Although this winter in Toronto has been fairly mild, and temperatures have been undulating around 0 degrees, you have swapped out your regular or all-season tires for a set of winter tires. You may think winter or snow tires are only required for those who live in rugged, snowy terrains and aren’t really necessary for those travelling on paved and frequently ploughed roads in urban areas. The truth is that regular and all-season tires just don’t perform as well during Canadian winters as they do the rest of the year.

Cold temperatures can cause regular tires to become too hard. This means that they lose their normal traction, even when there’s no snow on the ground. Winter tires are created using rubber that stays soft in colder temperatures. This allows the winter tires to grip the surface of the road – including compact snow and ice – with more surface area, allowing for better traction, acceleration, stopping, and steering compared other types of tires. Winter tires also have wider, longer treads that will eject snow and ice more easily.

Winter tires can be identified by a special logo on the tire’s wall that indicates it has been designed and tested to meet winter traction requirements. The logo is a three-peaked mountain with a snowflake inside. Be sure to look for this symbol when you shop.

Decide in advance if you want to purchase just the set of winter tires, or if you also want to purchase rims. While getting rims for your winter tires will cost more initially, it will likely save time and money down the road. Switching tires back and forth on the same rim is a more complicated process than switching out a winter tire that is already on a rim. It also requires balancing of the winter tires on the rims. This means a mechanic will charge you more for the service each time it is performed.

Without winter tires, you are running a high risk of skidding while driving and getting into a motor vehicle accident.

At PRI Clinic, we can offer continued support through your Motor Vehicle Accident claims process while providing you with dedicated care for your car accident injury.

Physiotherapy, Aquatic Therapy, Massage Therapy and Acupuncture are sometimes used with Chiropractic therapy to achieve remarkable rehabilitation results if you have sustained a bodily injury during the accident.

We are very thorough with our reporting:

Your MVA claim relies on the detailed, honest reporting of your chosen chiropractic provider. We recognize this and take a personal interest in ensuring it’s done properly, and in a timely manner.

If you’ve been involved in a collision, and are looking for rehabilition to bounce you back to health,  please contact the staff in our office at:

Tel:      (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com

I’m not sure why, but it seems that when I have the opportunity to sleep on the weekends or when I’m on vacation, I wake up at the crack of dawn. Ignoring the fact that you should get up at about the same time each morning for your health, many people love the opportunity to sleep in when they don’t have commitments such as work or school. During the week or during your regular schedule, it can be difficult to drag yourself out of bed. Have you ever wondered why that is? What makes it so hard to get out of bed in the morning?

Well, there’s one trick anyone can use to get up and get their day going with a little more gusto:

Find one thing to get truly excited about on an upcoming day!

Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Choose Something Achievable

If I were going to wake up and meet Jennifer Lawrence on her private jet to be whisked away to Bora Bora, I’d bounce out of bed each morning ready to face the day. Alas, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me or most other people, so it’s much better to choose something realistic to get excited about.

Choose something easy or comforting to look forward to such as finally cracking open that new book that you’ve been dying to read or the sushi you’re going to get after work. Choose something that makes you a little bit happy and focus on that.

Let Your Choice Be Your Beacon

The entire point of finding one thing to look forward to is to have a light at the end of your daily tunnel. It could be a bright spot on a no good, very bad day, or it could be the cherry on top of an ice cream sundae when your day is already looking good. Let this thing guide you all day, like a beacon of hope.

Don’t Skip It

In order to make this entire strategy work, you cannot skip the thing you choose to focus on. Do not, under any circumstances, let it fall through the cracks or get swallowed up by other things during the course of the day. Always make sure it’s something you give yourself and make time for. Remember, no matter how small, it’s still something to wake up for.

Until Jennifer Lawrence answers the call or Mickey Mouse moves into your living room to make each day magical, you have to learn to find magic in the mundane. Try this helpful hack and see if, in fact, you can be the morning person you always wanted. Or close enough.

This is just one of many hacks, your local chiropractor can provide to help you achieve your goals!

Is “improve my health” still on your list of 2020 New Year’s resolutions? Keeping your resolution will be much easier if you make chiropractic care part of your life. Contact us to schedule your appointment.

Tel:      (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com

Let’s face it, we are all getting older, but there are many people out there who have successfully slowed down the effects of aging. These people prevent injury, illness, surgery and/or their dependence upon medications. Unfortunately, there is no guaranteed warranty on our bodies, but there are several key factors for increasing the mileage and its ease of operation.

