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About Dr. Ronnie Bolar

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So far Dr. Ronnie Bolar has created 95 blog entries.

What’s Making Us Unhealthy and How Can Chiropractic Help?

In the world we live in, there are as many emerging things to do to be healthy as there are things to avoid doing so as to not become unhealthy. It can be pretty overwhelming, but we believe that understanding the big-picture elements affecting our health is a great place to start before we start talking about how your health is related to chiropractic. So let’s get into it!

There are 3 Types of Stress Bombarding us Chronically:

Physical stress:

This type of stress can encompass a wide scope of physical elements, big and small. On one side, we’ve got macro-traumas that can have an immediate impact on our body, such as:

  • Motor vehicle collisions
  • Slips and falls.
  • Injuries.

On the other hand, we have microtraumas that have a subtle, yet effective effect on our body over time, such as:

  • Our posture.
  • Sitting for long hours in one position.
  • Having a physical job.
  • Repetitive movements in sports (i.e. swinging a golf club, kicking a soccer ball, swinging a baseball bat) or life.
  • Gravity.

Chemical stress:

This type of stress involves the toxic substances that our body is exposed to that then affects our levels of inflammation, our body’s ability to detoxify, and our cellular health. Examples of chemical stress that we experience include:

  • The quality of our diet.
  • The quality of the water that we drink, shower in, and use to wash our clothes.
  • Air quality in our homes […]

Can Chiropractic Help with Insomnia?

Anyone who has had a rough night of sleep knows that sleep can play a significant role in how you feel on a given day. But for those who deal with insomnia, getting a good night’s sleep can feel like an impossibility. But what is it about sleep that affects our body’s ability to function so much?

Why is Sleep so Important?

Sleep is vital to maintaining good health. It is essential to every process in the body and allows your body to function physically and mentally as it should. Sleep helps your immune system, digestive system, metabolism, mental health, mood, and so much more. In children sleep is even more critical in that it helps them develop mentally and physically. Poor sleep in children has been associated with difficult behavioral issues, difficulty learning and retaining information, and even poor eating patterns.

While your body sleeps, your brain gets a chance to process and perform healthy brain functions like storing new information in long-term memory, clearing the cortisol that has built up from the day’s activities, and recharging mentally so that you can think clearly tomorrow and maintain good mental health. Physically our bodies get a chance to rest and recover from a day of activity so that we are ready to work, exercise, and play the next day.

Sleep helps our brain function properly, it helps our emotional and mental state stay healthy, it reduces our risk of disease, and so much more. And poor sleep and sleep deprivation have been associated with a whole host of issues such as fatigue, higher levels of stress, anxiety, depression, lower immune system, weight gain, and behavioral issues, and sleep deprivation can even increase your risk of having a car accident.

What is Insomnia?

Insomnia is defined as a sleep disorder where it […]

Does Everyone Get Chiropractic Adjustments the Same Way?

As you might expect, many people don’t get adjusted the same way (the same adjustment, with the same technique and the same treatment plan) because there are many factors that determine what an adjustment looks like for someone. Let’s dig deeper into why this can be!

 

Chiropractic Technique:

In the chiropractic world, there are many different techniques that allow a chiropractor to analyze someone’s spine as well as to execute an adjustment. Depending on the technique that your chiropractor uses, your adjustment could include:

  • Manual adjustments
  • Drop tables
  • Instruments
  • Distraction tables
  • Sacro-Occipital Technique blocks
  • Soft tissue therapy
  • Others 

Age/Stage of Life

Expectedly, how you get chiropractic care as a baby is not the same way that you get care as a child or an adult. Babies are not tiny adults, which is why their adjustments looks different! When it comes to babies, their adjustments are much gentler and there is a more neurologically-based approach instead of a musculoskeletal one. Additionally, a young adult with a simple case of neck pain may be adjusted very differently than someone past their seventies who has a tougher time getting on the table, shifting positions or whose body is more sensitive to certain types of adjustments.

 

Past and Present Conditions

On the other hand, there are some people with either past or present medical conditions or issues that could change how a chiropractor approaches their body. For example, you may have a history of hardware in your body, such as spinal fusion surgery. This could mean that your chiropractor cannot directly adjust over the affected region and may have to focus on stabilizing the segments above and below it. People with disc herniations or disc extrusions may benefit greatly from chiropractic, but they will do better with adjustments that do not input excessive rotation into those segments. […]

Can Chiropractic Help with High Blood Pressure?

High blood pressure is a fairly common condition, with the NHS estimating that 18% of adult men and 13% of adult women have elevated blood pressure. Furthermore, they state that half of the people over 75 years of age have high blood pressure. But what is high blood pressure, and what does that mean for our bodies and our health?

What is High Blood Pressure?

