Happy International Women's Day

Happy International Women’s Day! 3/8/24

We have 13 employees of which 10 are females! We have a chiropractor and massage therapists, co-owner and assistants that are women.

What is the difference between treating men and women?

Women are smarter! They have a higher pain threshold and they come to get treatment more frequently. Mothers have the highest pain threshold, then come women, then athletes, then boyfriends husbands and then  men in their 40’s and 50’s. 

The number one condition I see in women is migraine headaches. 30 million Americans suffer from migraines of which 20 million are women, and this is not even including 80 million Americans who suffer headaches. 

There are so many different causes of migraines, and no two people are alike. It can be caused by misalignment in the neck, or diet, or hormones or stress and tension. But we decrease the frequency of migraines and the intensity especially in women. 

The number 2 thing I see in women is hip and pelvic problems. A lot of women will come in thinking they need a hip replacement, what they don’t understand is that what they’re actually having is sacroiliac joint or their pelvis including the muscles around the buttocks. Why is this, women have lower center of gravity than men. Women tend to cross their legs more than men. Women have children or they get pregnant or have their period every month and this causes laxity in their joints. Their ligaments are more prone to damage. Also high heels! This can cause misalignment. These are the main reasons. Anatomically women are different from men, men have the same shape of pelvis, women have 3 different shapes of pelvis. It depends on their height and their genetics and things like that, but regardless of what type of hips that they have, it can determine what type of hip and lower back pain that she can have. 

More women have scoliosis than men typically between ages 12-18. The spine stops growing at age 18 and whatever you have at that point is the problem but it doesn’t get any worse you are just dealing with the compensation. It is a bio-mechanical thing. 

I also notice when it comes to back pain 80-90% of back pain in women is on the right side. There is a natural scientific reason that women have back pain on the right side of their back, its because they are always right. 

There are a few other things that women have that are different because of hormones and progesterone and they time of the month, as well as their center of gravity is lower and their chests are bigger. What happens is when the pecks are forward and down all day the back muscles try to pull them back, and this causes back pain. When women get breast implants this can affect their structure and we adjust the rib cage so that they open up the rib cage and relieve the pressure. We don’t do face down adjustments on women with larger breasts, or women that are breast feedings. Adjustments don’t damage the implants, we find the adjustment that is most comfortable for the patient. 

When you are pregnant, they lay face down for 2-3 months, maybe 4 and then they start showing so we treat them on their side  or sitting up. When they get to 7-9 months then it depends on how low they are carrying the baby. Women love when their upper back is adjusted at that point. I tell the pregnant women we see you normal up to the last month then we treat them as frequently as they need which is typically more frequently. 

There tend to be more obstacles towards the end of pregnancy and right after birth, including having a c-section, these patients tend to find it more difficult to make it into the office. We can still adjust their back and shoulders when they have had a c-section. We can adjust each part of the body separately. 

We also have many women reaching out to us to treat TMJ or another common condition we see in women is AR temporal arthritis which can cause a lot of pain-this is a neurological condition. We see more TMJ in women than men, again this is genetics and biomechanics as well as types of jobs and the many roles women have. We are a safe haven for all women.

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