7cb45d57

A Family Centered Practice

Thu, 24 Feb 2022 14:31:46 GMT

It is no secret that parents are under a lot of stress these days. Being a new Mom myself, I know firsthand how difficult it is to find childcare when both parents have full-time careers.

Better Sleep and Fewer Headaches

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 13:10:11 GMT

Tech Neck

Most smartphones now come with software that keeps track of how many hours per day and per week you’re spending on your smart device. How many hours are you spending on your smart device? Tech companies want you to be constantly on your smartphone and always trying to catch your attention and they are really good at achieving this. If you find yourself spending too much time on your device, try turning it off for a few hours and going outside instead. Fresh air and sunshine can do wonders to improve your health and overall sense of well-being.

Have you noticed that after a while of mindlessly scrolling that your posture is worse than when you first started that scrolling session? Over time your head translates forward which puts more tension and stress on the bones in your neck and can speed up spinal degeneration. That same forward head posture can put tension in the muscles that support the neck creating knots that cause you pain.

As you're scrolling through your day be mindful of your posture. Try to always make sure that your smart device is at or close to eye level. Sit up straight and bring your shoulders back and down. If you notice your child’s posture looking less than superb, try making a game out of who can keep the best posture for the longest. As for the knots that have built up in your neck and shoulder muscles, we have a helpful and easy way to loosen those up.

Take a tennis ball and a hard surface, preferably the floor or a wall if you can’t get down on the floor easily. Place the tennis ball on the muscle knot. Now lay back onto the tennis ball and stay on that knot until it melts away. Keep doing this and moving around to release different knots in your muscles. The muscle tension will keep coming back until your chiropractor fixes the misalignments in your spine, which will improve your posture over time. Make an appointment with one of our chiropractors today. Your future self will thank you!

Cervicogenic Headaches

Did you know that chiropractic can help you achieve better sleep at night and fewer and/or less severe headaches? When you have a subluxation or a misalignment of a bone in your spine it irritates the nerves coming from your brainstem that travel to your head and neck. This pressure can lead to pain, tension headaches and migraines among other things. A cervicogenic headache is a headache that comes from a specific part of your neck and is referred up to your head. It is usually one sided in nature and usually occurs with muscle tension in the neck. It often starts with an intermittent pain pattern and ends up being a constant pain.

Here are some risk factors that contribute to cervicogenic headaches:

-Fatigue

- Previous neck injuries

- Bad posture

- Muscle stress

- Sports injuries

- Whiplash

Chiropractors remove the subluxation or misalignment in the spine, relieving the muscle tension in your neck, which also relieves the pressure in your head. Oftentimes the ligaments in our neck can get too tight, which contributes to the neck tension and headaches. By loosening up the ligaments in the neck, it relieves tension in the muscles and allows for more motion in the spine.

To help relieve some of that pressure on your head and neck, here is a tip for you to do at home. All you need for this is a rolled up hand towel and a bed. Of course this won’t completely fix the problem. Your chiropractor will want to do a thorough physical exam with x-rays in order to address your specific issue.

Watch the video below to find out what you can do to achieve better sleep.

Now you know how to relieve some of the built up tension in your neck, achieve better sleep at night and to be mindful of your posture while using your smart device.

If you’ve been dealing with neck pain or headaches and would like to speak with one of our doctors about it, click here to find a time that works for you or give us a call at 802-899-9991.

Surprising Causes of Neck Pain

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:57:57 GMT

Jaw Pain Related to Neck Pain

Sometimes neck pain can correlate with jaw pain. Have you noticed that your jaw pops or clicks when you’re chewing, yawning or even talking? Do you experience jaw pain or tightness during or after a routine dental visit? Did you know that chiropractic can help reduce jaw pain? Your jaw has a joint on both sides of your face, which can get misaligned through physical traumas such as sports injuries or car accidents, or in the form of chemical traumas from emotional or mental stress. These traumas can cause a condition called TMD or temporal mandibular dysfunction. Your chiropractor will first assess the cause of your TMD. Most cases of TMD respond well to conservative chiropractic care. Your chiropractor can adjust your jaw, just like the bones in your spine, either by hand or with an instrument.

