Alternative
Therapy Services
At Watson Lane Chiropractic and Wellness, our goal is to promote alternative therapy with chiropractic, acupuncture, acupressure and sports medicine.
Acupuncture
Medical acupuncture is one of the world’s oldest forms of healing. It is used to treat illness, prevent disease, and improve physical and emotional well-being. It is an ideal adjunct to chiropractic care. We use acupuncture when we see health problems that seem to be caused by disruption to energy pathways in the body called meridians. This centuries-old procedure focuses on the integrity of body systems, not specific conditions.
Low Back Pain
Low back pain has been reported to be one of the most common conditions for which sufferers worldwide seek medical attention. It has numerous causes and can never be lumped into one specific category. We recommend 12 treatments in cases of lumbar pain as a trial of therapy and expect to discharge the patient from acute pain in 4 visits. Do not become discouraged if it takes longer. These points are treated with needles.
How Does It Work?
No one knows for sure. We just know it does. The best way to think about acupuncture is to imagine rivers of energy throughout your body called meridians. These meridians can experience a log jam, and energy flow is restricted. The needles help loosen the log jam and allow energy to circulate properly.
What About The Needles?
This is the most common question. Our needles are ultra-fine sterile disposable needles. They are inserted at special energy points on the body called acupuncture points. When there is discomfort, it is usually created by vivid imaginations.
Accupuncture Needles
Acupuncture treatment can take anywhere from 20-40 minutes. Most people experience a variety of post-session feelings, which range from energized to a deep sense of relaxation and well-being, much like you would feel after a massage or chiropractic treatment.
Sports Medicine
In world-class competition, you are willing to do anything to try to get the extra edge so that you can perform your best. If you are an athlete of any type, sports medicine is the way to go.
Sports injuries? We Know How Bad It Can Get
Dr. Vanessa has had about every injury. From stress fractures to muscle strains, sports injuries can cause an inability to walk. Some injuries are through excessive training and exhaustion. We are here to help the healing.
Sports Experience
Dr. Vanessa has been a world-class marathon runner representing Nike experiencing every sports injury possible while training between 80-100 miles per week under the coaching of a bronze medalist named Al Lawrence.
Alternative Healing
A Bachelor of Science from the University of Texas and a career in Pharmacy educated Dr. Vanessa on what the medical doctors could do for her injuries, but further education allowed her to understand what alternative healing could do for her and now her patients.
Overcoming Extreme Sciatica
After Dr. Vanessa discovered her right leg was shorter, a sports medicine doctor in Houston helped her to understand how this led to extreme Sciatica, which ultimately led to my stress fracture. Through sports medicine, I could address the concern.
Personal Experience
My most extreme injury was a stress fracture of the posterior distal femur. In trying to understand why I got a stress fracture in the femur, which is one of the largest and strongest bones in the body, this led me to educate myself on the structure and biomechanics of the body, which led to such a serious injury. All of this led me to chiropractic, diet, massage, acupuncture, yoga, stretching, and many other healing modalities that I now share with my clients.
Whiplash and Auto Injuries
Whiplash is a term describing an injury to the neck that occurs as a result of a motor vehicle or car accident. Most commonly from a rear impact, and most typically, the greatest at risk of injury is the occupants that get hit from behind.
Joint Dysfunction
Joint dysfunction means that one of the joints in the spine or limbs may become loose. Resiliency and joint play get restricted, possibly leading to a restricted range of motion. This can often heal with scar tissue. It is the difference of muscles feeling like soft taffy candy versus hard taffy candy.
Disc Herniation
Disc herniation is an injury to the disc can occur, leading to small tears and cause parts of the disc to extrude through the outer core. If this extrusion touches a nerve, symptoms may include sharp shooting pain down the arm and leg and even numbness, tingling, and muscle weakness.
Chronic Pain
Severe whiplash injuries may produce neck pain that is persistent and long-lasting.
Higher Center Dysfunction
In some instances, whiplash may affect the patient’s mental functioning, such as a foggy feeling and the inability to concentrate.
Acid Reflux
Dr. Vanessa has developed a protocol for treating the underlying cause of Acid Reflux and has a very good success rate for people suffering from Heartburn, Acid Reflux, and Hiatal Hernia. Dr. Vanessa Provides each Patient with personalized examinations, unique, safe and effective adjustments, therapeutic exercise, and manual therapy.
A chiropractor believes that a spine and body free from dysfunction and restriction is a body that can function optimally.
Dr. Vanessa can help treat your acid reflux by helping you to:
Spinal Decompression
Spinal decompression is the relief of pressure on one or many pinched nerves of the spinal column. Two types of spinal decompression are acute and dangerous.
