New Year’s Day will soon be here and you can bet New Year’s resolutions are sure to follow.

Quitting smoking is one of the top New Year’s resolutions – and with good reason. Smoking is bad for your health in myriad ways. And smoking also can make it more difficult for you to recover from injuries.

At Nault Chiropractic in Worcester, we focus on the overall health and well-being of our patients. To learn more about how chiropractic care can help you, or to schedule an appointment, contact Nault Chiropractic today.

The professional chiropractic organization Chiro-Trust reports that chiropractors focus on every aspect of their patients’ health – not just helping them with neck and back pain, although that remains a key area of many practices.

Under the Triangle of Health approach employed by many chiropractors, Dr. Nault and others focus on three key areas to ensure patient health:

• Structure: These are issues that chiropractic care specifically treats.
• Chemical: This has chiropractors review factors such as proper nutrition and diet, which are key to overall health.
• Emotional: Chiropractors consider issues such as depression and anxiety in patients during treatment.

These are the three sides of the health triangle. If any one of them is not balanced, it can directly impact the remaining sides of the triangle. The ultimate goal is help the patient achieve balance in the health triangle.

What is smoking’s role in health?

Let’s take a look:

• Smoking for years has been the number one cause of preventable deaths worldwide. Smokers typically live around seven to 10 years less than those who don’t smoke.
• Smokers are three times more likely to die prematurely than non-smokers.
• Smoking leads to all kinds of physical problems including emphysema, heart disease and asthma.

Smoking negatively affects your body and its ability to be treated – and to heal.

Many surgeons won’t accept smokers as surgical fusion patients because the rate of failure is so much higher than it is for non-smokers. Research shows smoking can lead to a number of complications post-surgery.

Some other reasons smoking makes people’s lives miserable are:

• Nicotine has toxic impacts on cells that affect your bones.
• Smoking negatively impacts hormones, including sex and adrenal hormones.
• Smoking can quicken the development of rheumatoid arthritis and back pain.

Chiropractors treat sprains and strains all the time. And if you smoke, you lessen your chances of getting the most out of these treatments.

With rotator cuff and other shoulder injuries, smoking can interfere with the healing process. Also, larger tears have been found in heavy smokers compared to those who smoke less.

Your risk of injuries may increase if you smoke.

Studies indicate heavy smoking over a long period can hike your risk of tearing your rotator cuff. Smokers also face a greater risk of bicep tears and an overall reduction of blood supply to heal tissue.

You probably already know that smoking can cause lung and other cancers, bronchitis and heart disease. So make quitting smoking your resolution for 2015.

Contact Nault Chiropractic to learn more – and how we can help improve your overall health in the New Year.