What is Direct Primary Care in Mesa?

Direct primary care is a new approach to healthcare that allows healthcare providers to spend more time with each patient, reduce their overhead costs and provide a better level of care. For patients, direct primary care is a new way to pay for your monthly healthcare visits. Pricing starts as low as $65 for individuals and families of 4 can get packages starting at $150. You can visit CrispAZWellness as many times as you need for the month with absolutely no copays. You will get to spend more time with Megan, allowing her to listen to you and create a treatment plan that can truly address the cause of your issues, not just focus on masking them.

How Can The Chronically Ill Benefit?

For patients that are chronically ill, the copays and fees can really add up. Some patients with insurance are required to pay upwards of $25 for each visit to their healthcare manager, even if they only see their healthcare provider 4 times that month, the cost is already going to be around $100, not including any additional costs for medications or testing.

Contact Us To Start Direct Primary Care in Avondale, Arizona Today

Do you or a loved one suffer from a chronic illness? Interested in Mesa direct primary care near you to reduce your overall monthly costs? Contact CrispAZWellness today to learn more and schedule your first appointment with us.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Support Your Gut

Many people aren’t aware of how important the gut is to your bone health and the health of the rest of your body. We recommend eating foods with prebiotics and probiotics, these can improve the health of your gut, allowing your food and nutrients to be properly digested and absorbed into the body. Calcium, magnesium, Vitamin D and Vitamin K are all extremely important for bone health.

Limit Stomach Acid Reducing Medications

Did you know that certain medications such as proton-pump inhibitors and heartburn medications can actually decrease the absorption of calcium? Due to the decrease in stomach acid, the body cannot properly breakdown, digest and absorb the foods we eat. If you suffer from chronic heartburn, indigestion, etc. schedule an appointment with our AVONDALE NURSE practitioner today, we would be happy to help.

Improve Your Diet

As mentioned above, there are various vitamins, nutrients and minerals that are vital to bone health. Vitamin K, Vitamin D, Calcium and Magnesium should all be increased through diet and/or supplementation. It is important to determine if you have any deficiencies of these vitamins so that they can be properly addressed. Schedule an appointment with CrispAZWellness for vitamin deficiency testing in Avondale, Arizona.

Visit Our Avondale, Arizona Nurse Practitioner Today

Think that you may need help with your bone health, lifestyle, dietary or exercise choices? CrispAZWellness would be happy to help. Schedule an appointment with Vianka Cesena, our nurse practitioner in Avondale, AZ today.

What Exactly is Functional Medicine?

Functional Medicine is a medical approach which focuses on the identification and treatment of the root cause of a medical ailment. Optimal functioning of the body and its organs is an essential part of being healthy and feeling good, functional medicine ensures that the whole body is properly functioning, allowing our patients to feel their best.

Benefits of Functional Medicine in Mesa

Functional medicine addresses the root cause of patient health problems, resulting in long term solutions that can help patients avoid unsuccessful and potentially harmful treatment options. Due to the fact functional medicine treatment options frequently have very few, if any side effects, it makes it much less risky than drugs, surgery or other treatment options.

Functional medicine encourages patients to take part and help themselves. While a “quick fix” may seem ideal, in healthcare the fix tends to never last. With functional medicine, patients are educated about their health and bodies, allowing them to partake in the process of getting better. This sets patients up for success, allowing them to understand what is happening in their body and how to address it.

In the long run, functional medicine is often much cheaper than traditional treatment options. Due to the fact functional medicine addresses the root cause, treatment is typically far cheaper and requires fewer visits to your doctor.

Schedule Functional Medicine in Avondale, AZ Today

Interested in a Mesa doctor that is interested in addressing the root cause of your health issues? Contact CrispAZWellness today, we would be more than happy to get you on our schedule for an appointment.

Avoiding Processed Foods Can Reduce Pain

Did you know that fast, processed food is actually super unhealthy? Surprise! You have to eat real food to be healthy. We recommend avoiding baked goods, cereals, chips, basically anything in a box or bag. These foods tend to contain nasty ingredients (some of which are known chemicals) that can contribute to inflammation and pain in the body, among other health conditions.

Eat Vegetables & Fruits Can Reduce Inflammation

While avoiding the bad stuff, it is important to increase the good stuff. You should be eating at least 6 servings of vegetables a day along with at least 3 servings of fruit. We recommend trying fruits and vegetables of all colors to ensure you are getting balanced nutrients.

Reducing Alcohol Consumption Can Reduce Pain & Inflammation

If the hangover that comes with drinking alcohol wasn’t a big enough hint it isn’t great for you, maybe the fact that it causes dehydration and malnourishment will be more convincing. Being properly nourished and hydrated is an essential part of feeling good and properly healing your body. Women should stick to one drink while men can typically have two.