Surgical Spinal Decompression
It is a non-surgical spinal decompression. Chiropractors can help with this. Non-surgical spinal decompression is achieved through the use of a mechanical traction device which reduces the body’s natural propensity to resist external force and/or generate muscle spasm. This allows non-surgical decompression tables to apply a traction force to the discs of the spinal column, reducing intradiscal pressure.
Inversion therapy
The hanging upside down therapy is a form of mechanical traction used for spinal decompression. The treatment has several varying versions, including articulating spinal decompression or range of motion decompression, which enables the doctor to adjust the patient’s posture during the decompression. Varying the spine’s posture enables the decompressed pulling forces to reach into spinal areas and tissues that basic linear decompression misses.
Back & Neck Pain
Many factors can lead to back pain. The back is a structure of bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles. Due to so many complications of any of these structures, a patient can sprain ligaments, strain muscles, rupture disks, and irritate the joints, have a vertebral subluxation which is a bone out of alignment. All of these factors can lead to back pain.
Other Injuries
Other factors may be sports injuries which can cause biomechanical instability of the spinal structure, and trauma such as car accidents, heavy lifting as well as something simple like lifting a tennis racket. Other factors are degenerative joints, and disc disease knows as osteoarthritis, poor posture, obesity, and even bone loss such as osteoporosis.
How does chiropractic help with neck and low back pain?
Chiropractors are specialized in spinal manipulation. Chiropractic spinal manipulation is safe and effective by mobilizing the joints spaces and freeing up the spaces between the vertebrae allowing the nerve impulses to flow freely.
Chiropractic Manipulation
Chiropractic manipulation reduces pain, decreases medication, speeds up physical therapy care, and add mobilization to the joint. Chiropractic care is recommended by the agency for health care to choose the most conservative care first. Spinal manipulation is also the most conservative care and recommended care, as it is the safest and most effective.
Sciatica
Sciatica starts in the lower back and travels into the thigh. In extreme circumstances, it can travel further down the leg as far as to the feet and toes. Sciatica is only felt as pain but can be felt as a tingling or burning sensation.
What causes Sciatica?
Sciatica gets its name from the inflation of the Sciatic nerve. The Sciatic nerve is composed of 5 different nerve roots. (lumbar 4 and 5 and sacral nerves s 1, s2, and s3). All of these 5 nerve roots come together to form the largest nerve in the human body. That is why Sciatica is so common.
It is the largest nerve in the body and can get irritated at either 5 different nerve roots. The sciatic nerves allow you to move your legs and walk, feel sensation, and is multifaceted in function.
Numbness or Weakness
If the condition worsens, there can be numbness or weakness of the legs muscles, and patients only feel like their leg muscles will not support their body. In most cases, sciatica affects on the leg. Only in extreme cases does it affect both legs. It will often seem it may be in one leg one day and then travel to the other leg another day.
What are the most commen causes of Sciatica?
Trigger points, or knots in the muscles of the buttocks or low back, which can cause the sensation of pain down the leg, are the most common causes of Sciatica. A trapped nerve in the lumbar and sacral area can also affect the sciatic nerve. A disc herniation (slipped disc) can press on the lower lumbar nerve roots, thus causing Sciatica.
Piriformus Syndrome
Piriformis syndrome is a condition where the Sciatica nerve runs under and sometimes through the piriformis, and when the piriformis muscle gets tight, it can irritate the sciatic nerve.
How Do You Treat Sciatica?
Sciatica can be treated through a combination of chiropractic adjustments, massage, stretching, and ice packs or bio-freeze. The leander or flexion-distraction table can treat Sciatica.
Thor Laser Therapy
In this treatment, intense beams of light are produced at specific wavelengths to help stimulate the cells in the body that communicate pain, decrease inflammation, and restore tissue. Thor laser therapy can also release trigger points identical to the effect of acupuncture, but without the invasiveness of the needles.
Achieve Recovery Faster
If specific healing protocols are followed, your rehabilitation can be accelerated up to 30% with surgery and 70% without surgery.
A Great Chance at Success
This therapy has a 100% success rate for getting rid of pain from tennis elbow, carpal tunnels, tendonitis, and golfer's elbow.
Choose Pain-Free
A painless procedure, Thor Laser therapy has no downtime, and the treatments vary anywhere from 10-30 minutes, depending on your treatment plan.
Treat Various Aches
Thor Laser therapy helps to heal a variety of health problems, such as soft tissue injuries, back and neck pain, as well as joint conditions.