Fairway Chiropractic Centre

01/22/2026

He braced himself for a long recovery from severe shoulder pain. Turns out, a misaligned rib was the culprit. A quick adjustment later, the pain vanished. Unbelievable results!

01/21/2026

How to Choose the Right Pillow and Mattress for Your Body

I have been getting a lot of questions about how to choose the right mattress and pillow, so I decided to write a blog post that summarizes this information in a clear and easy to understand way.

Sleep is incredibly important. This is when our bodies grow, repair, and recover. We spend about one third of our lives asleep, so it makes sense that what we sleep on should properly support our bodies and allow this process to be as restful and restorative as possible.

Most adults should aim for seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Teenagers need closer to eight to ten hours, and even more if you are younger and still growing.

Poor sleep has been strongly linked to low back pain. Pain can also disrupt sleep, creating a cycle where poor sleep worsens pain and pain further interferes with sleep. This is exactly why choosing the right mattress and pillow matters.

Your sleeping position comes first:

Sleeping on your back is generally best, as it allows the spine to remain neutral and under the least amount of stress. Side sleeping is also fine, but depending on mattress firmness and body shape, it may allow the lower back to sink or twist slightly.

Sleeping on your stomach tends to be the most aggravating position, especially for the neck, as it requires prolonged head rotation for many hours each night.

Choosing the right mattress:

In general, a medium firmness mattress works best for many people, particularly back sleepers. Some individuals with a deeper lower back curve may feel more comfortable on a slightly softer mattress.

Side sleepers, especially those with broader shoulders or hips, often benefit from a mattress that allows those areas to sink in while still keeping the spine aligned. Zoned mattresses can be especially helpful.

If your mattress is eight to ten years old, shows sagging, or has visible indentations, it may no longer be providing proper support.

Choosing the right pillow:

Your pillow should match your sleeping position.

Back sleepers often benefit from slight head elevation.
Side sleepers need a pillow that keeps the head and body level with the bed surface.

Research shows that latex or rubber pillows perform best for reducing neck pain, headaches, and shoulder or arm discomfort. Feather pillows tend to shift during the night and often lead to uneven support.

Why materials matter:

Some bedding materials treated with chemicals or flame retardants can release volatile organic compounds. Because we are in close contact with our mattress and pillow for many hours every night, choosing organic and chemical free materials is especially important. This is even more critical for infants and young children who spend more time sleeping.

My recommendation:

If you are looking for a high quality option, we recommend Obasan, based in Ottawa, Canada. Their mattresses and pillows are organic, chemical free, breathable, and customizable even after purchase.

Our patients also have access to a discount on their pillow collection.

Take the next step toward better sleep

Investing in the right mattress and pillow is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your spinal health and improve your sleep quality.

If you are still waking with stiffness or discomfort, there may be underlying alignment issues that a pillow alone cannot correct.

At Fairway Chiropractic Centre, we are here to help.

Call 519 748 5535 to book your consultation.

The full article with research references is linked in the comments below.

01/14/2026

Severe shoulder pain and limited movement vanished in a day after treatment from Dr. Nik. While this quick recovery isn't typical, it shows what's possible.

01/13/2026

Degenerative Disc Disease isn’t what most people think.

Despite the name, it’s not really a disease — and it doesn’t mean your spine is “breaking down” or doomed to surgery.

Degenerative Disc Disease (DDD) simply describes age-related or stress-related changes in spinal discs. These changes are common, often show up on imaging, and don’t always cause pain.

What does matter is how well your spine is moving, loading, and adapting.

Many people with DDD are told:
• “You just have to live with it”
• “Avoid movement”
• “Surgery is inevitable”

That’s often not true.

Pain and stiffness associated with disc degeneration usually come from:
• Poor spinal movement patterns
• Loss of disc hydration and load tolerance
• Muscle guarding and altered posture
• Nerve irritation from reduced space

Not from the disc itself being “worn out.”

At our clinic, care focuses on function first, not fear.

Depending on the individual, this may include:
• Chiropractic adjustments to restore motion
• Postural and movement retraining
• Targeted rehab strategies
• Non-surgical spinal decompression to reduce disc pressure and support healing

The goal isn’t just pain relief — it’s helping your spine move better, tolerate load, and support daily life again.

Many people with disc degeneration return to walking, lifting, sports, and work without surgery when the right approach is used.

Your spine is stronger and more adaptable than you’ve been led to believe.

If you’ve been told your MRI defines your future — it doesn’t.

Author: Dr. Nik Dukovac, Chiropractor.
Serving Kitchener, Waterloo, and Cambridge

01/02/2026

Hip Pain. Things you can do AT HOME to help.

Quick Answers
Q: Why does hip pain happen?
Hip pain is often misunderstood. While some cases come from the hip joint itself, many others come from referred pain from the lower back, myofascial trigger points, or mechanical imbalances in the feet, knees, or pelvis.