You may be wondering; how can I prevent jaw pain? One of the things you can do is to avoid chewing gum for long periods of time. Chewing gum can exacerbate problems with misaligned jaw bones and create more stress in the muscles and ligaments attached to the jaw. Another thing you can do is to avoid resting your chin on your hand for extended periods of time. This can put pressure on the joints of the jaw and further misalign the jaw. If you grind your teeth at night, consider using a night guard. When chewing food, make sure to chew evenly on both sides of your mouth and not favor one side or the other. Consider visiting your dentist or orthodontist if your teeth don’t align when you close your mouth. This can create an imbalance in the muscles of the jaw which contributes to the TMD. Massaging the muscles of the jaw can also bring you some pain relief. There are also a set of exercises that you can do to help strengthen and reset the muscles that control the jaw, which your chiropractor can recommend for you.

Watch the video below to see how to check your own jaw for misalignment.

Cervical Curves

Why are we chiropractors always talking about the curves in your spine? Proper spinal curves are really important for proper alignment of the spine, which leads to proper nerve function. These curves also act as shock absorbers and provide balance and support for the body. Why is spinal alignment and nerve function important? Your nervous system controls every function in your body. If your spinal bones are misaligned it irritates the nerves that control many functions in your body. For instance, if your spine is misaligned in the lower neck you might experience pain, numbness, tingling, and/or muscle weakness into your arms and hands. The same thing can happen in your lower spine and you might experience pain, numbness, tingling, and/or muscle weakness into your legs and feet. In order to assess your spinal curves we take x-rays of your spine to be able to visualize the curves from the front and from the side.

Why do I need to go to a chiropractor when I can just crack my own neck? When you “crack” your own neck you are actually over-stretching the ligaments in your neck and making mobile segments even more mobile, which creates instability in your spine. Over time, this cracking can cause further damage to your spine and overall health. Chiropractors are professionals who are trained to assess the spine and entire body to find misalignments in the spine as well as other joints, and deliver specific adjustments to the segments that are locked up and not moving properly. By freeing up the segments that are locked up, this releases the pressure on the nerves, which improves their function and reduces your pain. By the way, that “crack” that you sometimes hear is just a bit of gas escaping from the joint space.

Check out our video below to learn more about spinal curves.

Now you know that there is something you can do about that annoying jaw pain and it doesn’t involve medication or surgery and the reasoning why you shouldn’t crack your own neck.

If you’ve been dealing with neck or jaw pain for a while now and would like to speak with one of our doctors about it, click here to find a time that works for you or give us a call at 802-899-9991.

Preventing Neck Pain

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 12:34:02 GMT

Neck pain is one of the most common conditions we see at Farrell Chiropractic Center in Jericho, VT. As we go through life we experience macrotraumas and microtraumas, and over time these traumas add up and contribute to spinal degeneration. Microtraumas are small motions that we do on a repetitive basis and macrotraumas are things such as car accidents or sports injuries that occur once in a while but leave a big “scar” on our health. Chiropractic addresses neck pain in a natural way, avoiding medication and surgery. It’s important to address neck pain sooner rather than later, which prevents you from having to do something more invasive in the future, such as surgery to eliminate the pain.

How To Prevent Neck Pain While Working From Home

This year one in four Americans are expected to be working from home. When moving your place of work from an outside office to an in-home office, many people forget to think about their home office ergonomics. This can lead to poor posture for 8 hours per day for 5 days per week. Over time this adds stress to your spine increasing tension, stiffness, pain, and promotes spinal degeneration. Here are five things that you can do to improve your home office set-up.

1) Bring your monitor to eye level. If you’re working on a laptop, consider purchasing a monitor and keyboard and connect it to your laptop. By separating the keyboard from the monitor, this allows for proper ergonomics.

