Q: I have twins and am chasing them everywhere! My body hurts basically all of the time now and I need relief. Will these problems effect me for the rest of my life? Can a chiropractor help?
A: These problems do not have to effect you now or for the rest of your life. We have the pleasure of helping parents care for their families with less pain on a regular basis. We get to see the “mommy-to-be” and the toddler chasers everyday. All of the stages of rearing children create a different type of stress for the parent, from physical to emotional. Likely discomfort should be expected after a long hard day of [parenting, but pain all day and night is unacceptable.
From morning to night, a parent’s busy day is full of twists, turns, lifts, dashes and you-name-it, all of which, a little at a time, can take their toll on the body. Parents become experts at multi-tasking, but that takes its toll, too. Cradling a telephone, say, between your ear and your shoulder while you’re fixing lunch could cause a painful lock-up of the spinal joints in the upper back and neck. Toting a baby on a hip while doing some other chore can have your lower back screaming by the end of the day. Bending in and out of a car trunk or back seat to retrieve groceries, strollers and children is physically demanding work, stressing your body, and your back in particular.
The result of all of this chasing around is commonly pain from muscle spasm, misaligned joints, lack of flexibility, and even injury like a sprain or disc herniation. Chiropractic treatment, of course, can help when your musculoskeletal system gets knocked out of line. Relief is usually a handful of treatments away, and correcting your body’s movement patterns, strength, and flexibility takes mere weeks to attain.
But talk with your chiropractor about the right way to perform some of your parental movements. He or she can give you some more tips and some exercises to stay limber and pain-free that are specific to you, but here are a couple of proper ways to perform some of these parental tasks. When lifting a child, for instance, don’t bend at the waist. Squat, instead, holding the child close and let your legs do the lifting.
