Exercises for Healthy Hips

Keeping your muscles strong and flexible is essential for keeping your skeleton in alignment. Whether you’re recovering from an injury or just trying to stay healthy, it's a good idea to be stretching regularly. At Kosak Chiropractic in Fairfield, we help patients to devise individualized therapeutic regimens that fit their needs and are safe for them. But there are a few strategies for maintaining strong hips that work for most people, so let’s explore the basics.

We need to be cautious about forms of exercise such as jumping that subject the joints to repeated impacts. While in recovery from an injury, it’s often better to start slowly with range-of-motion exercises, such as hip circles. This means standing on one leg and slowly rotating the other in the air. Another exercise is the knee-to-chest stretch, in which a person lies on their back with their legs straight, and lifts one knee toward their chest and holds it before switching to the other leg. Side leg raises, in which a person lies on their side and lifts their leg while keeping it extended, are also a good way of strengthening the glutes.

As a person recovers, they’ll be able to do more complicated stretches and higher-stress exercises, such as lunges. The keys to avoiding overuse injuries are to ramp up intensity slowly and to maintain a varied work-out routine. Strong core and hip muscles will allow runners and other athletes to better withstand the jostling their joints are subjected to when their feet strike the ground or they have to change direction suddenly. We can also help athletes to recover faster by providing electric muscle stimulation, which increases blood flow by contracting the muscles, and by adjusting dislocated joints that may be putting extra strain on the hip and lower back muscles.

Kosak Chiropractic is located at 1252 Travis Blvd., Suite G, Fairfield, CA, 94533. To schedule an appointment, visit Kosak Chiropractic online or call 707-426-1111.

Osteoarthritic Hip Pain

Kosak Chiropractic in Fairfield treats aches and pains by taking a holistic perspective on health. If a patient is suffering from hip pain, it won’t just be their hip that’s affected, but also their lower back and legs. But by the same token, improvement in hip function can improve overall health, and we offer several non-addictive, complementary treatments for strengthening hips affected by osteoarthritis.

When a person has osteoarthritis, the cartilage that cushions the bones in their joints is eroding. This causes the bones to rub together, triggering inflammation and the growth of bony spurs. Wear and tear is a factor in osteoarthritis, and as the cartilage on the ball of the femur gets worn down, grinding between the femur and socket of the hip changes the hip’s mechanics. The muscles and ligaments surrounding the hip joint are complex, allowing the leg to move in all directions, and as they experience more friction, they become strained. The hip will often stiffen, leading to deterioration of the muscles between the leg and lower back.

Hip pain will often be worse when a person has been lying down or seated for a long time. Although it is tempting to rest for long periods, inactivity will cause further atrophy of the hip muscles. Instead, they need to be strengthened and made more flexible through therapeutic exercise. We can help by prescribing personalized work-out routines as well as providing anti-inflammatory treatments such as therapeutic massages and electric muscle stimulation. We also advise patients on better posture to reduce stress on their pelvic joints, and perform chiropractic adjustments on lower back vertebrae that are under stress due to tight muscles.

Kosak Chiropractic is located at 1252 Travis Blvd., Suite G, Fairfield, CA, 94533. To schedule an appointment, visit Kosak Chiropractic online or call 707-426-1111.

Back Pain in the Office

With so many people staying seated most of the time, it’s no wonder that back pain is so common. Maintaining any position for too long causes muscles and tendons to seize up, but office workers, especially, tend to sit in a way that puts excessive stress on their joints and soft tissues. At Kosak Chiropractic in Fairfield, we utilize a variety of complementary, non-invasive treatments to restore people to health. But to prevent back pain from returning, they need to know how to sit properly.

The best posture to hold when seated is one that allows most of your musculoskeletal system to remain aligned. When seated at a desk, you’ll want your chair to be at a level that allows your thighs to be perpendicular to the floor while your feet are flat on the ground. Your elbows should also be slightly elevated, allowing you to reach straight forward to your mouse and keyboard. Your computer monitors should be at eye-level when you are sitting straight, and you should sit as far back in your chair as you can, with your back resting on the back cushion. Above all, you want to avoid slouching forward or backward, and to not have anything in your back pockets.

But even the best posture is unhealthy when a person doesn’t move around enough. People should stretch every half hour and get out of their chairs to walk around at least every ninety minutes. Most people are advised to get in at least twenty minutes of aerobic exercise a day. Stretching out the hips and legs will help reduce strain on the lower back, as will increased core strength. If a person is currently suffering pain, we can help to diagnose their condition and provide treatments, including massage therapy for soft tissues and chiropractic adjustments.

Kosak Chiropractic is located at 1252 Travis Blvd., Suite G, Fairfield, CA, 94533. To schedule an appointment, visit Kosak Chiropractic online or call 707-426-1111.

 

Personal Injury

When bodily harm occurs from being involved in any type of accident, specifically outside of your workplace, it is considered a personal injury. We at Kosak Chiropractic recommend coming in for a visit as soon as possible so that he can assess the damage and get you on the road to recovery. Whether it be a single or series of adjustments, your Fairfield, CA chiropractor is one of the best options for uncovering underlying issues from your accident.

Examples of personal injuries include:

- Auto accidents

- Motorcycle accidents

- Bicycle accidents

- A slip, trip, or fall

While a doctor treats symptoms with prescriptions, a chiropractor works to correct the problem with focused stretching of the affected muscles and careful adjustments. Your Fairfield, CA chiropractor recommends against letting your injury go untreated since this can cause more problems down the line, and affect your quality of life even more than the accident already has. If you find that everyday tasks cannot be done without significant pain, it may be time to schedule an appointment with us at Kosak Chiropractic.

Do you have any questions or concerns? We are happy to help. Kosak Chiropractic is located on 1252 Travis Blvd., Suite G, in Fairfield, CA 94533. For more information or to schedule an appointment, please visit kosakchiropractic.com or call us at 707-426-1111.

 

Core Strengthening for Healthy Backs

Physical therapy is frequently necessary to recover from back pain, but maintaining a healthy core is also one of the most important measures a person can take. Our musculoskeletal system experts at Kosak Chiropractic help patients to make lifestyle adjustments that will allow their bodies to function comfortably. While injured patients should consult with professionals about what exercises to do, there are some aspects of the body’s core that everyone should be informed about.

We have multiple layers of abdominal muscles, and the visible one from the front, the rectus abdominis, is important but not the only contributor to spinal support. The innermost core muscle, the transverse abdominis, is a corset-like structure that holds organs in place. Between it and the rectus abdominis are two layers of oblique muscles, which allow the torso to rotate and bend side-to-side. There are also several vertical muscles running along the vertebrae that maintain posture. These are known as the deep muscles or transversospinales to distinguish them from other muscles of the back, which allow the thoracic and cervical vertebrae to bend.

When core muscles are strong, they are able to support the spinal discs and other soft tissues attached to vertebrae. In addition to strengthening and flexibility exercises, soft tissues benefit from therapeutic massages, which reduce recovery time by improving blood flow and loosening knots. Low or no-impact exercises, such as yoga and swimming, are good choices for most chiropractic patients, so talk to us about what kind of exercise you might enjoy.

Kosak Chiropractic is located at 1252 Travis Blvd., Suite G, Fairfield, CA, 94533. To schedule an appointment, visit Kosak Chiropractic online or call 707-426-1111.