A pregnant body is undergoing tremendous and wonderful changes, but these changes aren’t without consequence. The increase of weight in the front alters their centre of gravity and changes the biomechanical forces in her joints as she walks and moves. As she nears the end of her nine-month adventure, the ligaments that hold the joints together start to loosen in preparation for the main event. If the joints don’t feel stable anymore because of the lax ligaments, then the muscles may become tense and brace around them to provide additional support.
A woman’s body spends a lot of energy building a baby (or babies). That body deserves special treatment. Chiropractic care is a safe and effective way to help your body adapt to the changing biomechanical demands and forces on your tissues. The more "gracefully" you can adapt to these body changes, the better you will load your tissues, meaning less aches and pains.
Congratulations, you had a baby!
Life with a new baby can quickly shift from the most magical experience of your life to a time of insurmountable physical and emotional stress. Your body has just performed miracles. It has put up with the biomechanical burdens of increasing weight, shifting centre of gravity, and ligament laxity. It has survived the extreme sporting event of child birth. In some cases, you may have even undergone major surgery. And now, as your body is trying to put itself back together, you are carrying around a squirmy little sack of potatoes roughly 20 hours a day, hunching over to feed it, and not sleeping. Being a mom is magical, but it’s not easy!
At AltaVie Health, our postnatal care and rehabilitation program is designed to help you stay healthy, feel good, get strong, and avoid injury while meeting (and exceeding) the unique demands of motherhood. Whether your goal is to be able to lower baby gently into her crib without excruciating pain or to run your first half marathon since your motherly transformation, we can help you get back to your activities and to feeling good, safely. Postpartum Chiropractic Care can mean different things to different people.
Postpartum Chiropractic Treatments
Common postpartum conditions:
Pain after having a baby is common, and doesn't make life any easier. A postpartum chiropractor can help. Some of the conditions that we see in the office postpartum include:
- Neck pain often related to infant feeding positions and posture
- Low back pain
- Pelvic pain
- Tailbone pain
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis (aka "mommy thumb” or "mommy wrist")
- Plantar Fasciitis (pain on the bottom of your feet)
- Diastasis Recti recovery
Postpartum treatments may include:
- Soft tissue work to ease tension and hypersensitivity
- Joint adjustments/manipulations (we have a VARIETY of techniques to choose from and will find the right fit for you)
- Clearance for return to exercise
- Specific exercise prescription for your particular situation and goals
- A referral to a pelvic floor physiotherapist, if needed
- We have great RMTs on staff too! Registered massage therapy (RMT) sessions can encourage relaxation and healing
- Accessories for support at home
- Kinesiology taping
Chiropractic care is a safe treatment option for all ages.
There have been several large review studies verifying the safety of chiropractic care for children of all ages6,7,8,9. All manual therapy techniques and home care recommendations for children are modified to appropriately meet the physical needs of the developmental stage that little body is in. For example, the amount of force used to adjust an infant is often compared to the amount of pressure you would use to test a ripe tomato at the grocery store10. (Those of you with kids know that they are certainly able to withstand a lot more of a squish than that!) Catering care in this way requires a working understanding of the anatomy as it grows and changes over time. This is one reason why choosing a chiropractor who focuses on or has completed additional training in pediatric care is often recommended.
Chiropractic care for kids is different… because kids are different!
Although the basic premise for chiropractic care is the same whether the patient is 80-years-old or 8-minutes-old, the ever-growing and ever-changing active little bodies of children have distinct needs. Although our care is essentially applied understanding of anatomy at any time of life, chiropractic care for infants and children looks very different than that for adults, both in treatment techniques and responses. Generally, we find that children respond much faster and more profoundly to chiropractic care than adults do.
Another major difference is that pain is often not a primary complaint. This can make it more difficult for parents to know when their child may benefit from a visit with their chiropractor. There are certain “clues” that parents can watch for to gain more understanding in this area, such as postural changes, only wanting to breastfeed from one side, being off-balance or suddenly clumsy, always tilting their head to one side, refusing to roll one direction, or running with a limp. Remember, chiropractors are healthcare professionals trained in assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of the neuromusculoskeletal system. That means we support the health of the bones, joints, muscles, and nerves of the whole body, whether it is full-size or still growing. We are here to help, whether for headaches and pain complaints, trauma checks, gross motor development, early feeding struggles related to biomechanics, or something more subtle.
As mentioned above, the amount of force used and the specific techniques utilized will vary depending on the unique needs of an individual kid and what stage of development they are currently in. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to chiropractic care of infants and children! Depending on the presenting patient and their goals, chiropractic care at AltaVie may include a blend manual therapy (adjustments, soft tissue treatments), craniosacral therapy (CST), kinesiology taping, lifestyle modifications, home care recommendations, exercise rehab, clinical nutrition, and health education. One aspect of care that is the same for children and adults is that you are going to be involved!
→ Are you starting to experience menopause or menopausal symptoms?
→ Are you noticing more lower back or pelvic pain?
→ Are you experiencing incontinence or leaking with activity that you have never had before?
→ Do you have nagging aches and pains that just won’t go away?
Menopause is a major life event that creates changes to our body that many of us don’t even know about. The shift in hormones slows our tissue healing times, reduces the integrity and elasticity of our connective tissues and decreases our muscle mass and bone density. For these reasons, it is very important to maintain an active lifestyle to keep the body strong for this stage of life. But for many, they begin to experience nagging aches and pains and especially pelvic issues that they never had as a younger adult when trying to be active during menopause.
All of these things could, in part, be due to menopause causing the connective tissues in the pelvic floor to loose their elasticity. Without this elasticity, our core and pelvic floor can’t function properly to support our organs and the rest of the body. Chiropractic and proper pelvic floor rehabilitation can help improve these symptoms to help get you back to doing the things you love without the pain and dysfunction!
Chiropractic helps all people from all walks of life but can be very beneficial for special populations such as those experiencing or about to experience perimenopause. Since this is a time for drastic change in metabolism, bone growth and collagen formation many aches and pains as well as weaknesses can expose themselves.
Chiropractic can assess and improve muscle imbalances, joint stiffness as well as prevent tendon injuries with soft tissue techniques, joint mobilizations and exercises. We also want to support great body mechanics to keep you exercising through these years to prevent bone density loss.
Common Body Symptoms During Perimenopause
- shoulder pain/injuries,
- urinary incontinence,
- plantar fasciosis or foot pain,
- headaches and
- recurrent low back injuries.