Car Accident Insurance: Are You Covered?
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Houston Area Chiropractor Comments: Most states require drivers to carry various types of insurance to protect themselves as well as others who may be involved in an unfortunate accident. Drivers, and the banks that may carry the car’s loan, generally think of the vehicle first when deciding on appropriate coverage. While it’s difficult to think about, you need to also consider injuries to you and your passengers, and potentially other drivers and passengers, should you be determined to be at fault. Some drivers also carry medical insurance (med pay) or personal injury protection (PIP), which can be accessed for care in the event of an accident.
Some items to consider are that vehicle repairs can be quite costly, as can health care. If you are the cause of a multi vehicle accident, minimal amounts of insurance may not cover the costs of repairs for expensive new vehicles. In terms of health care, an ambulance ride with minimal interventions could cost $1000-$1,500 dollars. If you spend a few hours or a day in an emergency room, this could run into the thousands, especially if advanced imaging such as MRI or CT scans are needed. This is just the beginning of your evaluation in a severe accident. Then, there are the costs of care over perhaps months, disability from being able to work and other costs. If a few passengers are involved, the costs can soar.
It’s important to discuss these issues with your insurance agent. Is your med pay / PIP adequate? Sometimes med pay premiums are a cost-effective way to get some additional piece of mind. A $1,000.00 med pay allowance will not last long in today’s health care environment. Clear lake chiropractor care, while very cost effective compared to medicine or surgery, can still run into the thousands if severe injuries have resulted from the accident. You may also need to consider uninsured and underinsured coverage should another driver be at fault and not adequately insured.
If you’ve been involved in an accident, our clinic can assist you in getting well. Most patients have a lot of questions about how chiropractic care works and the treatment techniques used in our office. It’s important to get evaluated right after an injury to get you feeling well as soon as possible. Doing self-care when the trauma is substantial can lead to more problems if a serious injury is not discovered.
Dr. Ward Beecher practices at Beecher Chiropractic Clinic at 1001 Pineloch, Ste 700 Houston, TX 77062. You can schedule an appointment at BeecherChiropractic.com or by calling (281) 286-1300. If you have any questions regarding this blog, please comment below!
Do We Under Treat Headaches?
Doctor of Chiropractic Comments: With all the different types of pain relievers available at the corner drug store, you’d think headache sufferers would have a solution to their problem. But, such is not the case, and headaches continue to be a great burden on society, afflicting millions of people and causing economic and social losses, in addition to personal pain. What’s more, it seems general medical physicians may under-diagnose this common problem.
A study from England (Br J Gen Pract 2008; 58(547):102) has highlighted this widespread issue. The researchers studied over 91,000 adult patients who had recently reported a headache. Amazingly, seventy percent of these patients were not given a diagnosis. It was suggested by the authors that general medical physicians have difficulty in diagnosing headache presentations.
Causes of Headaches
It’s important to diagnose the cause of a headache. The spine is often overlooked as having the potential for causing a headache. Too often, headaches are thought to have their cause in the head. While this is where 
the pain is most prominent (as opposed to the neck), neck symptoms, such as muscle tension, knots and painful tissues, also contribute to the pain picture. If your neck mobility is also reduced, this can also be a indicator that the neck could be the source of the head pain.
When bad neck posture is present, this can manifest as a forward head posture. Patients who have had previous whiplash injuries can often show this type of posture. Sprains of the small vertebral joints can be enough to produce head pain and need to be addressed. When the headache is thought to originate in the neck, it is called “cervicogenic.”
Neck problems have also been implicated in certain cases of tension-type, as well as migraine headaches, but how this occurs exactly is still being investigated.
Whatever their cause, headaches have a devastating impact on our quality of life and need to be effectively treated. Chiropractic care has been shown in several studies to reduce headache pain and is an important non-drug option for patients. While drug treatments can be quite effective for some patients, one also has to consider long-term side effects when considering this management approach.
If you would like to discuss your headache symptoms, we can consult with you to see if this type of care is appropriate.
Dr. Ward Beecher practices at Beecher Chiropractic Clinic at 1001 Pineloch, Ste 700 Houston, TX 77062. You can schedule an appointment at BeecherChiropractic.com or by calling (281) 286-1300. If you have any questions regarding this blog, please comment below!
