We have had a few big snow storms and more to come! I want to show you guys how to shovel properly so you don’t get hurt. I typically get 10-12 people in the office because of back pain caused by shoveling wrong. I’m going to show you the most common ways that people get hurt shoveling snow.

First, most people don’t warm up, and this is the number one reason people get hurt. Second, the way that people shovel snow. Most people bend their back, and then from this bent position, they take the snow, twist their back wrong, and then throw the snow, and they continue to do this for hours, depending on how thick the snow is.

Another common way that people get hurt is by waiting for the snow to get piled up, and when the snow gets very heavy, they’re going to get hurt.

What is the right technique for shoveling snow? First, bend at the knees. From this position you’re going to twist and you’re going to throw the snow. Will you finish faster the wrong way? Absolutely. But you’ll finish, and hurt yourself. This is how you’re going to avoid getting hurt during this snow shoveling season. If you do get hurt, we’re here to help you. Contact Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture to schedule an appointment. Enjoy your snow day.

What is causing those headaches? In our examination we take x-rays to help figure that out. Let’s find out if your neck is actually what is causing your headaches.

If you cannot find the solution to your headaches, let's take a look at your neck and get a proper evaluation. Contact Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture to schedule an appointment.

My name is Dr. Alex Hernandez and I am a Chiropractor in North Bergen, NJ with Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture. Today we are going to talk about knee pain and how it affects people.

When people have knee pain often they walk this way. To go up the stairs they use the one foot stance. The reason they do that is because they don’t want to feel pain in the knee. They put all the weight on the good knee and the least amount on the other knee. They do the same when they go down the stairs. If you find yourself walking this way you definitely have a knee problem.

When there is knee pain, there are areas of the knee to consider. There’s ligament pain which can be caused by the inside ligament and the outside ligament. You could also have IT band pain, which is the band that runs across from the top of the hip down to the juncture of the knee. You could have patellar tendon pain, which is the tendon right in front of the knee, we know it as the kneecaps. And, you could also have tears in the cartilage on either side of the knee.

If you’re experiencing any kind of knee pain, it’s a good idea to get a proper evaluation. We’ll check the range of motion, we’ll check all of these structures, and we’ll determine exactly what’s causing your knee pain and what we can do about it.

My name is Dr. Alex Hernandez . I am a Chiropractor in North Bergen, NJ and I’m here with Maria. Maria is going to show us what normal low back motion looks like. We’re going to do a couple of flexibility tests to assess what normal range of motion is for the low back.

Maria, why don’t we show them flexion first, bend forward. Maria is pretty flexible, she can touch the floor, we don’t expect everybody to touch the floor but you should be somewhere between 6 and 9 inches off of the ground. That's what normal flexion of the low back should look like. There should be no pain or discomfort in the low back while doing this. Let’s go back up slowly, you shouldn’t have any pain coming back up.

Alright, now we will show lumbar extension. When you do lumbar extension, you want good flexibility in the low back, you don’t want to be bending the knees, cheating, alright? You should have normal motion, not experiencing any pain, discomfort, stiffness, or shooting pain.

The next motion is flexion to the side. You should be able to have a nice bend to the side without picking up your foot, a lot of times people have problems with the low back and they compensate by picking up the foot. When you bend to the other side, you should have smooth motion, you shouldn’t have any difficulties, tightness, grinding, cracking, or any of that.

Two more, let’s have you rotate to the side, and then rotate to the other side. Alright, so as you rotate, there should be no pain or discomfort, grinding or cracking and you should be able to relax the arms.

If you’re experiencing any of those problems, it’s because there’s an underlying cause, whether it’s a pinched nerve, a muscle problem, it’s important for you to find out. If you want to do something at home to assess your low back pain, try these motions. In the next blog we’re going to show you what abnormal low back motion looks like.

Contact us for a proper evaluation of the lower back.

Warm Holiday greetings to you all. We write this note to you with joyous confidence that 2021 will bring happier, healthy, and more profitable days to us all! That wish is certainly a cause for optimistic celebration this Holiday season.

Our Holiday gift to you is the gift of small business in your community. To be able to buy locally is a true gift to your neighborhood as well as to your family and friends. We hope that everyone reading this takes a measured effort to buy local to the fullest extent possible, not only during this Holiday season but going forward as well.

Buying local is one of the best gifts you can give to your neighbors and your community. Visit a local restaurant, salon, store, or shop for better relationships and better customer service; but more so you can shake the owner’s hand and wish them the best in 2021 and beyond. That will be a gift for you both. Help make this a joyous holiday for everyone: Give the gift of your business to a local business.

We wish you and your entire family happiness, health, and warmth this Holiday season. Our warmest regards to you all.

My name is Dr. Alex Hernandez, Chiropractor in North Bergen. Today I’m going to show you how to get into and out of the car when experiencing back pain. Most people are not thinking about how to get in and out of the car when they don’t have back pain.

However, when you have a lot of back pain most movements are very, very painful, and getting in and out of the car can be a project. I’m going to show you how to get in and out of the car, especially if you’re alone with nobody to help you.

The first thing is you want to move slowly, and you want to get your body prepared. Come to the edge of the car, you want to turn yourself, and then you want to put some pressure on your legs, allow your legs to do all of the work, once you’re in and in a seated position, you want to swing your legs in and then position yourself.

