Is your stance predicting your future? Bad posture and favoring “sides” can lead to: Foot and ankle pain and degeneration Knee pain and degeneration Hip pain and degeneration Back pain and degeneration Impaired movement, need for a cane or walker, poor sleep, misery, poor balance, falls, pain while sitting, driving, standing, and working. Contrapposto (Italian pronunciation: [kontrapˈposto]) is an Italian term that means “counterpoise”. It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot, so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs in the axial plane. (source: wikipedia) Contrapposto was position used by sculptors to create a more dynamic “image” of the human form and posture. Imagine the standing position where you put more weight on one leg, and the other leg is bent back slightly. This technique to create dynamism within a sculpture was first seen in Greece about 500 BCE. The term “chiropractic” comes from Cheir and Praxis which collectively mean “done by hand”. Chiropractic also focuses on the structure, posture, and function of the human form and how it impacts how your brain and nerves experience life. While the posture and...

What is your greatest concern about labor and delivery? Is it having a natural birth or c-section? Is it pain? Hoping for a VBAC? Birthing at home? We may be able to help you prepare for labor and delivery. Chiropractic care during pregnancy by a board certified perinatal specialist may make your labor and delivery smoother and more predictable. Mounting evidence shows that beyond pain relief, chiropractic care during pregnancy may reduce your risk of a c-section, may reduce your need for medications, and may reduce the likelihood of complications due to pelvic misalignment. All of these would make a home birth less complicated and will take you closer to your goal of a Safe and natural birth with a healthy baby! You have concerns and we have the knowledge to first ease your concerns, then take safe, non invasive chiropractic care to the table to attempt to lower your risk of unwanted issues during pregnancy, labor, and delivery. Dr. Lou was awarded board certification after completing advanced training and examinations to work as a specialist with children and moms before, during and after pregnancy. This board certification was awarded by the Academy Council of Chiropractic Pediatrics and The International...

The last place you want to be during pregnancy is in a facility that cares for sick people. According to a study published in MMWR, pregnant women with COVIID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized and are at increased risk of admission to the ICU for mechanical ventilation, than non-pregnant women. The moral of the story? Don’t get COVID-19 while pregnant. When you are pregnant, you are not only caring for yourself and your family but for the baby on the way. The consequence of COVID-19 on pregnancy is not yet fully understood.   Maybe your kids are back in school and run the risk of bringing home COVID? CDC Back To School Decision Making Help For Parents and Guardians. How do you limit your risk of contracting COVID-19 while pregnant? It’s nothing you haven’t heard before. PROBIOTIC – Supplement with probiotics. They help build your immune system. MASK UP – Always wear a mask in public. AVOID SICK CLINICS – Unless unavoidable, avoid clinics that see sick people. If your back hurts, before going to the ER, Urgent Care, or Convenient MD, consider going to a chiropractic office with a controlled environment, that doesn’t work with sick people. What are...

Stress During Pregnancy Affects More Than You May Think. A study recently performed at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City, showed that mothers with high stress during pregnancy, either physically or mentally, were more likely to have girls.  They were also more likely to have premature babies. (LINK TO REPORT) While this is a preliminary study, it raises important questions. 1. If stress during pregnancy can affect gender, what else does it change on a genetic level. 2. If stress affects gender, how seriously does it impact the mother’s body chemistry? 3. We know that mental stress causes tension in the neck, head, shoulders, low back and pelvis. Pelvic tension leads to breech presentation. How does stress impact breech presentation? 4. If stress during pregnancy affects gender, how does it impact fetal brain chemistry, growth and development. 5. We know that fetal development of the stress response begins at around 5 weeks. How does maternal stress impact fetal stress at the level of the brain? All breakdown, all derangement of function comes from stress. Stress during pregnancy can be classified under three types: Physical, Mental & Chemical. Pregnancy is the one time in a woman’s life where she generally really wants...

Are you concerned about your child being on ADHD medication for the rest of their life? Is your child taking medication for ADD or ADHD and you don’t want them on the drugs? Does your child have medically diagnosed ADD or ADHD? Did you know that the part of the brain that regulates emotion, insight, empathy, intuition, communication and body language is affected by chiropractic care? It’s called the Prefrontal Cortex. Kids with ADD and ADHD respond well to chiropractic care. NOT for back pain, instead, their brain responds to chiropractic adjustments! It’s like a brain “re-boot” much like when you reboot your computer to make it run smoother.     Experts Say ADHD Is A Lifelong Condition.  We often complain about “having” to do things for the rest of our lives. Working out, brushing our teeth, paying taxes. What if your child starts a medication and it changes their brain chemistry to the extent that they can’t chemically come off of the medication later in life. This often happens with anti anxiety medications, anti depressants, and other medications started at an early age. The NIH says “in general, we haven’t really found any adverse effect of long-term use.” In general? Haven’t...

