen’s Birthday Holiday- A reminder that Carrier St Chiropractic will be closed on Monday June 14th for the Queen’s Birthday Holiday.

Patient Appointments

Please note we are trialling sending reminder SMS, emails and calls, out earlier, to be able to better organise our appointment book.
We have recently noted that some patients are contacting us on the day of their scheduled appointment, sometimes only a few hours before, to tell us they are unable to attend. We understand that life happens, however, we often cannot fill that appointment spot at such late notice, so we ask that when you receive your reminder, to contact us if you cannot attend.
When making your appointment, please understand you are booking a time that we can then no longer offer to anyone else, so to cancel especially, on the day of your appointment is not only frustrating for us but for patients on our waiting list.
When making an appointment, we ask that you:

1. Check your diary or timetable to avoid appointment clashes
2. If the possibility of being called into work exists, try scheduling care outside of work hours (we are open early morning and late to accommodate this.)
3. If work involved the possibility of working late due to meetings, again, please schedule your appointment time outside of those times.
4. Please answer your reminder message to confirm your appointment
   
   We ask for 24 hours’ notice if needing to reschedule your appointment.
   Be proactive in your care and don’t wait until you receive your reminder message to determine if you are able to attend or not. This can affect your progress towards achieving your health goals.
   As of the 1st of July, we are trialling a new missed appointment schedule. If a patient continually cancels without adequate notice and without reason, we will ask that the next appointment is prepaid and if that appointment is again cancelled late or missed, a missed appointment fee will be deducted from the appointment fee paid.
   

Antibiotic Use

Antibiotics have been heralded as one of the most important health interventions, having saved countless people from death or significant disability from infections, often common ones such as a UTI or from a cut or graze to the skin.
While they are an important tool to use to treat some diseases, they have also been over-prescribed and over utilised both in the healthcare and agriculture systems, leading to resistance in individuals and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

So, when should we use antibiotics? In a very fit, healthy, non-immune compromised individual, the use of antibiotics is sometimes not required. For certain infections, such as ear, throat or even a UTI, may be managed successfully without antibiotic usage. Sometimes antibiotics are prescribed after a routine procedure such as tooth extraction or stitches, in the event of an infection occurring, yet no infection may occur. Again, this may be a time to talk to your doctor about antibiotic use.

A good rule to follow is this – only take antibiotics when you have a bacterial infection that is not going away on its own. So, if you have an earache, sore throat, heavy chest cold, that doesn’t necessarily mean you need a course of antibiotics, as these can all be the result of a viral infection that will not be assisted by antibiotics. In fact, by taking antibiotics when not required (eg. a viral infection) can increase your resistance to antibiotics. This poses a problem in the future if you do have a bacterial infection that is not going away on its own and you need a course of antibiotics, as they may not work as well, if at all. Taking antibiotics when not required can also affect your body’s population of good bacteria, leaving you more susceptible to other infections. If you do find that you need antibiotics, it’s really important to follow the course and complete as prescribed, not just a few tablets until you feel better. Also once completed, think about recolonising your gut with some good bacteria in the form of probiotics. This will aid your digestion as well as boost your immune system function.

Life becomes easier when you learn to accept the apology you never got

R. Brault

Pain – The Sometimes Forgotten Causes

During Spinal Health Week, May 24th-31st, the Australian Chiropractors Association was encouraging everyone to consider chiropractic care for back pain and to associate the burden that back pain places on our health, our family life and work and the cost to the community and economy due to lost productivity.
Spinal pain (neck, middle back or lower back) can have its origins from past injuries, poor posture, the way we stand or sit, our posture or the position we adopt when we work, play sport and even when resting. However, there are many other less well-known reasons why your back pain may be exacerbated and why even with regular chiropractic care, you may still experience spinal and joint pain.

1. You are dehydrated!
   In my 25 years practising, this would have to be the number one reason why people experience continual pain. If you feel constantly sore, tired, lethargic and tender to touch, there’s a good chance you are dehydrated. Without enough water, our body can’t effectively rid itself of waste products, nor function at 100%. Every system in the body to function properly, requires adequate water intake. Our cognitive function (thinking) respiration, digestion, rest, circulation and movement are all affected by how hydrated we are.
2. You are stressed!
   Don’t get me wrong, a little bit of stress in important to our physical and mental wellbeing, but stress 24/7 is definitely not. Constant high levels of stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, can increase your blood pressure adversely affect your cholesterol and insulin levels, disrupt sleep, affect you bone density and decrease your muscle mass, as well as increasing inflammation in the body, all of which can make you feel sore and tired. Prolonged chronic stress, depression and anxiety have all been shown to affect pain perception in the brain teaching us to feel increased levels of pain. If you are experiencing significant stress, do not underestimate how this may impact on how you feel.
3. Your diet is pro-inflammatory!
   You’ve heard it all before but it’s true, what you eat can be making you feel achy, sore and tried. Diets high in processed foods (sorry everyone that means food in any packaging except fresh fruit and veggies), salt, sugar, processed grains, dairy, certain cooking oils (vegetable and canola) and high levels of animal protein (especially grain feed animals and farmed fish), have been shown to cause irritation to your gut lining. This in turn creates inflammatory reactions in the body which can lead to a number of disease processes including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. But the most important thing to remember is that a proinflammatory diet can make you feel sore and tender.
4. You just don’t move enough or properly!
   Surprisingly, not being active on a regular basis can lead to muscle soreness and joint pain! It’s crazy to think that doing nothing might be causing you pain but it’s true. We are designed to move on a regular basis with movement providing nutrition and stimulation to our brain, improving our respiration, circulation and skeletal system. Regular weight-bearing activity improves our bone density and muscle mass and tone and overall helps us to feel less fatigued and sore. A side note here is to cross train, that is constantly change the, amount and intensity of exercise as our bodies adapt very quickly, to the exercise we do. So doing some type of exercise, at the same intensity and same amount wont provide the great benefits exercise can.
   

Paprika Chicken with Spaghetti Squash