Clinic News

Improve your chances with IVF treatment by adding acupuncture and naturopathic medicine! Listen to Dr. Misa’s recent radio interview!

Need some relief from pregnancy related aches and pains? Prenatal massage is a great way to get you through those tough weeks!

Got shoulder pain? Graston Technique and BIOFLEX laser therapy is an effective combination. Let’s get you active again!

New Neck Pain Study Shows Chiropractic Treatment & Exercise Is Better Than Medication

Posted on February 22, 2012

Chiropractic More Effective For Neck PainA research study published on January 3, 2012, in the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that in dealing with acute or subacute neck pain, chiropractic adjustments and home exercise is more effective than using over-​the-​counter or prescription medication. The results of the 52 week long study led the authors to state: “Spinal manipulation therapy and home exercise advice led to similar short and long-​term outcomes but participants who received medication seemed to fare worse, with a consistently higher use of pain medications for neck pain throughout the trial’s observational period.”

This is nothing new to chiropractors and massage therapists who see this happen every day with the patients we see. And it certainly makes sense because our hands-​on approach is geared towards addressing the actual cause of the neck pain whether it be muscle, joint or nerve related. At best, drugs will mask the pain but will never correct the biomechanical issue causing it.

It’s understandable that people simply want to be out of pain as soon as possible and hence, the medicine cabinet or the walk-​in clinic is the first resort. Or at least that how we’ve been conditioned to think…there’s a pill you can pop for any ailment! And it’s usually when the magic pills don’t work that we get second dibs on working with patients to really fix the problem.

Next time you have neck pain, see if you can avoid reaching for the bottle of Tylenol and try these steps instead:

  1. Perform some light stretches and/​or neck mobilizations at home
  2. Apply ice/​heat depending on how you think you may have injured the neck…if in doubt, ice is the safer bet
  3. Have your spouse/​partner try to massage out any sore muscles in the neck and shoulder
  4. If none of that has helped much, see a chiropractor or other manual therapist like a massage therapist or physiotherapist to do a proper assessment and more advanced treatment
  5. Follow through with any short or long term home recommendations offered by the health professional

Your friendly Richmond ill chiropractor, Dr. Keith.

0 Comments - Posted in Chiropractic, Latest Research, Professional Services

How Safe Is Chiropractic Care?…Let’s Compare.

Posted on February 10, 2012

It’s not uncommon for new patients to question me about the safety of chiropractic adjustments. It usually occurs after they have read the Informed Consent form that identifies key risks which includes a roughly 1 in 2 million chance of a stroke following a cervical adjustment (and that’s IF you have certain stroke risk factors like blood clotting problems, hypertension, smoking, high cholesterol, use of BCPs, heart problems and trauma such as sport injuries or blows to the head from an accident.) Nowadays, all of the hands-​on health professionals like chiropractors, physiotherapists, massage therapists, etc all have patients read and sign an informed consent form prior to treatment. This is simply good practice both from a doctor-​patient education point-​of-​view, as well as from a medico-​legal perspective. When’s the last time your family doctor outlined the risks of his/​her proposed medication for you? Have you ever really took the time to read the informational pamphlet in the medication box of that your pharmacist gave to you? You might be surprised by some of the risks and possible side effects.

So for chiropractic it’s 1 in 2 million for a possible stroke. Guess what your chances are for getting struck by lightning?….1 in 1 million. Both are pretty rare. How many people do you know who have been struck by lightning?

Let’s talk about insurance for a minute. Insurance companies provide you coverage for home, auto, health, etc., based on certain current criteria as well as historical data including statistical data. I don’t know what you pay for auto insurance, but my annual premium is currently at $1700 and I’ve been driving for 25 years. A newer, twenty year old male driver roughly pays almost twice that and possibly more. Guess what chiropractors pay for malpractice insurance…$950. So relatively speaking, I am at greater risk of harming myself and others by driving my car than I am administering a chiropractic adjustment. Interesting?

And just for comparison, what does say a family doctor in Canada pay for malpractice insurance?…in 2007, it was $2040. Some medical specialists will pay in the tens of thousands for insurance based on ‘higher risk’ procedures. So you could say that it’s about equal risk to see either your family doc or me for your neck pain. (And if you really want something to be mad about, taxpayers foot the bill for over 80% of our medical doctors’ insurance!! But that’s a whole different topic.)

There’s no doubt that there is a health risk with chiropractic care. But let’s be fair because there is some risk associated with ALL forms of health care. Chiropractors should at least be applauded for initiating and being early leaders in the health care world for full disclosure of the risks of treatment. At the end of the day, you as a patient and a health consumer have to weigh the relative risk to benefit of care. And ultimately, it’s your choice and I personally would never push you to continue with chiropractic care if you were not comfortable with it. Fortunately, I have other treatment methods in my arsenal that could still help.