CREATING A SAFER, MORE CERTAIN FUTURE FOR YOUR CHILD WITH ADD, ADHD, AUTISM OR SENSORY PROCESSING DISORDER. The number one concern among parents with child who has processing disorders, is their future. What will happen when they, the parents, are gone. Will the child be able to care for themselves? How much will need to have been saved for their care? Who will take care of them? How will they manage in their current state, but as an adult? It is these fears that drive parents to do everything they can to help their children reconnect, adapt and thrive, even if only a little bit. Sometimes the little bit is the difference between independence, relative independence or none at all. If you, the parent, can’t sleep at night because of worry for your child’s future, but you feel like you have tried everything, it may be time to look at the science from a different perspective.  CLICK HERE TO SLEEP BETTER AT NIGHT! I would like to think, based on conversations with parents, that even a 1-5% improvement in a child’s function would make the child’s life dramatically better, and the parent’s worry decrease a bit. It’s hard enough...

Teachers Deserve More.   While many say that a child’s greatest (or worst) education is at home, teachers mean the world to our families and our children. Despite fatigue, stress, wear, tear and premature aging, they relentlessly do their best to educate our children. It’s fair to say they do a great job, but when their health suffers, so does the community at large. My wife is a teacher. My father taught for over 40 years. My mother was a teacher. I was and am lucky enough to have teachers at home and at school. Not all kids are so lucky. The health of our children’s teachers directly impacts our homes and our communities. They deserve more. The four most important things in life are on the other side of this link. If you are a teacher, you are on vacation this week. Even though many of you are catching up on school work, it’s still a  rest from bending over, looking downward and hunching over students. Hopefully, you have a break from grading papers, the stress of children’s issues, a break from over concerned parents and juggling your own life at home with your life at school. Do you...

Worried about your child’s safety and wellbeing but don’t know where to turn? Bullies are in our lives from childhood to adulthood, and how we learn to deal with them impacts our lives more than theirs. Childhood bullying trauma can destroy an entire life. Empowering your children through education and peaceful strategies for controlling situations and escaping potentially harmful ones is at the core of success. Nothing is more upsetting than seeing your child’s spirit broken by kids who are likely victims of the same bullying, harassment and abuse that they themselves are delivering. KIDPOWER International and KIDPOWER Maine are hosting 2 upcoming events in Portland, Maine. Course facilitator, Bo Jespersen is trained to teach your child strategies of avoidance, empowerment, peaceful diffusion of difficult situations, and other techniques to avoid threatening, dangerous and otherwise unpleasant people. He empowers your children to stop bullying safely. The two upcoming workshops are each 1 hour long. The cost is $10/family.  This is not a “drop off” event, parents need to stay to help their children and to learn the techniques to help their kids remember and practice them after the workshop. The video below demonstrates some of what is taught in...

Reduce your potential risk of an emergency c-section. Pain is your body’s way of alerting you of a problem. Some problems make labor and delivery even more difficult, which in turn leads to “fetal distress” at which point the doctor will order a c-section so that your baby is not “damaged.” Pelvis and low back pain, like all other warning signs, have causes. Some of these causes lead to dystocia, or difficult labor and delivery.  “Dystocia” or abnormal progress in labor is a common problem that is being looked at more closely as the incidence of C-Sections at some hospitals in the United States approaches 100%. Dystocia is also loosely defined as failure to progress during labor, lack of progressive cervical dilation or lack of fetal descent.  Before we look at the three most common causes of dystocia, lear about CPD and “abnormal progress”, both of which are common reasons that doctors give for the need for c-section. In many circles, CPD and “abnormal progress” are not legitimate reasons to have a c-section, ultimately it’s the parents’ call. Cephalopelvic distortion (CPD) is often blamed for dystocia and the need for a c-cection. CPD is a situation where the baby’s...

2 a.m. mom’s know who they are. ARE YOU A “2 a.m. MOM?” A 2 a.m. mom is one who is up at 2 a.m. because of a child. If you are reading this, you are a great parent. You may be up worrying or you may be up because the child is up and needs you. Either way, at some point during the night, your stress is heightened and your worry soars. Your mind races, longs for answers, you want to sleep but your child is more important than rest. If nothing else is certain about Sensory processing disorders, ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) and the rest of the growing neurological disorders in children, one thing is for sure. They have strong and undeniable neurological components. The question is, what is the rest of the equation? What caused the nervous system to change? In an article published in the journal “Frontiers In Integrative Neuroscience,” in 2009, findings point to a host of potential contributors to Sensory Processing Disorders (SPD) and children with both ASD and SPD. Many studies have shown that there may multiple causes, making the hunt for a single cause, all that more elusive. Many of...