East Bay Chiropractic Wellness P.C.

Dr. Martin Marmorale

How Can the Graston Technique® Treat Chronic Pain?

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The Graston Technique® is a soft-tissue instrument-assisted mobilization, a manual therapy technique used in chiropractic treatments. Instead of using just one’s hands, practitioners of this technique use six instruments combined with a specialized form of massage to achieve a therapeutic effect by releasing adhesions that restrict mobility, causing pain.

Chronic pain is any pain that lasts multiple months (typically 3-6). It’s a common enough problem that roughly 20 percent of all U.S. adults deal with it.

Does Insurance Cover the Graston Technique®?

Chiropractic care isn’t specified in federal essential health benefits requirements. So, whether or not your insurance provider will cover the Graston Technique® will depend on the state you live in and your own personal insurance plan.

Does Graston Help with Whiplash?

If you’ve suffered a car accident injury and you’ve been suffering whiplash for months, then you should see a trained chiropractor or other qualified health professional. They can help you establish a program to help improve your neck’s strength and flexibility.

How Do You Break Up Scar Tissue from Whiplash?

Each of the six core tools used in the Graston Technique® is made of stainless steel and comes in an array of convex and concave shapes. They’re used to scan over the body to detect areas of injured fibrotic tissue.

The Graston Technique® works to break down adhesions and fascial restrictions found in the soft tissue areas affected by trauma. It attempts to stretch and rearrange tissue to reduce restrictions on the treated areas.

Why Is It Important to See a Chiropractor After a Car Accident?

A chiropractor can help reduce pain and discomfort throughout the neck and back. It can also help reduce inflammation and swelling.

Some states require a person involved in a car accident to seek medical treatment within an allotted amount of time close to the time of the incident to qualify for certain times of insurance.

Does Graston Work for Back Pain?

A back injury is one of the most common results of harm from an auto collision. Evidence suggests that massage and other manual therapies can help reduce pain and improve mobility function with chronic nonspecific neck to lower back pain.

Can Graston Help with Back Injuries?

Scar tissue can limit a muscle’s ability to move normally and cause back muscles to tighten, which can work the spine out of alignment. This can lead to a herniated disc, also called a slipped disc.

Can a Slipped Disc Be Fixed by a Chiropractor?

Chiropractic care can prevent a herniated disc from worsening and ease pain symptoms and inflammation. Certain cases of fragmented herniated discs may be beyond being treated by chiropractic care and may require surgery.

Your treatment plan with your chiropractor will vary in specifics depending on your physical activity level, pain level, overall health, and other factors.

East Bay Chiropractic Can Help to Alleviate Pain

For many people, chronic pain is a daily challenge. East Bay Chiropractic specializes in the use of the Graston Technique® in pain management and relief caused by soft tissue fibrosis and chronic inflammation that could lead to constant discomfort or pain. Contact East Bay Chiropractic today and learn more about how we can help you manage your chronic pain with the Graston Technique®.

7 Reasons for Massage Therapy During the Holiday Season

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The holiday season is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, filled with family, fun, and memorable moments. However, it also can be an incredibly stressful time for our bodies. Holiday celebrations often involve travel and increased physical activity – shopping, decorating, marathon cooking, and more, all while enduring cold, damp weather. This can overtax our bodies, causing discomfort that detracts from enjoying these special days.

If the holidays are giving you physical aches or stress overload, a chiropractic massage therapy session might be the perfect solution. There’s no better gift you can give yourself than the gift of wellness.

What Are the Benefits of Chiropractic Massage?

Chiropractic massage offers numerous physical and mental benefits that allow you to fully enjoy the holidays and be more present in the moment. Here are seven reasons you should treat yourself to massage therapy during the holiday season:

  1. Pain Relief: Massage relaxes your muscles, reducing nerve pressure and inflammation. This helps decrease pain levels naturally and without drugs.
  2. Stress Reduction: Reducing pain and stiffness in your body lowers your physical stress levels. Massage also boosts your serotonin and dopamine levels, helping you relax and release mental stress.
  3. Increased Mobility: A chiropractic massage enhances the elasticity of your muscles, increasing your range of motion.
  4. Stronger Muscles: Chiropractic massage allows your muscles to function more effectively, making them more resilient and resistant to injury.
  5. Better Sleep: Massage lowers cortisol and stimulates serotonin, which aids in melatonin production. Melatonin regulates your sleep patterns. Melatonin allows you to rest, recover, and wake up feeling refreshed.
  6. Overall Wellness: Massage provides numerous wellness benefits. It lowers blood pressure, reduces anxiety and depression, flushes toxins, improves circulation, and strengthens the immune system.
  7. Self-Care: During the holidays, you spend so much time doing for others that it’s wise to invest in yourself and your well-being.