The ideal blood pressure is typically 120/80 mmHg. What does that measurement mean? Blood pressure is measured by the amount of pressure that blood traveling through your body will exert on the artery walls holding it. It is measured in millimeters of mercury or mmHg. The two numbers represent systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Systolic blood pressure refers to the pressure exerted on the blood vessels when your heart beats and pushes the blood flow through your arteries, and diastolic blood pressure refers to the pressure in between each beat of your heart.

High blood pressure, also known as hypertension, is defined as having a sustained blood pressure of 140/90 mmHg or above.

How does High Blood Pressure affect the body?

Often, people with high blood pressure will not know that they have hypertension, as it can often present with little to no symptoms. They will often find out when their healthcare practitioner will measure their pressure on an average visit. However, high blood pressure can cause headaches, blurred or double vision, regular nosebleeds, or shortness of breath.

High blood pressure itself often can put a person at risk for developing other health issues such as coronary heart disease, stroke, and heart attack. Furthermore, diabetes and kidney disease have been linked to complications with high blood pressure.

Causes of High Blood Pressure

Oftentimes there is no single identifiable reason for a rise in blood pressure, but […]

Non-Cardiac Chest Pain & How Chiropractic Can Help

Having pain in your chest can be scary—most people immediately assume the pain is related to a heart attack and rush to the emergency room. While this isn’t a bad idea since it’s better to err on the side of caution, heart attacks typically only cause about 5% of total chest pain. If you experience chest pain that has been confirmed as non-cardiac, it’s important to explore all your options to resolve the pain and get to the root of the problem. Dr. Ronnie Bolar of Vital Life Chiropractic has experience with non-cardiac chest pain and can help you find relief with neurologically-based chiropractic care.

Getting to the Root Cause of the Pain

One of the aims of chiropractic care is to find the true origin of discomfort and dysfunction. Dr. Bolar is not satisfied with just treating symptoms or putting a hypothetical band-aid on a problem for temporary, short-term relief. Instead, he wants to figure out what is causing the non-cardiac chest pain that you’re experiencing so that he can help resolve the issue fully and permanently. Most commonly, the cause of non-cardiac chest pain is related to the ribs. When the rib cage is out of alignment or ribs are displaced, this can bring about muscle tightness and pain in the chest. Lower back problems can also cause ribs to be displaced or can bring about muscle spasms and pain in the chest. Tightness in any muscles or muscle groups near to the chest can also cause pain in this area.

Most commonly, muscle issues that result in chest pain are due to misalignments of the spine. When a vertebra is shifted slightly to one side or another, or if it is a little twisted or turned, the muscles on either side of […]

Slip and Fall Accident

If you’ve been involved in a slip and fall accident, you likely have a lot of things on your mind. You’re thinking about your physical pain levels, insurance costs, and doctors’ appointments. If your accident happened at work, you’re dealing with workers’ compensation claims, conversations with your employer, and figuring out how to make ends meet while you’re out of work. While many traditional treatment methods are utilized to speed up healing after a slip and fall accident, you may be surprised to find out that a chiropractor can play an important role in your healing as well.

Spinal Subluxations

A subluxation in your spine is simply a misalignment of one or more of the vertebrae. Several of these small bones make up your spine, and any of them can get twisted, turned, or shifted out of alignment from a slip and fall, and this can bring about a lot of health problems, pain, and discomfort. Not only do spinal subluxations cause back and neck pain, headaches, and muscle soreness throughout the body, but they can also cause dysfunction in other systems of the body.

Since the spinal cord travels through the spine and is an important part of the central nervous system, any misalignment of the vertebrae can put pressure on the surrounding nerves and wreak havoc on the proper function of the central nervous system and all the other system it helps to control. For example, a misalignment of the lumbar spine can bring about digestive troubles while a misalignment in the neck can bring about vision problems, sinus issues, or headaches.

When you fall, your body experiences a jolt of impact. Depending on where the impact occurs and how hard you fall, the accident can cause one or many spinal […]

Chiropractic Care Can Help Make VBAC Deliveries Possible

No matter how much planning you do, there is no way to account for everything that can happen when you give birth. In many cases, C-sections and other interventions may become necessary. You may have heard that this means all your future deliveries will be similar. However, having a C-section at one birth doesn’t mean that one will be necessary in any future births. In fact, it’s been shown that C-sections are often performed when they are not needed for the situation and it can be better to have a VBAC, or vaginal birth after cesarean. One of the benefits pregnant women can experience from visiting a Lithia Springs chiropractor is a higher chance of a vaginal birth in the future, even if she’s had prior cesarean sections.

Why Try for a VBAC?