Although these tips aren’t a complete guide to an anti-inflammatory diet, they are a wonderful start for anyone interested in naturally reducing discomfort, stiffness and pain in the body.

Schedule Pain Consultation in Mesa Today

For a more complete guide on anti-inflammatory diets and natural pain treatment in Avondale, AZ, we recommend scheduling an appointment with Vianka Cesena at CrispAZWellness.

Mesa Pain Management Injections

Depending upon the location and cause of your pain, pain injections in Mesa can be a wonderful option. CrispAZWellness offers joint injections and trigger point injections. These injections can help the body to naturally heal, resulting in a reduction of pain and symptoms.

Natural Pain Supplements Mesa

Did you know that there are natural things that can help to reduce inflammation and pain in the body? While pain medications may have a purpose for limited use, taking a more natural approach is a lot healthier and typically has a lot fewer side effects and symptoms. At CrispAZWellness, we can help select the perfect supplement regimen to aid in your Mesa pain management.

Mesa Pain Management Counseling

For many patients, changes to lifestyle, diet, exercise and physical therapy can have a massive impact on pain and the associated symptoms. At CrispAZWellness, we provide our patients with guidance on their exercise routine, diet and lifestyle choices, teaching them to live a more healthy, low-inflammation and pain-free life.

Schedule Functional Pain Management in Avondale, AZ Today

Interested in pain treatment in Avondale, Arizona? Want to visit a doctor that is dedicated to finding the root cause of your pain, not just masking it with medications? Contact CrispAZWellness today, we’d be happy to get you on our schedule.

Don’t Suffer

Every day for the past six years, she wakes up with stiffness and muscle spasm and could barely lift even a grocery bag. She used to mow her lawn, but the pain had restricted most of her daily activities.

Sometimes when the pain was so bad, lying down on the bed makes the pain worse. Her mind is fogged from taking opioid medications, and nausea and constipation served to increase her suffering.

Her desire to socialize with her friends had dipped to an all-time low. She wished the doctor could do something more, other than refilling her prescription and referring her to physical therapy.

I was like Linda. I had suffered from chronic pain and from the hands of many traditional health care providers. I could not accept there were no other options or treatment plans to relieve my pain. So, I did my research. Surely, there must be an alternative way.

Fortunately, I found better ways to deal with chronic pain. I have spent the last years helping others manage their chronic pain using the integrative approach, so they don’t suffer like Linda, and I did.

I know the likes of us are not rare birds out there. Many suffer from some form of chronic condition, especially chronic pain.

Chronic Conditions on the Rise

According to a recent report, as of 2014, 60 percent of American adults had at least one chronic condition, and 42 percent had more than one chronic disease, which occurs more on adult women.

These chronic conditions account for a big pie of health care spending in the country. Chronic pain alone is a growing problem with more people taking opioids to relieve their pain. It came to the point that it had become a serious national healthcare concern.

CDC revealed that about 50 million US adults had chronic pain based on the 2016 National Health Interview Survey. Can you imagine how many pain prescriptions doctors write every day?

If you’re suffering from pain on most days or every day for the last 3-6 months, then you have chronic pain. That’s according to the International Association for the Study of Pain.

And if that pain has limited your life and work activities, then that is a high-impact chronic pain. In 2016, 19.6 million Americans suffered from this type of pain.

In a separate survey, the most common chronic pain identified were:

• Back pain (10.1%)
• Pain in the legs/feet (7.1%)
• Pain in the arms/hands (4.1%)
• Headache (3.5%)

These may be due to neuropathic pain, joint pain, migraine, or muscular inflammatory conditions. Some are autoimmune and can be quite complicated to address.

Traditional medicine would address these pains with your usual pain relievers like Dilaudid, Tylenol, Aleve, and the like. But without looking at the root cause, these become temporary patches that only makes the condition permanent.

Assessing Chronic Pain

When I assess chronic pain, I do it holistically because of its complex nature. There’s the physical pain, and then there’s the effect of the pain on the psychological and social aspect of the person.

The longer the pain is left unaddressed, the more problems it breeds, like anxiety and depression and limited mobility and function. I use screening tools and many tests to trace the root cause of your pain and other health problems that arose because of the pain.

In dealing with common chronic pains like fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis, and low back pain, most family practitioners would prescribe medications depending on the type of pain and may manage chronic pain sufferers using cognitive behavior therapy, and movement and exercise therapies.

Getting to the Root Cause

Just because I embrace non-traditional approaches to pain doesn’t mean I don’t use conventional means.

I perform joint injections and trigger point injections using a combination of steroids and anesthetic for some types of pain to provide quick relief.