First, there are no quick fixes on this subject. Hard work and a smart plan are the major keys to success. By hard work, I don’t mean that it has to be difficult or painful. Whatever method(s) you choose to slow the effects of aging, it should be done with diligence, energy and with a specific purpose in mind.

We often see patients who have a regular exercise routine or an already established way of treating their injury or disease, but they have no idea why they are exercising or if they are doing it correctly. Understanding the purpose of your exercise and prevention plan along with its key components are vital to successful implementation.

When it comes to keeping your body healthy, moving and working well, you can be helped by applying the following principles no matter what method you use:

1. Exercise without increasing your joint or muscle pain during and after exercise. Soreness is OK, but pain is not normal.
2. Flexibility is the key to maintaining your ability to move the way you want.
3. Correct Posture is vital in protecting your joints from injury and allowing you to safely move and exercise throughout the day.
4. Proper Strengthening activities are another major key in preventing the effects of aging and allowing you to function at or above your chronological age.
5. Endurance Building is just as important as strength building, especially while we age.
6. Balance Activities are vital to the type of exercises that you choose. You also need to build a “balancing” activity into your routine as you age.

Through proper planning and the advice of your chiropractor and physical therapist, you can quickly and easily learn the simplest and safest ways to keep your body feeling and working younger!

At PRI, we specialize in a variety of techniques aimed at alleviating nagging pains and increasing mobility to aching shoulders. After correctly identifying the source of the pain, we employ extensive mobility stretches and exercises aimed to release tension to the area and increase blood flow. If the issue stems from subluxations (spinal misalignment), a full spine and body approach will be taken over an isolation treatment. It is important to remember to practice proper technique with and without doctor supervision. Physical health is after all a full time endeavor. Taking home exercises and executing them regularly will lead to a stronger and more resilient body.

To find out how we can help you, please contact us at:

Tel:      (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com

When you’re starting on a new health journey, knowing what to eat can seem confusing. For starters, there is a ton of conflicting advice out there, with proponents of each diet insisting their diet is the healthiest.

The truth is, the best diet depends on which one works best for you. Factors that determine this include your individual food sensitivities, digestive health, blood sugar handling, and stress handling.

In alternative medicine, we follow general guidelines that focus on whole foods, removing foods to which you are intolerant, and stabilizing blood sugar.

A custom diet plan starts with real food

With customization tips in mind, one basic rule still applies across the board: Eat whole foods.

When you eliminate foods that have been through processing (like breakfast cereal or chips), foods with artificial colourings, additives, and preservatives, and foods laden with industrialized fats and too much sugar, you are already on solid ground nutritionally.

This means sticking largely to the produce, meat, and nut sections in the grocery store. Use healthy, natural fats such as coconut oil and olive oil. Avoid vegetable oils, which are unstable and become inflammatory free radicals in your body.

Avoid hydrogenated oil as it has been shown to damage brain cells and raise heart disease risk.

You have to develop new habits to shop for and prep vegetables, cook healthy meats, and wean yourself off sodas, pizza pockets, chips, and other quick-grab items. But you’ll start feeling so much better you won’t mind. In fact, you’ll likely feel enthusiastic about it.

When eating real food is difficult

Some people favour processed food because they have trouble digesting real foods. This is a red flag digestion is seriously compromised.

For instance, if your stomach feels heavy after eating meat, as if it just sits there and does not digest, your stomach may be low in hydrochloric acid (HCl). HCl is necessary to digest meats and it’s a common deficiency.

In nutritional medicine, we know that a diet that consists primarily of produce is very beneficial. However, the dramatic increase in fiber from eating more fresh fruits and vegetables causes digestive problems in some people.

Factors that make eating produce difficult include an overgrowth of the wrong bacteria  low HCl, insufficient output of pancreatic enzymes, inflammation of the gut lining, and other digestive issues.

These people need to work on restoring gut health and slowly ease into eating more vegetables.

For more ideas on how to keep your body healthy with whole foods, please contact the nutritionist in our office for some solid advice.

Tel:      (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com

In today’s age, the volume of physical therapy services available at our fingertips is unending. Because of this, finding one that fits your needs and allows you to effectively return to a healthy routine can be a challenge. We compare it to shoe shopping. With so many different styles and fits, finding the one shoe that’ll rocket you to the moon requires some effort. Likewise, finding your ideal therapy provider requires the same amount of energy.  In most cases, our primary physicians can be a great starting point, but without the right questions and insight, you may end up back where you began. For this reason, it’s important to go a step further and connect with a local physical therapy provider like PRI to see what options are available to you.