2) Consider purchasing an office chair with adjusting armrests. You want to make sure your shoulders are not up near your ears and not hanging down unsupported.

3) Make sure that your feet touch flat on the floor and your knees are bent to 90 degrees.

4) Your bottom should be as far back as possible, and your back should be resting against the chair back. This takes the pressure off of your low back.

5) Your elbows should be bent to 90 degrees so make sure your keyboard is not too high and not too low.

Sitting has been dubbed the new smoking, so besides improving your home office ergonomics you also want to make sure that you are getting up out of your chair and moving around often during your workday. This will improve blood flow from your upper body to your lower body and from your lower body to your upper body. Adding in a few exercises and stretches during your workday will help to improve your posture, decrease your joint and muscle stiffness, and reduce your body aches.

Checking Your Own Posture

What is good posture and why is it so important? When chiropractors look at the spine, we look for an S-shaped curve from the side, and from the front or the back there shouldn’t be any curve, it should appear straight. The shoulders should be level, the hips should be level, the body weight should be evenly distributed between both feet, and the ears should be right above the shoulders. It’s important to have good posture so that the muscles, ligaments, blood vessels, and nerves can function properly without having any added stress. Gravity is constantly pulling us toward the earth, which can lead to poor posture if you don’t actively do something to correct it.

How do you know that you have poor posture? We all carry around a smartphone with a pretty awesome camera these days, so why not put that camera to good use and check your posture with it? Did you know that for every inch that your head is translated forward it adds 10 pounds of weight to your cervical spine? Over time that extra weight can lead to degeneration in your spine, which can lead to symptoms of pain, numbness, muscle weakness and tingling into your arms and hands. This forward head posture can also put added stress on the muscles in the neck and can cause what we call cervicogenic headaches. Chiropractors are trained professionals who assess and correct any misalignments in the spine which helps to improve your posture and slows down degeneration in your spine.

Here is a quick way to see if you need some help to improve your posture. Take a picture of yourself from the side making sure to include your ear and the top of your shoulder. If you have a lot of hair, make sure to pull it back and out of the way so that your ear is visible. Now take a selfie from the front making sure to get your head and your shoulders in the frame. If your ear is more forward than your shoulder, or your head looks tilted from the front view, then it's time to give us a call and have one of our doctors assess you for spinal misalignments to prevent further degeneration of your spine and your overall health. Give it a try, your future self will thank you for it!

Check out our video below to see how to take some selfies to check your posture.

Now you know how to set up your home office and how to check your own posture. It’s starting to make some sense as to why your parents always told you to “sit up straight”, and if you know better, you do better.

If you’ve been dealing with neck pain for a while now and would like to speak with one of our doctors about it, click here to find a time that works for you or give us a call at 802-899-9991.

The Amazing Healing Power of Class IV – Deep Tissue Laser Therapy.

clagville@comcast.net (David Claghorn) — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 06:24:02 GMT

MY EXPERIENCE AT FARRELL CHIROPRACTIC CENTER HAS SUCCESSFUL RESULTS.

YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS TO BELIEVE HOW GREAT IT IS
This is my story about getting a state of the art treatment for a painful Neuropathy in both of my feet. Having Type 2 Diabetes is a daily challenge for many Americans as well as myself included. When you add a Neuropathy into the mix, life can get complicated. With my damaged nerves in my feet, I get numbing and sometimes stinging pain that alternates between feeling too hot or too cold and this happens everyday for several hours. It effects the way I walk, which in turn creates stress on my back muscles and this is where Dr. Farrell discovered a potential treatment for my chronic health condition. Back in July, I mentioned my Neuropathy problem to Dr. Farrell as I was getting an adjustment. He suggested that I get Deep Tissue Laser Therapy at his office. In addition to suggesting this treatment, he made sure I was treated that same day immediately after my adjustment.

