A Precious Jewel In Our Midst

Michael Thomas, DC

Folks come into the office for some particular reason. They have neck pain or low back pain, sciatica or dizziness. If they are new to the office, they have heard that chiropractors can help these problems, or that I helped someone they know with a similar problem. . Once adjusted, these acute symptoms frequently resolve pretty quickly. A few weeks into care, I often begin to hear that other issues, that weren’t boiling over and might not have even been mentioned before, have resolved or are beginning to resolve, too. Sometimes its musculo-skeletal issues like hip, knee, ankle, or foot pains that have dwindled or gone.

Other times it is very different. “I am digesting my food much better,” people often say. “I am sleeping better. “ “I am not depressed anymore.” “I can think more clearly.” “ I can take a deep breath now. “ Secondary complaints have dissolved slowly over a period of time as the adjustment and the effects of the adjustment settle more deeply into their balance of health. People often remark that they just simply feel better all the time.

Through decades of clinical experience and research, we are beginning to understand that misalignment of the bones in the upper neck, and conversely, the upper cervical adjustment, both cause profound changes in internal homeostasis (balance) as well as the way we stand and move. Recent studies are now revealing that not only are the affected tissues twisted and pulled, but metabolism is significantly changed too. Blood flow is altered, as is cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) flow. It is now our hypothesis that tractionization of tissues (particularly the dentate ligaments), alteration of venous drainage out of the head ,and interference with CSF flow change the balance of the nuclei (brain centers) in the brainstem just above the neck in the bottom of the head. This area of the brain acts to maintain a basic balance of health. This balance is ever changing as we receive information from around us (our environment) through our senses, and then use this information to drive our actions, our responses to the world around us.

Through decades of clinical experience and research, we are beginning to understand that misalignment of the bones in the upper neck, and conversely, the upper cervical adjustment, both cause profound changes in internal homeostasis as well as the way we stand and move.

We now understand health to be an on-going process. It is not something that is finally achieved but rather, something that is forever unfolding. Adapting to new information is very much a part of being healthy. Poor adaptation to new environmental input IS dis-ease. Mal-adaption leads to pathology, the point when internal changes cannot match the changes being sensed and they fall behind. The tissues are disturbed. It is the beginning of sickness. Internal balance becomes disordered. As within, so without. Our posture, the very way we greet this world begins to diminish in vitality, stability and strength. The natural flexibility and ease of give-and-take in health is increasingly replaced by compression and resistance. The healthy give and take, push and pull of life begins to polarize and we find ourselves resisting the natural flow, hardening our tissues in the process. This response/reaction diminishes our potential while salvaging as much of it as possible. With observation, we see our bodies change from optimally dealing with the effects of gravity in a unified way -standing tall and at ease, fully aligned and essentially symmetrical, to a segmented, cantilevered state of uneven, and generally twisting resistance.

Something happens, perhaps a physical trauma, (bump head, lift a refrigerator, push a car, trip and fall, etc.), perhaps a mental or emotional trauma (anger, disappointment, frustration, fear, getting fired, divorced, losing a loved one, etc.). Something happens that you cannot fully abide within yourself. We can handle a lot of things, but sometimes the force of life that comes at us is more than we can dissipate. Our defenses cannot fully shield us and we absorb more than we can accommodate. We begin to fall back, to break down. Life isn’t gone, it’s still present, just impeded, and it makes a valiant effort to stabilize albeit in a less unified way. We settle and list and twist -our mass now more cumbersome and ungainly. The forces don’t cancel each other out like they do when we are optimally aligned with gravity. Ease becomes burden. This configuration leaves discrete areas of too much and too little force within us. After a while we begin to feel these areas as hot or cold, muscle spasms, areas of pain and numbness and tingling. Joints feel locked up and we may not feel as steady on our feet.
At the same time that our posture and movement is affected, so is our internal balance of life. We learned in the 2007 study that we can directly affect the brainstem centers that maintain blood pressure through corrective upper cervical adjustment. Obviously, we don’t consciously control all the parameters of our internal environment. Most of us don’t give it much thought. The controls for our ‘inner balance’ are located in the brainstem and are significantly affected by the torsion, blood flow and CSF flow changes that occur when the structures of the upper neck become misaligned. We found that 60% of the people in the study (folks who were on two antihypertensive (blood pressure) medications and were, up to that point, unable to get their blood pressure into a normal range, went on and maintained normal blood pressures –off their meds!- for two months after being properly adjusted upper cervically. We have many decades of clinical information that has shown us that the brainstem centers which control posture are also significantly affected. Together, these finding indicate that we have real ability to modulate (regulate) these brainstem centers. Not turn them up or down necessarily, but rather to help them all work together in a balanced way for optimal health.