I’m on my soapbox today because I recently had a new patient who brought up the whole “My family doctor and my orthopedic surgeon told me not to receive chiropractic care” issue. It’s not the first time, certainly won’t be the last, but is always somewhat frustrating. We discussed the risks, talked about other additional treatments I could do, and after thinking about it, she made the choice to include chiropractic adjustments as a part of her treatment plan. After I delivered her first adjustments, she said what most people who were initially apprehensive about it say: “That’s it??”. Yes, that’s it. A simple, quick impulse applied to the spine in a predefined direction that restores movement to the spine and reduces pain. That’s. It.

0 Comments - Posted in Chiropractic, Professional Services

TMJ Treatment Options

Posted on January 26, 2012

My sister, Sylvia, was recently diagnosed with TMJ. If you have ever had a temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD or TMJ for short), it certainly can be a life-​changing problem. In mild cases, simply biting down hard on food can result in sharp pain through one or both jaw joints. In severe cases, like what Sylvia has, even regular eating and talking can cause extreme pain and discomfort. Fortunately, she hasn’t gotten to the point where she has difficulty opening here mouth more than 1 to 5 cm. Imagine trying to eat just about anything when you have difficulty opening much more than a few centimeters.

Does this sound familiar to you or someone you know? Other TMJ symptoms include:

  • A jaw that locks or has limited movement
  • Pain in the chewing muscles of the jaw and cheek or jaw joint itself
  • Pain in the neck, or face
  • Stiff jaw muscles
  • Painful clicking, popping, or grating in the jaw joint

There are a variety of health professionals you can approach to tackle this problem. Like my sister, usually most people first see their dentist regarding TMJ issues especially those who experience popping, clicking, or pain in the jaw joint. If you’ve seen a dentist, you may have come away with a night splint to wear during sleep to help you prevent teeth grinding which often contributes to the TMJ problem. My brother-​in-​law agrees, Sylvia is indeed a grinder. Plus she works in a high stress downtown law office, and stress is also correlated with the development of TMJ problems. Maybe because they subconsciously grind their teeth even through the day when their stress levels peak.

Further to this, a large majority of temporomandibular joint problems result from jaw muscle tension and spasms while just a small proportion of cases are actually due to physical problems with the joint itself like a slipped disc, sprained ligaments, arthritic processes, etc.

At Meridian Wellness, we have a couple of non-​surgical treatment options for TMJ.

  1. We have a specific ACUPUNCTURE protocol that works to relieve pain and more importantly, help relax tense muscles of the jaw, cheek and head.
  2. For those who are adverse to needles or for those whom acupuncture did not help, we also use BIOFLEX low intensity laser therapy to reduce inflammation, pain, relax muscles and restore damaged/​torn TMJ cartilage
  3. Many patients have also experienced significant pain and functional improvement with intraoral massage of the jaw muscles by our registered massage therapists (Troy & Asta)
  4. Troy also leads meditation classes and one-​on-​one psychotherapy sessions for those looking to manage their stress better…and consequently their TMJ pain

The vast majority of TMJ cases will not require surgical intervention and experts say it is important to try non-​surgical therapies before resorting to surgery or other treatments that result in permanent changes to the jaw or teeth.

Give us a call at the clinic if you wish to speak with one of us to see how we can help! It’s a bit too far for my sister to drive from the far east end of Scarborough up to our Richmond Hill clinic so I’ll be looking for a colleague to help her out closer to home.

0 Comments - Posted in Acupuncture, Chiropractic, Laser Therapy, Massage Therapy, Professional Services

How Posture Affects Neck & Back Pain…And What YOU Can Do About It!

Posted on January 11, 2012

Today I want to talk about posture because it is an often overlooked yet critical cause of low back pain. In fact, the majority of patients think that back pain usually results from strenuous work like lifting boxes and shovelling snow or traumatic accidents but are surprised to find that most back pain is due to postural stress. I’ve even had patients resist the notion that their pain is due to something as ‘trivial’ as bad posture!

We can think of postural stress as a silent assassin…without us realizing the bad habits of poor posture over months and years take its toll on our spinal health. Whether we are sitting or standing, we induce stress on the spine if the natural curve of the spine is changed and if the spine moves past its natural balance point. The spine was designed to bear the load of our weight due to gravity. I bet that right now as you sit at your computer reading this, hunched over the keyboard or peering at you laptop screen, that your neck and back experiences postural stress. This typical computer and desk posture, in which your head and neck are extended in front of your body, reverses the normal curvature of your entire spine from the neck to your lower back shifting all the natural balance points. The end result is excessive strain on the supporting muscles, ligaments and intervertebral discs around the spine.