What Happens During Chiropractic Massage?

A chiropractic massage session proceeds similarly to a basic spa massage but with some crucial differences. At your initial chiropractic massage appointment, you will be asked questions about your overall health and wellness goals, including information about your pain levels, medical history, medications, exposure to stress, and lifestyle. Your chiropractor may do a more thorough examination, possibly ordering X-rays or other scans if necessary.

After taking this history, your licensed therapist will leave the room while you undress to your level of comfort and lie on the padded massage table beneath a sheet or towel. The table features various attachments and cushions that can be adjusted for your comfort.

When your massage therapist returns to the room, they will begin the massage, asking about pressure and comfort levels as they proceed. They may remind you to breathe normally during the session, which may last between 30 to 90 minutes. If you feel uncomfortable at any time, please let your therapist know so they can adjust pressure or environmental factors to ensure your comfort.

Once the session ends, the therapist will leave the room, granting you privacy to dress. Post-massage, they might share recommendations for future treatments and put together a comprehensive wellness program tailored for you.

Treat Yourself to a Massage This Holiday Season

Our team at East Bay Chiropractic Wellness can develop a holistic treatment plan to ensure optimal wellness during the holiday season. With more than 35 years of experience in various chiropractic treatments, including massage, we guarantee you’re in capable hands. Contact us online or call us at (516) 679-2225 for more information or to schedule an appointment.

How Chiropractic Care Can Help Following a Car Accident

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Many of us spend some time in a car almost every day. Whether we’re commuting to work, running errands, or visiting loved ones, driving is an integral part of life here on Long Island.

And while using a car overall is a safe form of travel, it’s not without its risks. More than five million car accidents are reported, on average, every year. Thankfully, less than 1% of all accidents lead to fatalities. That said, many of those who wind up in a car accident run the risk of injury.

While some car accident injuries are minor and heal quickly, others can persist, leading to chronic pain and discomfort. One of the most common enduring injuries is whiplash.

Can a Chiropractor Fix Whiplash?

To understand how a chiropractor can be help in treating whiplash, it’s important to understand the cause and symptoms. Whiplash typically occurs when a car abruptly halts during an accident, causing the neck to jerk backward and forward rapidly. This abrupt motion can result in the tearing of tendons and ligaments in the neck. Common symptoms include:

  • Headaches
  • Neck pain or stiffness
  • Dizziness
  • Drowsiness
  • Blurred vision

Over time, it can also cause chronic pain in the head, neck, and shoulders.

Chiropractors focus on injuries and conditions affecting tendons, ligaments, muscles, bones, and the nervous system. Therefore, they can treat whiplash symptoms from car accident injuries by addressing the underlying issue—the tears in the tendons and ligaments.

Can A Slipped Disc Be Fixed by a Chiropractor?

If the resulting accident leads to another injury, in this case, a slipped disc, chiropractic care can be helpful for your recovery as well. Spinal manipulation and massage therapy can help alleviate stress and pain in the affected areas. Most slipped disc injuries heal within six weeks. Chiropractic care can provide pain management for both such injuries simultaneously if needed.

Does Graston Help with Whiplash?

The Graston Technique® is used for injuries just like those caused by whiplash. Its primary purpose is to break up hidden adhesions in the tissue over tendons and ligaments, a common occurrence in whiplash injuries. This technique helps relieve pain and improve range of motion. A licensed chiropractor can effectively utilize the Graston Technique® to treat whiplash and similar injuries.

