by Dr. Merrill | May 23, 2023 | Healthy Living
Here on our blog, I talk about the everyday things we see in our practice, and many of the videos I do are more about a rabbit hole that I chased down here recently. And this was this is a weird one. Have you guys ever done that and chased down a rabbit hole? Typically, for me, it happens with Netflix. But this time, it occurred to me via reading, so I do a lot of reading. I like to read books, and I came across this one called Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. This is from the late 90s and it is a fascinating read about colonialism. It’s about how different cultures exercise control over other cultures make them into their subjects. It could very well just be called germs and dumb luck because the whole... Continue Reading
by Dr. Merrill | Apr 25, 2023 | Guidance, Healthy Living
You may be wondering why a chiropractor would be writing about kidney stones. Here at Nightlight Chiropractic, we don’t treat kidney stones, but we see a lot of kidney stones here. And we know these kidney stones because back pain is the most common presenting complaint. So a patient comes in, they say, I’ve got some back pain. Can you help me? And then we’ll do an exam. And during that exam, we found some pain in their flank, and we determined that they had kidney stones and we couldn’t help them. And we need to send them off to a medical facility. So the medical facility typically will give you some medication for pain, and they might give you some medication to dilate your urethra so that you can pass this kidney stone. But today, I will talk... Continue Reading
by Dr. Merrill | Mar 26, 2023 | Healthy Living
I am always listening to the news so I can bring you interesting things that are happening in the world of health and wellness. When I heard this piece, I went from a sense of nostalgia, maybe almost to horror within the course of just a couple of different sentences. One of the big stories was about Weight Watchers, and the news was that Weight Watchers has come to the conclusion that they’re going to add medical doctors that members will have access to. Those medical doctors will help to prescribe medications that will potentially help with health. That sounds great right so far, that doesn’t sound bad at all. I love Weight Watchers. I just had a patient the other day that had lost a bunch of weight by going to Weight Watchers. He’s doing great and looking... Continue Reading
by Dr. Merrill | Jan 18, 2023 | Guidance, Healthy Living
Here at NightLight Chiropractic, we are always asking our patients about the types of things they want to learn about in our video and blog series. A while back, you decided on the topic of ADHD and brain exercises that you can do to reduce the symptoms. We’re excited to share some of the research we’ve discovered and to offer some ideas for you! It’s interesting how many people think that if you have ADHD, you have one choice and one choice alone, which is to start taking medications to reduce those symptoms. Truth be told, medications really offer no long-term benefit for ADHD. You take the medication, you feel better for the day. Tomorrow, you’re going to have to take that medication to feel better for the ADHD or to get rid of some of your symptoms. The... Continue Reading
by Dr. Merrill | Nov 25, 2022 | Guidance, Healthy Living
Here at our Downtown Orlando chiropractic office, we get a lot of questions regarding CBD oil and supplements. On today’s blog, we’ll talk about why you should or shouldn’t be taking it and what it does. Why is it important, and why is everyone talking about it? Let’s start with this: there isn’t enough research yet to fully support it or to say it’s not beneficial. The research has been slow to come out on this. However, we have been carrying CBD products in the office here for over four years, and there’s some value to it that we have seen. I haven’t seen any side effects yet, and in the research, there are very few long-term side effects. Even the short-term side effects are typically pretty minor. The top four conditions that CBD oil helps with are pain,... Continue Reading
by Dr. Merrill | Oct 12, 2022 | Guidance, Healthy Living
One question we get a lot here at our Orlando chiropractic office is whether or not chiropractic is safe for pregnant patients. For a long time, we’ve been seeing a lot of pregnant patients. At any given time, some of the 5,300 patients that we’ve seen over the past 10 years will come in with a new pregnancy and back pain related to pregnancy. When I was looking through research related to this, I was interested to find that a lot of chiropractors say they don’t have much contact with pregnant patients, while we do. For a long time, I was a chiropractor under a program called MomCare, which is the Florida state-run program for women who don’t have insurance and find out they’re pregnant. Their baby is put into state Medicaid so that they have benefits to make... Continue Reading
