Beginning your journey of weight loss seems simple enough in theory, but in practice it can be frustrating. The results often don’t come as quickly as you’d like nor as easily. What I’ve found with my patients and friends is that motivation is extremely important. The results from your hard work will eventually fuel your progress, but results do not come immediately. In order to get in the habit of a healthy lifestyle, you need to find motivation first.
Losing weight has a lot of benefits that can motivate you to seek results in your routine. When you begin to exercise and eat properly, you lower your risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure, increase self esteem and improve the overall functioning of your body and mind. Recent research proves that losing weight also decreases back pain. Severe back pain can drastically lower your quality of life, and by losing weight, you can increase your overall enjoyment of life. If that’s not motivation enough to begin your weight-loss plan, I don’t know what is! A study involving 30 chiropractic patients proved that the lower the patient’s BMI dropped, the less severe their back pain became. Of course, the patients also received spinal manipulation throughout the study, but weight loss greatly increased their recovery rate.
When you lose weight, the space between the discs in your spine expands. When this space expands, there is less pressure on your nerves, causing the severity of your back pain to decrease. This decrease in pressure along with regular manipulations aids in a faster recovery. Not only will you recover faster, but you’ll be less prone to future injury. In a separate study of 5,511 patients who experienced a work-related back injury, 75% of them did not need to seek additional treatment after receiving chiropractic treatment.
I regularly work with individuals who suffer a work-related injury that interferes not only with their quality of life but with their ability to work and advance their careers. In order to fully recover from an injury and offset chronic back pain, a healthy lifestyle is required in addition to regular chiropractic treatment. Here’s why: chiropractic and overall wellness go hand-in-hand. Chiropractic facilitates weight loss by increasing athletic performance, mobility and decreasing pain. Weight loss greatly increases your recovery rate when paired with chiropractic due to the relief of spinal pressure. Once you recover enough from an injury to return to your full performance at work, you definitely do not want to re-injure yourself. However, without proper lifestyle adjustments, your risk of re-injury is high. If you exercise, eat well, and actively work at a healthy lifestyle, your chances of re-injury drastically decrease.
When I treat patients, I always encourage an overall healthy lifestyle. I can work with you on a weight loss plan, food log and exercise routine. It’s my goal to not only treat your back pain, but prevent it from reoccurring. And for those of you who are already living healthily, prevention is key! Regular adjustments will help keep you in top athletic performance no matter your preferred workout routine.
Keep this in mind as the holidays approach and temperature drops. Work hard to find motivation to stay healthy all winter long!
Best of health,
Dr. Chad M. Hoffman
Lifestyle Chiropractic
(920) 499-3333
drchadmhoffman@gmail.com