Get Car Accident Chiropractic Care at East Bay Chiropractic

Unfortunately, whiplash is a common injury affecting millions of Americans each year. At East Bay Chiropractic, we specialize in the Graston Technique® as a pain management approach that targets soft tissue scars, reducing inflammation and helping you regain your life comfortably. This technique has also been proven effective in alleviating whiplash-induced pain. With nearly three decades of experience, you can trust that you’re in capable hands. Contact East Bay Chiropractic today to learn how we can help you manage your chronic pain.

National Chiropractic Health Month: Relieve, Restore, Resume

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For years, the American Chiropractic Association and chiropractors around the country have celebrated National Chiropractic Health Month in October. This is a way to help raise awareness of the benefits of chiropractic care and how it is both a patient-centric and drug-free approach to pain management. This year’s theme is “Chiropractic: Relieve, Restore, Resume”. This speaks to how chiropractic care, if maintained, can be a long-term solution to chronic pain while avoiding addictive pain medications.

If National Chiropractic Health Month helped get the message out to you, but you still want to know more about what a chiropractor can do for you, we’re here to help.

What Do Chiropractors Do?

Many people assume that chiropractors focus solely on the back and that it’s all spinal manipulation. While that is certainly a focus and area of expertise, chiropractors do much more than that. The spine is a focus because, in many cases, the nerves firing from your spine can cause pain to many other areas of your body, as far up as your head and as far down as your feet.

Chiropractic adjustments can help with pain not just from the spine and bones, but also from soft tissue including muscles, cartilage, joints, and connective tissue. Massage therapy is an effective adjunctive therapy that compliments chiropractic care. Some chiropractors go beyond this and utilize further specialized training, such as the Graston technique®, which requires separate training and licensing and utilizes specific tools to target damage in your soft tissue to alleviate pain.

Are Chiropractic Adjustments Addictive?

Earlier, it was mentioned how chiropractic care is a form of pain management that avoids addictive pain medication. Still, people unfamiliar with the practice may have questions regarding whether chiropractic adjustments themselves are addictive or habit-forming. While there are several myths around chiropractic care, there is no evidence to suggest chiropractic adjustments are addictive.

This could come from a misconception that you may need periodic adjustments as part of your pain management and interpret that as a form of addiction. Unlike an addiction, you wouldn’t need to increase the frequency of chiropractic adjustments to achieve the same result. That said, it is still important to do your research and choose a well-respected chiropractor with a good track record for your care.

Explore The Benefits of Chiropractic Care This National Chiropractic Health Month

In addition to other tried and true chiropractic care practices, East Bay Chiropractic specializes in the use of the Graston Technique® in pain management and relief caused by soft tissue fibrosis and chronic inflammation. In fact, we are the first on Long Island to be certified in the use of the technique. And with over 30 years of experience, you know you’ll be in good hands. Contact East Bay Chiropractic today and learn more about how we can help you manage your chronic pain, or to continue your journey towards a more comfortable life starting this National Chiropractic Health Month.

What Is the Difference Between Graston and Gua Sha?

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Chiropractic care can help relieve stress and pain in the body and improve our overall quality of life. Many chiropractors have a similar set of skills they can implement to give their clients relief, which includes spinal manipulation and massage therapy, as well as more specialized skills, such as the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture. Other separately specialized skills like acupuncture include the ancient practice of Gua Sha and specifically, the Graston technique.

So, is there a difference between Gua Sha and the Graston Technique®?

Are Graston And Gua Sha The Same?

Gua Sha

Similar to acupuncture, Gua Sha also finds its roots in ancient China. This practice dates back to the Paleolithic age and predates acupuncture by thousands of years. Traditional Gua Sha involves scraping parts of the body with a smoothed edge tool, such as a spoon, a coin, or a tool made of gemstone. The goal is to reduce inflammation and improve circulation by bringing blood to the targeted area to expedite the healing process, which is why the scraping of the skin with a smooth-edged tool, when done properly, creates small red dots under the skin.

The Graston Technique®

In terms of approach, the Graston Technique® is part of the greater Gua Sha umbrella. Unlike traditional Gua Sha and some of its other offshoots, including facial Gua Sha, the Graston Technique® involves using tools that target the deeper muscles and tendons rather than focusing on the skin and the capillaries on the surface. A certified Graston Technique® Specialist (GTS), like Dr. Marmorale can target damaged muscle tissue and fascia to smooth it out and relax it, reducing pain and restoring range of motion.