It has been shown in a number of studies that a large number of interventions during birth, such as forceps, vacuums, or C-section deliveries, can actually be detrimental to the short- and long-term health of a baby. Jaundice and feeding problems are among the top concerns for intervention-related risks, though others can occur. In some cases, a C-section can be a lifesaving procedure and is very medically necessary. However, patients are not often well informed before they are told they need to undergo this surgery, and they are often not aware of the potential risks. For example, a baby born surgically may have a lower body temperature upon delivery. When planning your birth, it is important to balance the risks and benefits of any interventions you are offered and to be in the know ahead of time.

How Chiropractic Care Helps

Whatever kind of birth you are hoping to have, the best way to ensure success is to adequately prepare […]

The Webster Technique for Breech Presentation in Babies

We know that chiropractic care can be beneficial for babies as early as right after birth, but did you know that a baby can benefit from chiropractic care before they are even born? In pregnancy, a baby should be head down by a certain point to ensure that he or she can be born safely. When the baby’s head is up, that is known as a breech presentation. A breech presentation can rule out vaginal birth if it is not corrected early enough in pregnancy, making it one of the most common causes of C-sections. One option to help a baby get into the right position is visiting a Lithia Springs chiropractor who is skilled in the Webster Technique.

Turning Breech Babies

By the 34th week of pregnancy, a small portion of fetuses are in a breech position- about 4%. At this point, it is uncommon for the baby to flip before birth due to dwindling space in the uterus for movement. This is the cause of about 13% of the C-sections performed today, and while these interventions can be life-saving in some situations, the invasive nature of a surgery makes them a less optimal choice for most mothers and babies.  To try and avoid this outcome, some doctors will perform something called an ECV, or External Cephalic Version, to try and manually turn the baby. This is done by applying pressure to the uterus externally, which can sometimes work, but can often times be painful and even traumatic. If you have a baby you are hoping to turn but want to avoid the stress and uncertainty of an ECV, there may be other options.

The Webster Technique

Some chiropractors, including Dr. Ronnie Bolar in Lithia Springs, specialize in the Webster […]

Backpack Safety Tips from Your Lithia Springs Chiropractor

In most cities and states, school is already back in session or is starting soon. While times remain uncertain and some schools are still closed and opting for virtual education, kids still have school supplies and books that they need to learn this year. Whether they’re learning at home, going to their school in-person, or doing digital learning from a location other than at home, they will likely be hauling all their school materials around from time to time, if not on a daily basis.

Since back pain is such a common complaint among Americans, especially kids and teens who have a heavy load of school supplies to transport, it’s important that you utilize these backpack safety tips. Lithia Springs chiropractor Dr. Ronnie Bolar is passionate about helping kids and adults maintain health and optimal function of their central nervous systems, and that begins with the spine. Here are his top tips for backpack safety to keep kids healthy and pain-free this school year.

Choose a Quality Backpack

While quality may not be as big of a deal for younger students, middle and high school students who are carrying more books need a durable and supportive backpack. Choose one with padded straps, one that can be adjusted easily for proper fit, and one that has multiple pockets for proper weight distribution.

Wear It Properly

Kids are prone to tossing backpacks lackadaisically over their shoulder and running out the door, but that could be doing harm to their back and overall health. Backpacks should be worn close to the back, not sagging and loosely hanging off of them. Aim to keep the entire backpack on the child’s actual back, and make sure the shoulder straps are even. Avoid wearing it loosely or on just one shoulder, […]

Overcoming Nursing Difficulties with Chiropractic Care

Being a new mother is an overwhelming task, and there’s probably nothing you are more worried about than whether your baby is getting everything she needs to be healthy. For many, this includes breastfeeding, as it is known to be the healthiest option for newborns. But while breastfeeding is extremely beneficial, it can often come with challenges. Many women stop breastfeeding earlier than they would like because of the difficulties, even with the help of consultants and supportive families. One option that is not as well-known is seeking the help of a Lithia Springs chiropractor to ensure the spinal health of yourself or your baby is not impacting your ability to nurse well.

Why Nursing Can Be Challenging

Because it is a natural way to feed our babies, many people think that breastfeeding will come easily to them. While this is true for some moms, in many cases, there are unforeseen issues that can cause issues. Some babies have a hard time latching onto the breast in a way that allows them to get the milk they need. When they do latch, some babies will nurse but still seem to be hungry afterwards, or they may refuse to eat on a particular breast.

It can be difficult to have your baby struggle to eat and not know the best way to help him. But if you are invested in breastfeeding, spending the time to uncover the root cause of these issues can be well worth it.

Breastfeeding and the Spine

While it may not seem intuitive that the spine impacts your nursing, there is actually a strong connection. Your spine is key to the health of your central nervous system, and any misalignments in the spine can affect a variety of processes in the […]

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