Matthew Amman Chiropractic

100+ qualifies you for the centenarian club. 110+ qualifies you for the supercentenarian club. Here's a link to the Havard Health Letter on the topic of Living to 100:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/downloads/Living_to_100.pdf

The obvious traits are don't smoke, keep trim, get exercise, manage stress (a tough one for most people), and avoid social isolation.

I speak on this topic a great deal in corporate america trying to instill the value of making good choices. Health is a choice and that choice is yours. Although I break down the topic into ten steps, its a simple message of moderation.

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Dr. Matt

Today I did an exciting presentation at Milwaukee's VA hospital on the topic of lumbar disc herniation. It was a summary on the current evidence supporting the case for chiropractic care. Wow, the research is much better today than it was fifteen or even ten years ago.

It seems that scholarly research is feathering out the details regarding the effectiveness of side-posture adjustments/manipulation for patients suffering from pain associated with a lumbar disc herniation. For decades, chiropractic research was aiming to establish the very basis that chiropractic did in fact help people with low back pain, neck pain, etc., but today the answers are revealing that certain techniques/approaches are better than others, especially in regards to certain conditions (scoliosis, migraines, disc herniations).

For example, those techniques defined as Palmer Package, Diversified, or generalized osteopathic manipulation yield good results for low back pain determined of mechanical origin and arguably slightly less than good results for low back pain resulting from a lumbar disc herniation. However, when utilizing techniques such as Gonstead or Cox Flexion-Distraction better patient outcomes appear.

Comparing X technique to Y technique for Z condition is still a few years away in chiropractic research, but in looking at the details of some of the most recent research studies, the Gonstead technique may be rising to the top regarding the care for lumbar disc herniation--something I love working on.

For the audience's pleasure, I have a link to a wonderful review on the current state of chiropractic research that tackles everything from headaches to low back pain. Again, caution has to be used when reading such documents because ongoing research can often be at odds with previous results. The evidence for chiropractic for specific ailments is growing and helping to clarify the role of chiropractic according to the rules of the allopathic healthcare system.  

http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/print.aspx?token=af362d97-4f80-4453-a175-02cc6220a387&chunkiid=37431

Dr. Matt  

Posture is an exhaustive topic that I cover in great deal in my tips page: 

http://www.matthewamman.com/tips/item/10

A picture is worth a thousand words and in regards to posture, nothing could be closer to the truth:

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Dr. Matt 

2007 was a busy year for the team here at the office. We put forth a lot of work promoting ourselves in corporate america and the returns were favorable. We look forward to working with our corporate clients, helping them educate their employees about healthy habits and non-invasive healthcare.

Right now, my web designer and I are working on bringing my corporate speaking information online. In years past, we used "snail" mail to forward information regarding our various presentations which included: How to Live to 100, Vitamins and Supplementation, The Seven Behaviors of Successful Weight Management. If you would like to learn more, send me a note. I am more than happy to get the information out there.

In my holiday letter to my patients and corporate clients at the end of this year, I reported that we had a 94% success rate. That means that 94% of the time we were able to help patients feel 90% or better as indicated by pain level measures and /or questionnaires (Neck Pain Disability Index Questionnaire, RAND 36 Item Health Survey, etc.). Documentation of improvement allows me to make sure I'm doing my job: getting you to feel better.  

I still feel that the Gonstead approach with its specificity allows for better results, especially in the thoracic and thoraco-lumbar region using the Knee-Chest table. The art of adjusting is a personal pursuit of mine and I love using this table to properly release spinal fixations (subluxations).

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Dr. Matt