Q: What can I do at home to help hip pain?
Depends on the cause. For many cases you can self-massage using a lacrosse ball, mobility exercises, gentle core work, foot strengthening, temporary arch supports, and posture corrections can help significantly—especially if the pain is myofascial.

Q: How does Chiropractic help hip pain?
Chiropractic improves spinal and pelvic alignment, reduces nerve irritation, restores movement, and removes stress off of your nervous system so that your brain and body communicate more clearly and coordinate better healing.

Q: How do foot mechanics affect hip pain?
If the feet collapse inward, rotate outward, or lack stability, it changes the load on the knees and pelvis, creating stress across the hip muscles. This is often correctable.

Q: Can Chiropractic and home care together resolve chronic hip pain?
Yes—especially when the root cause is mechanical. When the pelvis, spine, and feet are corrected together, results are often long-lasting.

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Hip Pain Is Not Always a “Hip Problem”
People are often surprised to learn their hip pain is not coming from the hip joint at all.

There are several potential sources:

1. Hip pain referred from the lower back
I frequently see patients whose hip pain is actually caused by irritated nerves or joints in the lumbar spine (lower back). These pain patterns are well-documented in research and clinical practice.
When spinal joints stiffen or discs become irritated, symptoms can appear in the hip, thigh, or buttock.

2. Myofascial pain syndrome
This is one of the most common—but underdiagnosed—causes of hip discomfort.
Myofascial pain syndrome occurs when muscles and fascia develop trigger points—tiny areas of hyper-irritable tissue that refer pain to surrounding areas.

For example:

Tight gluteus medius refers pain to the outer hip
Piriformis tension can mimic sciatica
Gluteus minimus trigger points can feel like deep hip joint pain
These problems respond extremely well to self-care strategies at home.

3. Mechanical stress from the ground up
Your hips are greatly influenced by:

How your feet contact the ground
Arch height
Knee alignment
Pelvic tilt
Leg-length discrepancies
If the foundation (your feet) is unstable, the hips often compensate.

Chiropractic care evaluates the entire chain, not just the area of pain.

What Is Myofascial Pain Syndrome?

What Is Myofascial Pain Syndrome?
Myofascial pain syndrome happens when muscles become overloaded, strained, or chronically tight. Trigger points form inside the muscle, creating:

Deep, aching pain
Stiffness
Tightness upon waking
Pain with pressure
Referred pain down the leg or into the hip
Research shows that myofascial trigger points can mimic joint problems and nerve issues (Simons et al., Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction, 1999).

The good news?
Most trigger points respond extremely well to pressure, stretching, improved movement, and Chiropractic care.

Home Strategies to Help Hip Pain
Here are evidence-supported approaches and what you often teach patients in-office.

1. Lacrosse Ball Release for the Glutes & Hip Muscles
This is one of the most powerful self-treatments for myofascial hip pain.

How to do it:

Place a lacrosse ball against a wall or floor
Lean your gluteal muscles onto it
Roll gently over tender areas
Spend 60–90 seconds on each trigger point
I frequently teach patients to release:

Gluteus medius
Gluteus minimus
Piriformis
Tensor fasciae latae (TFL)
Patients often notice quick reduction in hip tension – within the first few days of doing this.

2. Exercises from Your Website
Visit the exercise video section on my website at Fairway Chiropractic to follow along with the routines we recommend for hip pain.

Hip mobility drills (Hip Greaser Exercises)
Hip Strethces
Hip / Glute Lacrosse Ball Muscle Release Exercises.
3. Improve Foot Strength & Mechanics
Weak feet or collapsed arches create internal rotation at the knee, which loads the hips improperly.

Helpful strategies include:

Short-foot exercises
Toe spreading
Arch doming
Balance training
Barefoot strengthening (as tolerated)
A temporary arch support can be extremely helpful while you’re strengthening the foot muscles.

Lots of great videos on this on our website too.

4. Consider Orthotics or Temporary Arch Supports
Poor foot mechanics can contribute to:

Hip pain
Pelvic tilt
Knee strain
Asymmetrical loading
You often recommend temporary supports while the patient builds intrinsic foot strength.
Orthotics may be needed when the structural issues are more significant.

5. Evaluate Pelvic Alignment
A tilted pelvis changes weight distribution across the hip joints and gluteal muscles. Even a small imbalance can create major pain when left unaddressed.

Patient Story: The Heel Lift That Changed Everything
A patient of yours had hip pain for many years. Chiropractic adjustments helped temporarily, but the pain always returned. When you reviewed her X-rays, you noticed a subtle pelvic tilt.

We added a 3 mm heel lift under one foot.

