Arthritis Treatments in Los Gatos, CA

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Positive Motion Chiropractic provides expert chiropractic adjustments to treat arthritis joint pain in Los Gatos.

Arthritis is a degenerative condition where the cartilage that covers the joint surfaces begins to wear thin and becomes inflamed. Arthritis causes painful joints and limitations in our daily activities. These arthritic joints commonly cause:

  • Knee pain
  • Hip pain
  • Neck pain
  • Shoulder pain
  • Finger Pain
  • Foot pain
  • Low back pain

Just because you have been diagnosed with arthritis doesn’t mean you have to reserve yourself to daily pain. Depending on the stage of arthritis, the joints involved, and your other health habits there are many things that can be done to help decrease symptoms and improve pain-free function. Our expert chiropractors in Los Gatos have been successfully helping patients with arthritis pain since 2004. Our oldest patient is 101!

Arthritis, Osteoarthritis, and Degenerative Joint Disease (DJD)

A fact of life is that we are all getting older. It is true of the 5 year old and the 95 year old. But that doesn’t mean that our body has to be in daily pain.There is a difference between chronological age and physiological age. The first is the inevitable passing of time. But physiological age is how our body is aging.

It is not uncommon to see a patient in their 50’s with the strength, stamina, flexibility, and energy of many of our 30 year old patients. How can that be? Physiological age is a combination of how well we take care of ourselves, including things like:

  • Our dietary habits
  • Our exercise routine (types, frequency, duration)
  • Stress levels and stress reduction tools
  • Accumulated injuries (and how we have corrected those)
  • Genetics (less so than we previously believed)
  • Inflammatory load

At Positive Motion Chiropractic in Los Gatos we tell our patients that degenerative conditions like arthritis and joint pain should be thought of like rust on the bumper of your car. Just like rust (an oxidative process) is continually going on, it doesn’t mean that a car with one year of rust (hard to even visualize) on the bumper is worn out. Indeed, you may have a thirty year old car that don’t show any signs of rust.

So it is with our joints. Your joints will develop arthritis and the discs in your spine will thin out as you age, but the speed at which that occurs is largely up to you. Just like your teeth and whether you keep them healthy into your retirement.

We also know that just because someone has x-rays or an MRI that shows degenerative changes or arthritis doesn’t mean that that person has to be in daily pain and limited in their activities. It is not uncommon for us to see patients with moderate, and sometimes even severe, degenerative changes on their x-rays and MRI who have minimal, if any, symptoms of pain or limitations in their daily lives.

Our skilled chiropractors address each patient with arthritis and degenerative changes in a personalized manner. Through a thorough history, physical exam, functional movement evaluation, and that patient’s individual goals we are able to craft a customized conservative care treatment plan to get them feeling their best.

Treatment Options for Arthritis Pain

There are many methods for treating joint pain associated with arthritis. At Positive Motion Chiropractic we believe that the most elegant solution is always the one that is simple, addresses the root cause, and is the least invasive.

Many people take drugs, get injections, and have surgery to deal with arthritis pain. These options come with great costs and risks. However, in some cases medications (ex: anti-inflammatories, pain medications), cortisone injections, and joint surgeries (ex: total knee replacement, total hip replacement, spinal fusion surgery, etc) are the most appropriate treatment. At Positive Motion Chiropractic we believe in utilizing these options only in emergencies or after trying more conservative alternatives that have failed to produce results.

At Positive Motion Chiropractic our treatment approach is simple and effective:

  1. Correct the underlying joint and/or muscle imbalances.
  2. Speed up tissue healing and reduce inflammation to give accelerated pain relief.
  3. Teach the patient how to reduce the chance of recurrence.

Utilizing this framework we provide rapid pain relief, fundamental joint and muscle changes to correct the root cause, and also help the patient avoid having to keep returning for care.

Here are some of the techniques and tools we use when we treat our professional and Olympic athlete patients. Guess what? They are the same techniques and tools we use with every one of our patients. (follow the links below to learn more about each type of treatment)

Chiropractic Adjustments

There are 210 bones in the human body and in-between them are joints. Just like the hinges on a door can get rusty and stuck, the same thing can happen with your joints (no, they don’t rust). When your joints become fixated and lose proper motion they become stiff, inflamed, and painful.