But tracing the root causes is essential for long-term benefits.

What other practitioners miss is the role of natural pain supplements. Using the specific health index and wellness goals as the basis, we recommend the right type of supplements that will help relieve inflammation and address any nutritional deficiencies that you may have.

Complex Interventions

There are now many non-drug or complex interventions out there. In a recent study, the following approaches were found to be increasingly becoming popular:

• Psychological Approaches like:
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy
• Acceptance and commitment therapy
• Self-Management

Some of these self-management programs are available online like MoodJuice and The Pain Toolkit. You can access it anytime, anywhere.

Physiotherapy

Aside from doing physical activity and traditional exercises, you can use motivational interventions to help with your musculoskeletal pain.

Peripheral Nervous System Stimulation

Using Trans-cutaneous electronic nerve stimulation (TENS), you can get some relief from your pain. You can also control how strong, frequent, and long the treatment will be.

Complementary Therapies

Those patients who used complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to manage their pain tend to be more satisfied than those who didn’t. Some common methods, which most patients use along with conventional approaches are:

• Osteopathy
• Chiropractic
• Homeopathy
• Acupuncture
• Herbalism
• Hypnosis
• Aromatherapy
• Comprehensive Pain Management Programs

Comprehensive Pain Management

For me, a comprehensive pain management program is not just interdisciplinary but also integrated and holistic. It focuses on the patient as a human being and not just the pain as a symptom to manage.

The treatment plan is designed to meet the personal needs of the patient but backed by evidence-based medicine.

What can work for one patient may not be a good regimen for you, and what may not be effective for others may work for you.

Taking a Look at Gut Health

Some patients find relief using natural remedies for chronic pain. Others realize their chronic condition is a manifestation of poor gut health.

The many evidence pointing to food as a contributing factor to various inflammation and chronic pain conditions had shifted research to this arena.

We now look at anti-inflammatory diets as additional ways of managing pain caused by inflammatory conditions. It is exciting to know that something so simple and natural as eating the right amount of colorful, non-starchy vegetables can have an impact on reducing silent inflammation.

Imagine how largely untapped this gene silencing technology is, and it’s right within our grasp.

We Can Help

So if you think you have come to the end of the road in dealing with your chronic pain, rest assured there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

We offer a FREE initial consult for your pain condition. We can help.

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Many patients now turn to natural remedies, which have given them more acceptable results. What are these natural remedies you can try and combine to give you better pain control and quality of life.

1. Taking Herbal Remedies

Two topical herbal remedies were found to help in chronic back pains:

• Cayenne or capsaicin
• A combination of wintergreen oil and peppermint oil

Researchers believe these herbs are powerful local stimulants and desensitize the patient to pain.

Celery seed and its related extracts also helped in managing arthritis. On top of its analgesic action, it also helps control inflammation and reduce gastric irritation caused by taking pain relievers.

An additional benefit includes the lack of toxic effect. And unlike other dietary supplements that are metabolized in the liver and affect the metabolism of other drugs, it does not have this effect.

2. Eating an Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Inflammation is part and parcel of most chronic pains. Many dietary interventions are being explored, and some have relieved patients of chronic pain. Notable of which are the plant-based diet and intake of turmeric.

Intake of colorful, nonstarchy vegetables provides a rich source of polyphenols. Omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in the diet can also reduce the expression of inflammatory genes according to one blog.

3. Implementing Relaxation Techniques

Laughter is indeed one of the best medicines that have no tag price. In a study where participants laughed for 30 minutes during a social laughter session, the level of naturally-produced opioids in the body increased compared to the baseline level.

In another study, the use of Mindful Meditation helped in managing the psychological effects of chronic pain, such as depression and quality of life.

4. Applying Heat

One of the more common and effective strategies patients use to self-manage chronic low back pain is the application of heat like warm packs, hot baths/steam, and infrared lamps. It can reduce pain/disability for up to 3 months.

5. Implementing Complementary Health Approaches

An evidence-based evaluation of complementary health approaches for pain management in the United States was conducted and revealed the following results:

• Acupuncture and Yoga helped in managing back pain
• Acupuncture and Tai Chi for osteoarthritis of the knee
• Massage therapy for neck pain with adequate doses and for short term benefit
• Relaxation techniques for severe headaches and migraines

As with any chronic condition, doctors must manage the chronic pain in a holistic way beginning with:

• A complete history
• A physical exam
• Diagnostic testing

There is a primary mechanism for pain and secondary factors that contribute to its persistence and aggravation.

We Can Help

At CrispAZWellness, we don’t just treat your pain, but we treat you as a whole person.

We look at the overall picture and determine what contributes to your pain before we come up with any treatment plan.

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