The Bass Guitar & Injuries Tools to fight arm and hand injuries. You are today, the sum of all your experiences, practices, gigs, accidents, stressors, and jobs. One of the biggest mistakes when working to prevent or resolve playing injuries is sometimes focusing too much on the instrument, it’s balance and position, and not enough on your day to day activities. “Good practices” are not as simple as warming up, taking breaks, and cooling down after play!!!” PRMD’s or “playing-related musculoskeletal disorders” are common among guitarists of all types. In bass players, repetitive stress injuries of the forearm, shoulder, neck, elbow, wrist, and hand are especially common. The length of the neck, string tension, and action, the weight of the guitar, arm and hand position, fingering techniques all make the bass guitar a moderate to high-risk instrument. From Carpal tunnel syndrome, and trigger fingers, to tennis elbow, there are many controllable factors and methods for reducing your risk of injury that you may not be aware of. Thinking beyond warming up, taking breaks, and cooling down after play. Warming up, taking regular and restful breaks, as well as cooling down after playing, much like in an athlete, have great...

Why Do I Cook For My Patients? ~Dr. Lou I’d say on average, I cook about 15-20 hours a week, mostly on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I cook for my family, my friends, people I care about. Food really brings happiness to peoples lives. It’s a great way to continue caring for people on the weekend, after a week of caring for people in the office. My mum used to care for us by preparing food. My mother in-law does the same thing. I do the same thing. After 2 years and 65 cooking videos on Youtube, patients often ask when I am going to “cook for us at the office.” The Truth. I can’t cook at the office, but I do want to share my food with those I care about. I spend nearly 50 hours a week at the office. The community of people who come to us for care are people with whom I could easily spend time with outside of the office. We have a uniquely wonderful group of people coming to us each day. Cool people, creative, friendly and compassionate people. I have patients who bring me eggs, who bring me beer, who bring...

What Do Your Symptoms Mean? Migraine Whiplash Neck Pain Shoulder Pain Back Pain Hip Pain Headache Sciatica These are the top reasons people call us for help. These diagnoses are symptoms of an underlying problem. Sometimes the root of the underlying problem is something serious, but more often these are symptoms of wear and tear on your body. Chiropractic care may help you resolve these symptoms and the underlying issues that have caused them. We are lucky as humans to have a built in security alarm. Your symptoms always mean that there is something going on, whether serious or not. Pain and dysfunction NEVER happen for no reason. There is always a cause and the effects are the symptoms. Often compared to the oil light in your car, the symptom is the fire alarm, the carbon monoxide alarm, or other warning signal to get out or get help. When you feel one of these pains, you need to decide how you want to deal with it. Let’s use the warning light on your car for this example. Once symptoms appear (oil light), you can choose to put electrical tape over the light and it will no longer bother your eyes, or...

What Lies Beneath….The Snow. Don’t be fooled! Just because the snow looks soft and fluffy from today’s storm, doesn’t mean there aren’t hazards beneath the surface! Slip and fall accidents leave people injured, missing work, missing family time and falling short in all activities of daily living if the fall is a bad one. Beneath the snow lurk hazards that will ruin your day, week or year if you aren’t careful. Below are a four of the main culprits that are awaiting your arrival! Hazard 1: ICE Ice beneath the snow is easy to slip on. One false move and you’ll be in a world of hurt, may miss work, may not be able to pick up your kids or sit down on your butt. A broken tailbone is the last thing you need. Hazard 2: POTHOLES Twist your ankle, fall on your hip, say hello to urgent care or the ER. Not a fun way to spend a Wednesday or Thursday afternoon. Hazard 3: LEGOS Legos are always a stepping hazard. Hazard 4: CAR TRACKS Believe it or not, packed snow under a car tire can be nearly as slippery as ice. Just pay attention. Hazard 5: CRACKS...

How does Dr. Lou eat? Here’s an inside look at what happens in his kitchen. Dr. Lou likes the principle spoken of by author Michael Pollan. “If you don’t make it, don’t eat it.” If you aren’t willing to churn the ice cream or bake the pie, you don’t get to eat them. Eating well is critical to your overall health. Dr. Lou wants to help you by showing you how easy it is to “do good” by your family and provide them with exciting, healthy meals. “Dr. Lou’s Kitchen” is a new playlist on Dr. Lou’s youtube channel (Mainechiropractor). High quality, easy to understand cooking lessons will be posted regularly for your enjoyment. This is exactly how Dr. Lou eats. Chiropractic is about optimizing nervous system control and healing and diet affects these in a positive or negative way, depending on what you eat. Maine is over 60% overweight or obese. Obesity in Maine kills more Mainers than anything else.  Eating well is a life saver, eating poorly will kill you. Dr. Lou is not only a Maine chiropractor, he is also a pretty good cook. He’s taught cooking classes for years here in Maine and in Kansas City. The...

