Bonds and His Chiropractor

As I promised, here is a feature article in the San Francisco Chronicle last week on the Giants team chiropractor treating Bonds and the rest of the players on the team. A similar reference also appeared on the team website.

So maybe Steroids + Chiropractic = 700+ home runs. ;)

Identity Crisis - the sequel

It took me all of five minutes after publishing the last post to realize I just like "Cornucopia Chiropractica" too much. The homage to Encyclopaedia Britannica was just too good to pass up. Besides, why worry about the unusual title, it's what blog branding is about, right? I think Seth Godin and Mario Sundar would agree.

Identity Crisis

Did you notice I've changed the title of the blog? I've been wanting to change the name of this blog for a long time. I just couldn't come up with one that felt quite right. The previous name "Confessions of a Chiropractor" was a result of the blog "Confessions of a Quackbuster". I mentioned it previously, and will continue to write about this blog in the near future.

Purely out of phonetic reasons, I would've preferred renaming this to "Cornucopia Chiropractica", but I just thought the Spanish may throw readers off. It reminds me of the term, "Encyclopaedia Britannica". As you can probably deduce now, I have a strong preference for alliterations in titles. I hope this new title is more applicable and as I've heard from a few readers, a little less "tacky". As always, your feedback is welcomed with open arms.

When Texting Goes Awry

This should be filed under "Would You Believe". An 8yr old girl in England is being treated for repetitive strain (tendinitis) injuries on her hands. The culprit? Incessant texting on her cell phone. Isabelle, the 8 year old textaholic "vowed to continue texting her friends and says without it her social life would be hampered." Sounds like she needs to verbal text her messges. Oh to be eight again...

Isn't she sufficiently happy playing Donkey Kong like the rest of us? Maybe it's the frustration of the triple barrels.

Women and Chronic Back Pain

A recent research article discussed how hormones in women may pre-determine chronic back pain.

Published in the June issue of Spine, a cross-sectional study consisted of surveying 11,000 Dutch women aged 20-59. The researchers wanted to find out if hormonal and reproductive factors in women are related to chronic low back pain and chronic upper extremity (shoulder/arm) pain.

The results of this investigation indicate that multiple sources specific to females may contribute to chronic back pain. Some intuitively logical causes such as past pregnancy were identified. But the researchers found other factors that are less obvious:

chronic low back:

• past pregnancy
• young maternal age at first birth
• duration of oral contraceptive use
• estrogen supplementation during menopause
• irregular and prolonged menstruation
• hysterectomy (surgical removal of uterus)

chronic upper extremity pain:

• young age of menarche (first menstrual period)
• irregular and prolonged menstruation
• hysterectomy (surgical removal of uterus)

My personal thoughts: Surprising to me, no associations in this survey were found for current pregnancy and number of children. Although since chronic back pain is the research topic, it is not surprising after all to find current pregnancy omitted. Since current pregnancy usually involves pain primarily in the 3rd trimester, the back pain would be consider acute and would not fall under the category of "chronic low back pain".

The following is an abbreviated conclusion stated by the authors:

"In adult women, hormonal and reproductive factors are associated with chronic musculoskeletal pain in general. Factors related to increased estrogen levels may specifically increase the risk of chronic low back pain."

Source:

--Wijnhoven, HAH, et al. Spine. June 1, 2006; Vol. 31, Iss. 13, pp. 1496-1502

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Hobnobbing with Bloggers

I joined in on all the fun last night at Hotel Utah where 50 or so other bloggers congregated. There was a mish mash of bloggers: different topics, different personal backgrounds, different blogging experiences. We all came together because of the blogosphere. You can see that we took over the bar on a Tuesday night. Had a lot of interesting conversations with people I would've otherwise never met.

Some of my highlights -

• I showed up early before the mass of humanity arrived and got to meet Shel Israel, author of Naked Conversations - a book that Jeremiah Owyang champions regularly.
  
• Learned about Greg Narain's company - Social Roots.
• Thanks for the great marketing tips and advice I got from Mario Sundar.
• Finally got to meet Chris Salazar who I heard on a podcast a few weeks back. He didn't deem me worthy enough to grab one of his business cards. Just kidding Chris. (Inside joke)
  
• Met Olivia Trieu, who is planning to start blogging on health tips and astrology. We also found out we're fellow alums from the same high school. Hopefully Olivia and I can collaborate on future blogs, I think it's in the stars ;)
• Shared some personal thoughts with Shirley about the wonders of the universe.
• Oh yeah! I got interviewed by Jeremiah for a future podcast with The Podcast Roundtable.
  

To summarize: good beer, great people, great conversations, great drive home (no traffic since the Giants were on the road). But I did miss NBA Game 3. I hear it was a great 4th quarter. Obviously bloggers aren't necessarily big sports fans. What a pity!

Thanks for the invite again Jeremiah!

Confessions of a Quackbuster

In a roundabout way, I believe this is a vital site to visit if you want to build and market a successful chiropractic practice. This will be especially helpful if you're a student or a recent graduate. Please browse through even if you find it repulsive. There's quite a bit of articles and links in here. Read it to arm yourself so you can be better prepared for possible future attacks. This is a great site. You probably disagree with the intent and the underlying message of the site, but it provides a great collection of anti-chiropractic thoughts. Visit this site from time to time and you'll read just about every argument anybody might ever throw at you about your profession.

As for my personal thoughts, I certainly don't agree with the approach the blogger employs. But I do agree with many of the points raised throughout the site. Dissecting this site is going to take sometime, we'll get started this week. In the long run, my hope is to open some dialogue between myself and "Confessions of a Quackbuster". My goal is not to change his point of view, but simply to get a better understanding of each other.