A chiropractic adjustment helps to restore normal motion back to your joints. There are many different ways to perform a chiropractic adjustment, including by hand and using an instrument called an Activator. Chiropractic adjustments utilizing an instrument don’t involve “cracking sounds” or twisting of the body.

Myofascial Therapy, Graston, Fascial Distortion Model (FDM)

Muscle stabilize and move the bones of your body. Fascia, or myofascia, encases your muscles in a thin, yet tough covering. This slippery covering allows muscles, tendons, nerves, and other structures in your body to effortlessly glide over and past each other. But through trauma, repetitive motion injuries, and postural stresses, these fascial layers can become stuck to each other through adhesions (think microscopic scar tissue).

Without addressing these myofascial adhesions the movement restrictions and pain come back shortly after getting a chiropractic adjustment or massage. But by working on and getting rid of these myofascial adhesions we are able to restore normal motion and help create lasting improvement in a patient’s function.

We utilize various myofascial techniques, including Graston technique (an form of instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization or IASTM), FDM (Fascial Distortion Model) and cupping (static or with motion). These soft tissue therapies when directed at the right body tissues combined with specific chiropractic adjustments are core to the results we consistently see at Positive Motion Chiropractic.

Cold Laser Therapy

“I want to be able to keep up with my kids but my knees feel so stiff and painful lately.”

When patients need every chance to get back to 100% ASAP we have another tool at our disposal. We utilizes cold laser to help speed up metabolic rate, decrease inflammation, and help control pain levels. Athletes who don’t have any time to waste in getting back to 100% frequently use cold laser therapy in their treatment protocols.

Cold laser treatment is painless, takes around fifteen minutes per session, and is a great adjunct to chiropractic adjustments and soft tissue therapies like Graston.

Targeted Rehab Exercises

A specific single muscle can be weak leading to imbalance and pain. It is rarely a large muscle group that we would think of working out at the gym (ex: quadriceps or biceps). Rather it is usually a stabilizing or balance muscle which is often overlooked. But weakness in a vital muscle can have devastating effects on posture, joint function, and balance.

At Positive Motion Chiropractic we don’t give our patients a page of generalized exercises. Who has the time for 30-60 minutes of home exercises per day? Instead, through our detailed and personalized assessment we determine if the patient has a specific muscle weakness and design a customized, targeted rehabilitation program for those individual weaknesses. Translation: tangible decrease in pain and physical limitations with minimal investment of time and effort.

Kinesiology Tape

Most people have seen a professional athlete sporting some colorful tape over a body part. Professional and Olympic athletes have been using Kinesio Tape or Rock Tape for years. In the last few years we have seen more recreational and non-athletes using Kinesio Tape.

Kinesio Tape has three main functions:

  1. Decreases localized inflammation
  2. Helps reduce pain
  3. Aids in the correction of motion patterns

We apply the Kinesio Tape on the patient during treatment, but also teach them or a family member how to use the tape so they can use it at home. Teach a person to fish…

Postural Correction

What you do regularly has a very real impact on how your body functions and feels. If you regularly slouch and collapse into poor postures over time your body will lose function and hurt.

We all know good posture is important, but most people have been told two myths about correcting posture:

  1. You need to think about your posture ALWAYS.
  2. You need to strengthen your postural muscles – if they are stronger you will have better posture.

At Positive Motion Chiropractic we have literally travelled the world to learn from the greatest experts how to teach people to have beautiful, effortless, and functional posture. We do this in group classes and individual instruction. It is fun and interesting to learn and the results are phenomenal.

Ergonomics

Many people spend the majority of their day at a workstation. If that workspace is not set up for you to win then your body will lose. You will notice decreasing flexibility, limited range of motion, and over time strength declines. And your body will start to hurt. First felt as nagging tension and soreness.

To provide lasting positive changes for our patients we look at their ergonomic setup and make simple, but effective, recommendations to maximize the comfort and function of their workspace. Our ergonomic evaluations are invaluable and performed at no extra charge for patients who can benefit.

If you got this far reading about causes and treatment options for arthritis pain you deserve to take the next step and get a world-class evaluation by an expert sports chiropractor. Schedule your appointment now using our real-time online schedule.