That small mechanical correction, combined with Chiropractic care and her home routine using a lacrosse ball, finally resolved her hip pain — and the improvement stuck.

Before the heel lift, she improved only for a few days at a time.
After the heel lift, the pain stayed away.

This is a powerful example of why looking at the whole person matters.

The ADIO Principle: Why Chiropractic Helps Even with Myofascial Pain
As you teach in your practice:

Above-Down, Inside-Out means that health is governed by the nervous system (Above-Down) and expresses through the body (Inside-Out).
Even when hip pain appears muscular, the nervous system controls:

How muscles activate
How tight or relaxed they are
How well they heal
How they coordinate with surrounding joints
Chiropractic adjustments restore proper signaling and remove interference so the body can heal from the inside outward.

The source of the power to your muscles is your Brain and nervous system. If there is stress on this communication pathway from misalignments of your spine, your muscles will not work as well as they should, nor will they heal as well as they could.

This is why Chiropractic often accelerates recovery from myofascial pain and mechanical hip issues.

When Hip Pain Requires Chiropractic Evaluation
You should be assessed if you experience:

Hip pain that keeps returning
Pain that worsens after sitting or bending
Pain that radiates into the thigh or buttock
Pain linked to pelvic tilt or leg-length issues
Hip pain combined with lower back stiffness
Hip pain that improves temporarily but not fully with stretching
A Chiropractic exam evaluates:

Pelvic alignment
Lumbar spine mobility
Trigger points
Foot mechanics
Leg-length discrepancies
Functional movement
Full Spine joint alignment assessment.
This whole-body approach is why Chiropractic helps hip pain that hasn’t responded to other care.

Peer-Reviewed References
Travell J, Simons DG. Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction: The Trigger Point Manual. 1999.
Battié MC et al. The role of spinal loading in degeneration. Spine Journal. 2009.
McGill SM. Low back disorders: evidence-based prevention and rehabilitation. Human Kinetics; 2015.
Adams MA, Bogduk N, Burton K. The Biomechanics of Back Pain. 2002.
Neumann DA. Kinesiology of the hip: a mechanical perspective. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. 2010.

Author
Dr. Nikola Dukovac, Chiropractor
Owner of Fairway Chiropractic Centre & Disc Repair Clinic.
Dr. Dukovac helps patients recover from hip pain using a combination of mechanical assessment, Chiropractic care, decompression when needed, and McGill Method–based rehabilitation. He has published peer-reviewed Chiropractic research, teaches movement principles to patients and professionals, and integrates the ADIO philosophy — that the body heals from Above-Down, Inside-Out.

12/24/2025

12/17/2025

“Loud cracks. Big pulls. Viral videos. But are those techniques actually addressing the problem — or just creating noise? In this blog, I explain why I choose hands-on Chiropractic adjustments over the Ring Dinger and Y-strap, and what most people are never told about spinal care.”

👉 https://fairwaychiropractic.com/blog/why-i-prefer-hands-on-adjustments-over-the-ring-dinger-and-y-strap-technique/

12/14/2025

A moment from my time practicing in Australia that I’ll never forget:

A gentleman in his early 80s came to see me after more than 10 years of being unable to lift his right arm above shoulder height. He was a proud man — always well-groomed — and he used to keep his hair perfectly slicked back. Even though he couldn’t reach his head anymore, he still carried a comb in his back pocket… out of habit, or maybe hope.

Decades earlier, he had been told:
“You have severe arthritis. There’s nothing you can do. Learn to live with it.”

So he did.
And for years, he believed that was the end of his story.

A few weeks into care, he walked into my office, reached behind him, pulled out the comb, and effortlessly slicked his hair back — something he hadn’t been able to do in over a decade.

He froze.
He smiled.
Then he grew frustrated — not with me, but with the YEARS of his life he felt had been taken away because he believed he had no options.

That moment stays with me because it highlights something I wish more people understood:

Arthritis or degeneration on an X-ray tells you nothing about your potential for improvement.
Function can return even if the image doesn’t change.

If you’ve been told to “just live with it,” don’t lose hope.
You may still have a lot of life — and movement — left in you.

Dr. Nik Dukovac
Chiropractor

12/10/2025

“I’ve got proof that I’m taller since coming to see doc. You see this bump on my forehead?
I walk down the stairs of my house several times a day and I’ve never hit my head on the low ceiling of the stairway. I only just started seeing you, my posture is better and I’m standing taller. The bump on my forehead is proof!”

True story.
lol!!

12/09/2025

Ask The Spine Doc event.
Dr Adrian at Challenger Motor Freight providing checking spines and answering questions.

What an awesme day at Challenger Motor Freight’s Wellness Event Day

- Demystifying Chiropractic
- Helping people understand how to have a healthier spine.
- Answering any questions people have spine health related.
oment

Want us to come to your workplace?!
Just reach out.