BREAKTHROUGH RELIEF
My first treatment was so soothing. Dr. Farrell has exceptional professionals who use the wonderful balance of treating you with the best possible care and attention to details that are above and beyond expectations. As I was getting the Deep Tissue Laser Treatment , my pain eased away with a gradual warming feeling that erased my cold numbing pain. It was like ice melting into a warm feeling of comfort. This was a good sign, Deep Tissue Laser Therapy effectively fights chronic pain. Here it is late October and my feet continue to feel better as I have less pain. Let my case show you all – Deep Tissue Laser Therapy is an alternative answer to pain relief without the use of medication, keeping you healthier with relief from pain along with improving your wellness.

THE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY USED WITH DEEP TISSUE LASER THERAPY*
Laser therapy is the non-invasive use of laser energy to generate a photochemical response in damaged or dysfunctional tissue. Laser therapy can alleviate pain, reduce inflammation and accelerate recovery from a wide range of acute and chronic clinical conditions. As rehabilitation specialists know, the main goal of treatment for many when treating painful, debilitating conditions is to facilitate improved function and mobility. Laser therapy is a drug-free, surgery-free technique to help make that goal a reality.

Cleared by the FDA in 2003, Class IV Laser laser therapy has become standard of care for many musculoskeletal injuries. Many clinicians are confidently incorporating laser therapy programs into their practices due to the growing body of literature supporting the efficacy of laser therapy as a modality to reduce inflammation and accelerate recovery. Laser therapy technology has been recently endorsed by professional organizations such as the APTA, WHO and IASP.

* Disclaimer: All above information is owned by Lightforce including the videos shown below.

http://www.litecure.com/medical/

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT FARRELL CHIROPRACTIC CENTER'S DEEP TISSUE LASER THERAPY PROCESS
https://www.farrellchiro.com/laser-therapy

The Pro Athletes also get Deep Tissue Laser Therapy.*

Physical Therapists Weigh in on Deep Tissue Laser Therapy.*

Call Us Today at 899-9991 to schedule your free consultation.

Improve Focus by Walking Into Wellness.

clagville@comcast.net (David Claghorn) — Mon, 09 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

CHIROPRACTIC CARE IS ESSENTIAL FOR STRENGTH AND ENDURANCE

Lately, life is full of curve balls and chaos. For the past few years, every day features a new set of challenges. What am I waking up to today? More surprises seem to be the reality, and it won't end anytime soon. With all this as a way of life, I have to embrace it all and the change that comes with it. The focus is something I have to work hard at every day. By including the following, you can transform your life into a productive and meaningful one.

ROUTINE
My wife has always emphasized this over the past 20 years, and it turns out she is right on the mark. During May and June, I've become the family driver. Without going into the details of why I had to embrace it and take my iPad with me everywhere. Deadlines will never go away. Having a routine takes stress off my plate, which is full, to begin with.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE
Sometimes I am reminded by my own family that I'm getting cranky these days. It's important not to forget to tap into what inspires you. Always visit that place that can be uplifting for you. For me it's music. Whenever I have to create illustrations, website designs, and photography, I get the tunes playing. Music ignites my senses, and almost instantly, my mood is positive. Whatever it takes, get your mood positive early in the day.

THOUGHTFUL FOOD CHOICES
This is vitally important in my life as I have Type 2 Diabetes along with severe Psoriasis. Dropping foods that are high in carbs and sugars is critical. By eating more fruits, mainly berries and fresh vegetables my blood sugar readings are in the normal range. Having foods rich in protein are also important. Chicken, Tuna, Bacon and Healthy Fats as well.

EXERCISE
Walking daily from 30 to 60 mins a day, yard work and household chores help keep my weight loss goals inline. Remarkable, I have learned to keep things in perspective, and everything works best in moderation. During that last heatwave, I was working too hard with the landscaping and ended up paying for it.

CHIROPRACTIC ADJUSTMENTS
My mood is improved immediately. Having adjustments is one of the most essential items in my routine and schedule. My spinal health has become stronger over the past several years. When my neck and spine are adjusted, I can feel relief, and that allows me to stay active and motivated. If you can make a routine and stick with it by including all the points explained here, your life will change for the better. Enjoy this fun season of summer!