When arriving at the rehabilitation phase of your recovery, the ultimate goal is to choose a no-risk therapy that’ll lessen recovery times, while still getting you back to an uninterrupted lifestyle. Typically, your rehabilitation options will range from a menu of traditional flat land therapies, which are still extremely effective injury recovery solutions. However, many people aren’t aware that their options don’t have to stop there.

Thanks to advancements in technologies and accessibility, a lesser-publicized therapy, known as aquatic therapy, is steadily becoming a highly endorsed secondary option for a range of injury cases. Given the countless mental and physical benefits provided through H2O, everyone from elite-level athletes, to stroke survivors are benefitting from this low-impact, high-return therapy.

Due to the decreased weight-bearing conditions of the aquatic environment, aquatic therapy allows patients to move with less restriction and less stress on their body. Because of this, a patient with severe Osteoarthritis may not be able to walk the stairs in their home; however, since their body weight decreases in the water, they may be able to perform step-ups in an aquatic environment. Consequently, this allows for increased activation of the proper muscles needed to improve the step-up motion, which ultimately can help improve the patient’s ability to perform stair negotiation in the home.

Also, as we mentioned, post- or pre-surgical patients that would otherwise be restricted in their ability to perform land-based therapy, are able to begin therapy sooner in the water. In doing this, water therapy helps increase the patient’s ability to start proper muscle recruitment and increase range of motion without increased pain.

If you have sustained a sports injury, suffer from osteoarthritis and a slew of other musculoskeletal conditions, please see a specialist at the PRI clinic. This multi-disciplinary team is specifically trained to properly introduce their body to aquatic therapy, which will allow a remarkable improvement in their lifestyle. To book a consultation, please call or follow these links.

Tel:      (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com

We look forward to helping you out!

Chronic pain is usually defined as any persistent or intermittent pain that lasts more than 3 months, which can be categorized along a variety of dimensions, including one of the most important divisions, neuropathic versus nociceptive pain. Neuropathic pain is induced by a lesion or disease involving the nervous system, and nociceptive pain occurs as a consequence of actual or threatened damage to nonneural tissue.

Chronic pain is a major public health problem, with epidemiological studies reporting that in the USA and Europe, approximately one fifth of the general population are affected. Additionally, as one of the most common and disabling mental disorders, depression has been reported to be the third leading contributor to the global disease burden. Clinical studies have revealed that chronic pain, as a stress state, often induced depression and that up to 85% of patients with chronic pain are affected by severe depression. Patients suffering from chronic pain-induced depression exhibit a poorer prognosis than those with chronic pain only; and chronic pain and depression are closely correlated in terms of occurrence and development and are able to mutually promote their own severity progress.

To date, neither the corresponding pathophysiological mechanisms of chronic pain and depression nor their mutual correlation has been identified, which poses a huge challenge for the treatment of pain accompanied by depression. However, in recent years, studies have revealed considerable overlaps between pain- and depression-induced neuroplasticity changes and neurobiological mechanism changes. Such overlaps are vital to facilitating the occurrence and development of chronic pain-induced depression. In particular, injury sensory pathways of body pains have been shown to share the same brain regions involved in mood management, including the insular cortex, prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala, which form a histological structural foundation for the coexistence of pain and depression.

A chiropractic doctor is an excellent person to consult when you are experiencing depression, especially if you are unsure what is causing your symptoms. The chiropractor will give a thorough examination and will hopefully find places within the spine that could benefit from manipulation. Adjustments to certain part of the body will allow blood to flow more freely and can relax the muscles. This stress relief can be quite therapeutic for those with depression.

Some people with depression may find that imbalances within their body were contributing to their symptoms. If spinal vertebrae are out of place, it can place pressure on the surrounding nerves. Since the nervous system circulates throughout our bodies, a blocked nerve in the lower back can actually affect all sorts of places in the body. Once a chiropractor has identified a problem area, symptoms can often be alleviated after one adjustment. The chiropractor will recommend a regimen that will more than likely include regular visits and perhaps other related treatments such as massage.

People who suffer from depression that are considering trying chiropractic should also consult their primary care physician and therapist if they have one. When approaching an illness such as depression, a multidisciplinary approach can often be the most effective. Studies have shown that certain people respond better to different treatments, so adding chiropractic into the list of options will allow more people than ever to find relief from depression-related symptoms, many of which can be severely debilitating.

Chiropractic care as part of the healthcare team can play an important role in the assessment and management of chronic pain related to depression condition. More and more studies are providing evidence of effective relief of chronic pain and depression through chiropractic treatment.

For more info on how to take control of your health, and tackle chronic pain in a smart way, please reach out to:

Phone: (416) 477-1101

E-mail: reception@priclinic.com

Web:   www.priclinic.com