And it’s not just bad posture while sitting. The standing posture of most people needs to be fixed too. Heads tend to lurch downward, shoulders rolled forward, flat lower back…have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Or next time you are at the mall, take a seat on one of the mall benches and watch how people stand and walk. You might be surprised by how few people you see with good posture!

But there is hope still! You can certainly retrain your posture from bad to good again and usually restoring your posture But it will require some work on your part!

BRUGGER’S RELIEF POSITION is a great at-​home and at-​work exercise that serves to correct the slumping posture and prevent the build up of stress that occurs through your day. It can be performed seated or standing.

Do the following: 

  • sit on the edge of your chair or stand up tall
  • position your feet and knees slightly wider than your hips and rotated slightly outward
  • hold your head in a neutral position and perform a chin tuck
  • raise your chest up, relax the shoulders and raise arms slightly out to the sides
  • then rotate arms and hands to that the thumbs point backward
  • hold the position for 10 seconds while taking deep breaths

Who is Brugger? Quite honestly I don’t know but this is a very effective and simple exercise you can do periodically through the day to reverse the effects of bad posture.

Until next time,

Your friendly neighbourhood Richmond Hill chiropractor!

Dr. Keith

0 Comments - Posted in Chiropractic, Weekly Tips

How Probiotics Can Improve Your Health…Naturally!

Posted on December 13, 2011

In the past few years, there have been a lot of commercials promoting consumption of probiotic yogurt. You know those Activia Challenge commercials! As a naturopathic doctor, one of the main starting points in helping people improve their health is a look at digestive function. It is very important to maintain and protect your healthy digestive tract bacteria, first through proper nutrition and second, through supplementation. However, lifestyle factors such as having a poor diet or taking various medications such as BCPs, antibiotics and corticosteroids can upset the healthy balance of good bacteria in the gut and lead to a number of problems.

So what known benefits do probiotics offer?

  1. Probiotics relieve digestive issues. Things like diarrhea, constipation, gas, and bloating can improve significantly.
  2. Probiotics help with hormone balance. Your digestive tract bacteria have a key role in breaking down excess estrogen. For women on BCPs, regular probiotic supplementation will help you avoid unwanted symptoms of excess estrogen including weight gain around the hips and thighs.
  3. Probiotics help with vitamin production and nutrient absorption. In particular, Vitamin K, B12, B5 and biotin.
  4. Probiotics help prevent yeast infections. Women with recurrent yeast infections have compromised bacterial balance in the large intestine and should take probiotic supplements.
  5. Probiotics help reduce inflammation. Inflammatory symptoms related to problems like arthritis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease can be greatly helped with supplementation.
  6. Probiotics help with allergy relief. Allergy based symptoms like eczema, seasonal allergies, asthma and hives have been shown to improve with probiotic use.
  7. Probiotics help prevent cold and flus. Whether with daycare and school-​aged children or adults, supplementing with good bacteria helps strengthen our immune system.

Now that we’ve established how good probiotics are for you, the question is whether or not probiotic-​enhanced yogurts like Activia are any better than regular yogurt?

Activia contains a particular strain of bacteria called Bifidus Regularis that the manufacturer, Danone, claims will “survive passage through the digestive tract, arriving in the colon as a living culture,” whereas other cultures can be destroyed by stomach acids and the natural process of digestion. There seems to be some scientific research to support this claim. Is it significantly better? Is it enough to pay a higher premium for Activia versus regular yogurt. I’m not so sure.

Also important, is that in some of the regular sweetened varieties of Activia there is high sugar content. Of the 14 g or carbohydrates in a typical Activia serving, 11 g is sugar. Sweeteners are not good for your digestive health and they actually promote the growth of harmful bacteria and yeast such as Candida.

My advice is to stick to regular, unsweetened GREEK yogurt. In particular, our favourite is President’s Choice 0% Greek Plain Yogurt. It has 2 g of sugar, 0 g of fat, and 18 g of protein. Add a few fresh or frozen berries for taste and you’ve got a great probiotic, low calorie snack. Enjoy!

Your friendly Richmond Hill naturopath,

Dr. Misa!

0 Comments - Posted in Naturopathy, Nutrition, Weekly Tips

Trigger Points: A Possible Cause Of Your Pain

Posted on December 12, 2011

Every day at Meridian Wellness, our massage therapists or chiropractors treat folks suffering from various musculoskeletal aches and pains. Whether it be neck or back pain, shoulder or knee pain, elbow or hip pain, one of the potential causes of it may be MYOFASCIAL TRIGGER POINTS (MFTPs). Yikes, that seems like a pretty scary medical term. For all intents and purposes, we can also simply refer to them as MUSCLE KNOTS. It might be an oversimplification but it will suffice. The point is, the pain you are experiencing could be caused primarily OR secondarily by these knots or trigger points. But what are they exactly and how do we get them?