Is Graston Better Than Massage?

When it comes to chiropractic care, the best treatment is the one that is right for tackling your pain or discomfort head-on. A chiropractor should first meet with you and give you an evaluation to see what the source or sources of your pain are so they can work with you on a treatment plan. While the Graston Technique® is great for addressing deep-tissue trauma, massage therapy is just an entirely different approach.

You can expect the Graston Technique® to be applied to affected areas for about a minute at a time. Meanwhile, a massage therapy session could be anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. While massage therapy does cover affected areas, it is also an overall more encompassing therapy, whereas the Graston Technique® is very targeted. The two forms of therapy are not mutually exclusive; consult with a chiropractor on what will work best for you.

East Bay Chiropractic Wellness P. C. Can Help Treat Many Common Conditions Safely and Efficiently

For more than 35 years, East Bay Chiropractic Wellness P.C. has been providing a wide range of chiropractic services to best fit your needs. We are proudly one of Long Island’s only Graston Technique® specialists and have been for more than a decade, giving our clients access to expanded care options that are simply unavailable elsewhere. By utilizing a combination of chiropractic care and recommended lifestyle changes, we can help you reduce your pain and increase your quality of life. Reach out to us at (516) 679-2225, or you can schedule your appointment online.

Mattresses and Back Pain

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Waking up with back pain seems to be a rite of passage once you reach a certain age. However, the cause may not be age-related and might be your mattress.

As children and young adults, we often don’t pay attention to the type of mattress we sleep on. It’s either provided by our parents or dictated by our finances. But as the body ages and begins to see more spine misalignment, how and where we sleep becomes more important to avoiding lower back pain.

Why Do I Wake Up with Back Pain?

As adults, the reasons for waking up with back pain can be varied, with the cause changing from person to person and day to day. Many people find that their lower back pain is due to spine misalignment, which can be aggravated by the way you sleep.

Back sleepers, for instance, may need to place a pillow under their knees to maintain the proper curvature of their spine while they sleep. On the other hand, stomach sleepers may find placing a pillow under their lower abdomen while they sleep prevents morning back pain.

In addition, a mattress that is too old or too soft may contribute to morning back pain. One clue that your pain might be related to your mattress is if it gets better over the course of the day.

How Can I Tell If My Mattress Is Causing Back Pain?

The first indication that your mattress might be responsible for your back pain is when the ache occurs and when it goes away. If you have lower back pain in the morning that gradually dissipates over the course of the day, and it happens every day, your mattress might be to blame.

Another indication that you have mattress-related back pain is if the pain goes away when you sleep somewhere else. So, if you find that you’re sleeping better on vacation or on the couch, it may indicate that you need a new mattress.

What Type of Mattress Is Best for Back Pain?

Getting past all the hype from various mattress manufacturers to determine what is best for your back can be difficult. A 2003 study of mattresses published by the National Institutes of Health suggests that 90 days of sleeping on a firm mattress can relieve that pain for people with non-specific lower back pain.

The key information in that study is that the cause of the pain was non-specific. That is, the patients being studied did not have an underlying condition, such as fibromyalgia, that was causing the pain. In those cases, chiropractors are likely to suspect that spinal misalignment is a part of the problem and that a firm mattress with appropriate support will help.

However, a more recent compilation of all the studies regarding mattresses and back pain was much less conclusive. An analysis of studies between 2000 and 2019 shows that the specific firmness of the mattress may not be as clear of a cause as previously thought.

The study indicated that a medium-firm mattress provides better sleep quality and fewer days with reported back pain. However, another study of other mattress types had similar results and improvements in sleep quality. Spinal alignments were also seen in people who used adjustable beds or improved their sleeping temperature.

In short, the analysis of the studies suggested there are many variables in how and why sleeping can cause back pain. For instance, a person with a higher body mass index was more likely to wake up with back pain regardless of the mattress type.

East Bay Chiropractic Wellness Can Help Diagnose and Treat Back Pain

Here at East Bay Chiropractic Wellness, we can help you figure out the cause of your back pain. Our investigation into your spine’s alignment can help you start the day with more energy and more focus because the pain is gone. Before you spend hundreds on a new mattress that may not help, contact us online or call us directly at (516) 679-2225 to find out why your back hurts.