Why do I have back pain? The problem. The cause. The solution. “In a field of horses, don’t look for zebras” they told us in school. It’s usually an obvious cause to a common problem if you look closely. And indeed, but for the few odd cases, people and their problems are pretty predictable. In my 15 years of practice the majority of folks who haven’t had a clear cut trauma have suffered because of a long term accumulation of one or many of the  following causes: Mental stress. Too much sitting or standing. Heavy physical labor. Sleep position on the stomach or side with a leg up. Being overweight or obese. Lack of exercise. Repetitive motions over long periods of time. Lots of driving or commuting. Bending over for long periods of time at work (hygienist, dentist). Sitting on a wallet in your back pocket Time + Stress = Problems. Many men keep their wallet in their back pocket for years and then fail to figure out that it’s the cause of their back problems. Imagine a car with 13″ rims on one side and 20″ rims on the other. Or maybe a woman who wears a 5 inch heel on one foot...

Face Wrinkles – Non-Surgical Prevention! Every night when you go to sleep, you may be adding wrinkles to your face if you do this one big no-no. The solution is simple and costs nothing. Not only is sleeping on your stomach a major cause of neck pain, shoulder pain and headaches, it also causes you to visually age more quickly. Solution: Stop Sleeping On Your Stomach. Not sleeping on your stomach is easier than you might think. My technique, explained in the video below, has helped hundreds, maybe thousands of people switch from their stomach to their back while sleeping. Imagine this. 8 hours a night of smashing your face against a pillow.  Night after night, that pressure adds up and creates and accentuates wrinkles. Imagine this. You sleep on your back and while you are sleeping, your face wrinkles are decompressing and flattening out. Gravity to the rescue. The longterm effect of sleeping on your back may be a smoother face and will certainly reduce your risk of neck degeneration, pain, headaches, shoulder pain and tension. Don’t sleep on your stomach. Dr. Lou Jacobs is a chiropractor in Portland, Maine. He may be reached on twitter @drloujacobs or...

What do you do when doctors don’t know what’s wrong with you? You know something is wrong, they’ve done all the tests, you’ve spent thousands of dollars, your family is tired, you can’t sleep, they have no answers, your stress, anxiety and frustration are through the roof. Doctors have some of the answers, but they don’t always have ALL of the answers. Some limitations of doctors include: Education, Knowledge & Judgement. Philosophy. Personality. Inclinations & Persuasions. Testing tools and materials. Skill of applying “their medicine”. Doctors are human and they are only as good, as these things are good. We’ve all experienced it. So what do you do if doctors don’t know what’s wrong with you? You go somewhere else. There’s no such saying; “everything happens for no reason”. If you have a problem, there is a cause. Guaranteed. Because one doctor can’t find the cause, doesn’t mean it can’t be found, it means that doctor can’t find it. It may mean that their tools or their ability to comprehend or understand the cause may not be there. If their personality, inclinations, persuasions don’t allow them to see potential causes, they’ll never find it. Think about this. Without the...

You’ve been told “One leg is shorter than the other.”   Do you have a short leg? When you have a short leg, the discrepancy may be anatomical or may be functional. Either one leads to problems. (Dr. Lou’s video linked here.) Problems like pain, arthritis, immobility, hip pain, knee pain, ankle pain, foot pain, low back pain. Dysfunction in the joints often leads to nerve dysfunction called vertebral subluxation and this condition leads to reduction in function throughout the body. Often without you even feeling it.   Anatomical leg length discrepancies are due to one leg actually being physically shorter than the other. The bone is short. Functional discrepancies are due to muscle tension, spinal and pelvic subluxation, low back torsion or scoliosis and a number of other causes. When all leg bones are the same length but wear and tear, tension, imbalance and asymmetries are present, these are issues that can be corrected. When a leg bone is anatomically shorter than the other side, heel lifts and shoe modifications will balance things out.   If you’ve been told that you have a leg length difference, you should call our office, be evaluated by an expert and then...

Should you get adjusted before or after a workout? The most truthful answer ever recorded.   The answer to this and many other questions may be found on Dr. Lou’s Youtube channel. You see, understanding your purpose of the adjustment dictates when to get it. Dr. Lou Jacobs has worked with hundreds of exceptional athletes and has experience with the benefits of timing adjustments appropriately....