Let’s define an MFTP as:

“a small area of tightly contracted, hyperirritated muscle that can be felt as nodules within a taut band of muscle fibers”.

Trigger points tend to develop in response to aggravating factors such as: acute or chronic muscular fatigue/​overload, muscles being “stuck” in awkward positions (shortened or lengthened), chills, other kinds of pain, direct trauma, and lifestyle factors like sleep deprivation and smoking.

The most interesting thing about MFTPs is that they not only cause locally where the contracted muscle fibres are, but can also cause pain SOMEWHERE ELSE…we call this ‘referred pain’. For example, MFTPs in the upper trapezius muscles can refer pain to the base of the skull and temple area creating HEADACHE type symptoms. If you have MFTPs in the infraspinatus, you could feel pain in the lateral shoulder and down the arm to your hand and fingers in which case you might think you have a ‘pinched nerve’. And similarly, that pain down your leg that you think is sciatica may be simply due to a trigger point in your piriformis muscle.

So who gets myofascial trigger points?…EVERYONE! If you are living, breathing and mobile you have MFTPs somewhere in your body. Likely in your calves, your lower back, neck, forearms and IT bands just to name a few. But the good news is that they don’t always cause pain. Thus, there are both LATENT and ACTIVE trigger points. A comparison of the two is below:

LATENT ACTIVE
stiff, tight stiff, tight
hurts only if pressed upon hurts regardless of whether you touch it or not
is hidden is ‘loud and proud’ and impossible to ignore

So that episode of pain that seems to come out of nowhere was really the change of a pre-​existing, latent trigger point to an active, pain producing one. Essentially, you awoke the sleeping tiger. It reached the threshold for the mental or physical stress you’ve accumulated over time and is now announcing its presence!

At Meridian Wellness, we tackle the problem of MFTPs in a variety of ways. Trigger point therapy could involved some specialized deep muscle work by a chiropractor or massage therapist. It could also be the use of acupuncture or laser therapy directed straight into the core of that nasty trigger point. We’ll instruct you on some proper home therapy as well to assist the process.

Got a pain that’s not going away? Maybe you have some undiagnosed myofascial trigger points that need some work!

0 Comments - Posted in Chiropractic, Massage Therapy, Professional Services

Graston Technique For Pain In the News!

Posted on December 2, 2011

One the of the great things about being a chiropractor is the opportunity to regularly learn and implement new therapies so that my patients can get better results faster! One specialized treatment for acute and chronic pain injuries of the back, neck, shoulder, elbows, knees and feet is called Graston Technique. I’ve been certified for GT since 2008 and it has been amazing how well it works at breaking up scar tissue and adhesions in soft tissue injuries. I found an ABC news segment from San Francisco featuring Graston Technique that you can watch below:

My most recent success cases using the GT tools in conjunction with laser therapy were on:

  1. a 52 year old female patient with plantar fasciitis that was an avid volleyball player
  2. a 35 year old male patient with rotator cuff tendinitis from being a regular CrossFit participant
  3. a 67 year old female patient recovering from knee replacement surgery
  4. a 49 year old male patient suffering with lateral epicondylitis /​tennis elbow…no, he doesn’t play tennis either…just a desk jockey

The Graston instruments do indeed look like medieval torture tools and when I work on the affected tissue it certainly is no walk in the park. But it sure works!

0 Comments - Posted in Chiropractic, Professional Services

Free Psychotherapy Sessions at Meridian!

Posted on November 23, 2011

FREE PSYCHOTHERAPY SESSIONS! – Troy is in his last stretch of psychotherapy training and is looking for a number of people for his case study work that begins in mid-​January. He is offering 10 FREE sessions of one-​on-​one talk therapy which are 1 hour in length. If you are interested, pls contact the office or let him know directly before January 13th, 2012!

0 Comments - Posted in Announcements, Professional Services

What Makes Us Unique?

A Happy Patient Shares

“We just wanted to drop you a line to let you know what a difference you have made in our lives. We are happier, healthier and fitter thanks to you. As well as being extremely professional and knowledgeable practitioners, they are also very nice, down-​to-​earth people. We’ve done lots of different types of therapy that we weren’t able to obtain at previous clinics such as Laser Therapy and Naturopathy. Through them we have also gotten to know Troy and Asta…a massage by either is a welcome treat. Thanks again for an all-​around great experience.”

~ Renelle & Francisco Rico-​Guerrero, Richmond Hill

Read more testimonials

Health & Wellness — The Way It Should Be

Meridian Wellness provides a warm, relaxing, family atmosphere and is the ideal environment to address all of your health care needs. Our goal is to improve your condition and health… but we also want to change the way you think about your health by helping you take a more active role in it.

Come visit us to discover health care the way it should be.

Our Health & Wellness Team