With the weather warming up, making it difficult for us to be active during day, it is easy to excuse yourself from exercising. Although that shouldn’t be an excuse to not go running during night, find your old running shoes and start running again.
The benefits of running are immeasurable. And while most people agree that the right pair of shoes and a good warm up and stretch down- routine could avoid you putting strain on your body, research suggests that runners often develop back problems. With the pro’s far outweighing the cons, there are ways to rack up the mileage without having your spine suffer the effects.
For a typical runner most injuries reside as a result of weakened muscles around the mid-section, poor technique and foot imbalances. Now, all of these lead to disequilibrium of you body’s mechanics, and with running being quite a high impact activity, so the damage could be long term if not taken care of.
According to Dr. Christopher Bono, writing in “The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery” in 2004, disc degeneration is higher in athletes than it is in non-athletes; and the fact that sacral stress fracture occurs almost exclusively in marathon and track runners alone suggests that extensive running on hard surfaces poses a threat to the longevity of your spinal column.
Although back pain is usually temporary and curable through rest, there are certain situations, which are more critical and would have to be explored by a specialist for a more extensive treatment method.
These include
- Spinal stenosis
Symptoms
- Numbness, weakness or tingling in a leg, foot, arm or hand
- Pain or cramping in your legs when you stand for long periods of time or when you walk. The discomfort usually eases when you bend forward or sit down.
- Pelvic Misalignment
Such discrepancies can be mistakenly attributed to permanent biomechanical issues when in fact they are often a temporary condition brought on by poor pelvic alignment.
Symptoms
- Strength imbalances (or asymmetries): This can cause a runner to favor one side over the other, which ultimately pulls the hip out of alignment.
- While lying down with your knees pulled up then extended, a chiropractor would be able to see how your knees are positioned. You will also be able to see it by looking at different wear patterns on the soles of your shoes. Often the shoe with greater heel and toe wear will be the side that is slightly longer, since it may overextend and lead to more heel striking.
- Slipped disc
Symptoms
- Weakness when raising the big toe and possibly in the ankle, also known as foot drop. Numbness and pain can also be felt on top of the foot.
- Patients may feel weakness in the deltoid muscle in the upper arm
- Numbness or tingling sensations
Getting chiropractic treatment is a growing trend among elite runners, says Dr. Ira Shapiro of Old Bridge, N.J., a three-time member of the U.S. Olympic Committee medical team who has been treating runners for the better part of two decades.
When saddled with an injury, most athletes are desperate to find quick solutions before hard-earned fitness slips away. The benefits of seeing a chiropractor go beyond the significance of an adjustment. Head-to-toe analyses of our patients who are symptomatic, is the first step. Looking at how and why an injury occurs is different, from the approach that other practitioners have, for example- orthopedic doctors look at the bone; chiropractors look at how the soft tissue and the bone interact.
We look at the whole body, not just the injury, for example pain in the hip might be due to a problem in the shoulder.
