A lot of present-day aches and pains have their origin in early athletic activities. We don't think of basketball as a contact sport like soccer or football, but almost everyone that has ever played basketball as a young boy or girl can remember an incident where they were jolted or knocked down.

The normal reaction of most youngsters is to stop the blood, rest, put on an ice compress for a while, and then get back into the game.

Now, years later, there begin recurring aches and pains of seeming unknown origin. We don't always connect our present-day problems with our athletic activities of yesteryear.

It is common for patients to state that their neck, back or extremity pains started almost without any aggravation. "It must have been the way I slept or when I bent over to brush my teeth or put my shoes on." These actions and other innocent activities are usually just triggers to underlying problems that may have been lying dormant for many years due to a childhood athletic accident.

Childhood injuries involving the spinal column are somewhat like trampling a small sprig of a tree.

When the small tree is bent, and without any help to straighten it, it will grow crooked for years. Then, one day, during a time of stress, like a wind storm, the crooked tree, due to its imbalance, breaks in half and crashes to the ground.

Most all of us can remember a time in our childhood when we received a knot on the head, a bloody nose, a black eye, a big bruise or a broken bone. In time, we mended and here we are today with aches and pains that probably had their beginning way back then.

While we can see that the sprite of a tree is bent, we don't usually see or are not aware, that a little spine has been jarred out of its normal alignment.

However, if we look closely, we may see a slight head tilt with one ear higher than the other, an uneven level of the shoulders or one hip higher than the other as evidenced by belts and dresses.

The time to attend to these problems is in the beginning. Every child, regardless of their athletic activities, should have regular chiropractic check-ups. Call us.