Low Back Pain: An Ice Pack or the Hot Tub?
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Back pain doctor comments: Many patients do some self-care when they first hurt their lower back, hoping this will keep them out of a doctor’s office. Home remedies sometimes make the pain go away and sometimes they don’t. It depends on what you try. When the back is first hurt, it’s often a sprain/strain type of injury with accompanying muscle spasm. When a nerve in the low back gets pinched or irritated, the body will protect the delicate nerves by keeping you from moving and risking further nerve injury. The easiest way for the body to do this is to cause the back muscles to spasm and splint the injured area.
Is Heat or Cold Better for Lower Back Pain?
Muscle pain can be quite severe and heat can sometimes soothe muscle pain. For this reason, many patients take to the heating pad or the hot tub to try and get some relief. This should be avoided in an acute injury because inflammation is present. With inflammation, there is increased heat and the additional heat you provide is like adding gasoline to a fire. The results are usually not good. You will probably feel good for 20-30 minutes and then the pain will return.
A better choice with an acute injury is to ice the area, but this also needs to be done with some caution. The simplest ice pack is ice cubes placed in a plastic bag. While effective, you can cause a frostbite injury if you leave the pack on for too long. When you first ice the area, you will go through several phases before some pain relief is achieved. At first the pack will feel cold. The next phase is a burning sensation and the ice will almost feel hot. This is followed by an aching or throbbing sensation. Just before the area is numbed, a very sharp pain will be experienced followed by the relief you desire. This can take from five to ten minutes to go through all of the phases. Once numbness is achieved, the pack should be removed. This will be about 20 minutes. You should most definitely not fall asleep while the pack is on.
Treatment for Lower Back Pain in Houston
If this simple procedure does not solve the problem, it’s best to get your spine checked by a doctor of chiropractic.
Dr. Ward Beecher practices at Beecher Chiropractic Clinic at 1001 Pineloch, Ste 700 Houston, TX 77062. You can schedule an appointment at BeecherChiropractic.com or by calling (281) 286-1300. If you have any questions regarding this blog, please comment below!
A Possible Link Between Headache and High Blood Pressure
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Houston Area Chiropractor Comments: Headaches are one of the common pains we get. High blood pressure is also very common, affecting about 50 million Americans. Could they be linked? Yes, but not in the way you may think. Some doctors question whether taking pain pills actually corrects the cause of the headache. But there are also other, perhaps more seemingly silent concerns.
Is simply cutting the fire alarm when the house is on fire ever a good idea? If your headache is coming from a problem such as a sprained and subluxated neck, is taking a pill going to do anything to help the joint injury?
We all see the TV commercials and the long pill aisles at the supermarket. We must be consuming quite a bit and that is true. But could our excessive use of these drugs be causing another problem, one that may not be explained on the pill bottle label?
Researchers have looked at over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen (e.g. Tylenol) and ibuprofen (e.g. Advil), to see if taking them over the long-term elevates the risk for developing high blood pressure (Hypertension 2005;46:500. Women’s Health Study I and II) The study investigated 5,123 women between the ages of 34 and 77 and followed them over many years.
Compared with women who did not use acetaminophen, the relative risk for those who took >500 mg per day was 1.93 (1.30 to 2.88) among older women. and 1.99 (1.39 to 2.85) among younger women. A relative risk of 1.93 is a 93% increase in risk. The range was a 30% increase to a 185% increase.
For nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g. ibuprofen), the risk of developing high blood pressure in older women also increased, ranging from a 78% to a 161% elevation. For younger women, the increased risks ranged from a 10% increase to a 132% increase.
Aspirin use was not associated with developing high blood pressure. The authors concluded that because acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are commonly used, they might contribute to the high prevalence (percent of the population with this disease) of high blood pressure in the United States.
Dr. Ward Beecher practices at Beecher Chiropractic Clinic at 1001 Pineloch, Ste 700 Houston, TX 77062. You can schedule an appointment at BeecherChiropractic.com or by calling (281) 286-1300. If you have any questions regarding this blog, please comment below!