You want to do the same thing when you get out of the car. You have to do it methodically because if not you’re going to increase your back pain. Again, you want to swing your legs over slowly, come to the edge of the seat, and use the force of your legs. From the seated position, use the force of your legs to come on up. This is the safest way for you to get out of a car. If you do it any other way when you have back pain, you’re crunching the wrong area, pinching the nerves, and then you’re crouching down. There’s a lot of twisting and twerking of the spine which is going to hurt you even more.

Dr. Alex Hernandez here and we’re going to discuss abnormal motion of the neck. Janelle is going to show us what bad range of motion looks like. Some people come into our office experiencing neck pain. Some motion is very limited when trying to touch chin to chest. If there’s pain there, you've got a neck problem.

Some of our patients come in here with a bad neck extension problem. The neck gets very stiff, they grimace, they have pain, they have discomfort, or they even feel some grinding and cracking which is not a good sign.

Some patients come in with poor neck rotation, they can turn their neck all the way from side to side, some have about 30% of the normal motion.

With the ear to the shoulder motion, people will usually get stuck or they’ll actually try to cheat; that’s when you know that there’s a neck problem as well. Some people will say that they feel some grinding, some cracking, that's not good, that’s your joints rubbing against each other.

This is something easy that you can do at home, you can test yourself out if you feel pain and discomfort with any of these motions you know you have a problem with your neck. It’s not going to get any better unless you get it checked. We will do a proper evaluation, we will tell you exactly what’s wrong, and then we will give you a treatment plan that’s right for you.

Good morning everyone. Dr. Alex Hernandez, Chiropractor in North Bergen, NJ. Today I’m going to talk about over the counter medication and back pain. I’m going to talk about a patient who came in and was taking OTC medication for a long period of time. Typically what happens is when most people have back pain from raking the leaves or taking the garbage out and they feel a little twinge in the back, one of the most common things that people do is they take either Advil or Tylenol, or a muscle relaxant. That’s okay, we’re not against you taking any of these medications, nobody wants to be in pain. However, you really have to get to the underlying cause of what is creating your back pain.

What I decided to take after doing an examination, I took this patient’s x-ray. Look at this back here, this is the spine, and we’re looking at it from the front, this is the pelvis, these are the bones on the back. We could see really what the low back problem is, why he was getting pain. The green line is where the spine should be and the red line is how his back is. So taking pain medication isn't really going to do much for him, after taking them for 2-3 weeks twice a day, he said, okay I need to get some professional help, I need to figure out what’s causing my pain.

The last thing I want to share with you today is it’s okay to take these anti-inflammatories, these OTCs. But this isn’t really the solution to your problem. If you’re going on four, five or six weeks trying to manage your pain with these, your body is telling you that there is something deeper causing your pain. So the lesson here is to look at the source of the problem, seek professional help. If you have a back problem, it’s important to see a professional. See a Chiropractor, get some x-rays, find out what the cause of the problem is, and don’t prolong taking the over the counter medication. Thank you.

Good morning everyone, my name is Dr. Alex Hernandez, Chiropractor in North Bergen, NJ. Today, behind me I have an old TV that has been left as junk. So we’re going to show you how to lift something heavy and we’re also going to show you, more importantly, how not to lift heavy items.

This is an old school TV, it was awesome back in the day, but unfortunately these pieces of equipment are very, very heavy. Now, most people are inclined to lift things the wrong way. So when they see something like this, the way that they would approach it is they would bend forward, screwing up their back, and this is how people get injured, doing everyday things incorrectly.

Now I tested this before, it’s a pretty heavy item, very uncomfortable, but the way you want to approach something like this is you want to bend, use your legs, so you do not hurt your back. If you bend forward and pick up this TV, you can herniate a disc, causing a lot of excruciating pain. So the proper way to attack this by myself, is to bend and lift. If you have to bring a heavy item like this up a flight of stairs, it’s a real problem.

So I’m going to ask my friend, Joe the cameraman, and we’re going to show you how to properly lift this with a teammate. Again we’re bending at the legs, we’re taking this uncomfortable piece, and then we’re securing it properly, and then we can move it to wherever it needs to go. Then when placing it down, you would do the same thing, bend our legs and then properly put the piece down.

Ladies and gentlemen, that’s how to avoid getting injured by picking up heavy items. Thank you for watching and contact us if you need any advice or evaluation.

Good day everyone, Dr. Alex Hernandez from Life Chiropractic and Acupuncture. Today, I’m here to show you the simple and right way to change your water dispenser jug. This is a 5-gallon jug, and many people have these dispensers at home. One of the things that I find is that people pick this jug up wrong. We’re going to show how to replace this properly. Most people have a tendency to bend forward and try to lift this using the muscles of their back. When we look at the muscles of the back, they are small thin muscles when compared to your legs. Legs are thick muscles. We want to use the power of our legs, we want to bend down, we want to properly lift this water jug. So, take the cap out, bend forward, to pick it up, bring it close to the body, and then go ahead and give the proper turn.

Okay, so as simple as this is, if you’re changing this every week, and doing it wrong, you can get hurt. So this is the right way to pick up a water jug to prevent injury. I hope this tip helps and we’ll see you on the next video. Thank you.