Removing substantial interference to the nervous system and freeing the expression of life within each of us is a healthcare measure that the vast majority of humankind has not even glimpsed as a possibility.

The ability to ‘neuro-modulate the autonomic nuclei’ (what I was just writing about!) constitutes a remarkable primary health care measure that would fundamentally improve the health of humankind if they could be made aware of this possibility and, could gain access to corrective upper cervical adjustments. Removing substantial interference to the nervous system and freeing the expression of life within each of us is a healthcare measure that the vast majority of humankind has not even glimpsed as a possibility. No one looks for something that they are unaware of; and so we remain, for the moment, possibly the great secret in healthcare in the world. After studying many kinds of health care over the last few decades, I have never found anything else with the overriding potential of the upper cervical adjustment to fundamentally improve the health of people. I am proud to offer this work to all of you and I continue to write and conduct studies for publication which, if there is any justice in the world, may help to open the eyes of the world to this precious jewel in their midst.

Injuries and Alignment

Michael Thomas, DC

My wife Lexi, fell and hurt her knee recently. The next day, after walking on it around campus at school (she is finishing up a mathematics degree at the University of Florida this term), the two of us piled into the car for a trip to Atlanta. I was out of adjustment and we had made plans to get an adjustment for me. My Chiropractor is however, seven hours away (in Atlanta) and it takes some extensive planning to get adjusted!

Unfortunately, the car ride was very rough on her knee and the vibration of driving on the interstate felt excruciating to her by the time we arrived. I got my adjustment the next day and after lecturing at Life College with Dr. Friedman (my chiropractor, good friend, and the founder of Quantum Spinal Mechanics (QSM3), we drove home the next day. That night I found a proper brace and crutches and my resilient wife was off to school again that Monday.

The effect of not putting weight on one leg and using crutches soon told a story of pain in her neck and shoulders that actually became more painful than the knee itself! I was working with her, adjusting as needed and doing a lot of muscle work, but the stress of these days was wearing on her and she would come home and collapse on the couch for the evening. Slowly, too slowly for both of us, she began to feel the pain diminish. She took a day off from school and was able to rest for a long weekend and this helped quite a bit.

Lexi is still not out of the woods, but her knee has improved to the point she can begin to put weight on it and her neck and shoulders are recovering too although not without times of pain and spasm. She is now looking at graduating to a cane for some extra support and stability this next week. We are keeping her in adjustment and doing muscle work a couple of times a day.

I tell this story because it reminded me yet again that almost everybody has to deal with the effects of injuries. Things happen to us and we must recover. Standing on one foot with the crutches as she walked, caused her body to torque and deal with the stress of walking in a twisted, asymmetrical way. As her muscles attempted to keep her upright and moving forward, they had to absorb a lot of twisting force and this caused her to lose her alignment. Once she was out of adjustment, the muscle spasms and pains accelerated quickly. The brace stabilized her knee but also kept it from transmitting the force of her activities in a normal way. This (and her twisted posture) resulted in abnormal forces being built up and created a pattern of spasmed muscles all through her body. Adaptation and compensation are the best the body can do at times, but this alteration creates new problems too, as so many of you who come to see me for care are already aware.

When we are out of adjustment, our muscles do not function in a normal way. The messages they receive from the central nervous system are skewed. The normal tension of muscles that hold us upright begin to twist and compress. This leads to the many .variations of misalignment that we fall into when we are out of alignment. Everything is virtually connected to everything else and when one big problem occurs, it often causes problems in other places too. The problem is that the nervous system doesn’t know it is ‘out of calibration’ so to speak and it continues to make the same systematic error. If we have enough vitality, enough resilience, we can often overcome this issue and find a way to function, but often we can’t find a peaceful way to coexist with this twisted postural set and we begin to break down.

Some people are so strong and vital it can take five years before they realize they must get some help. Others, perhaps those with more extensive injuries, or perhaps just less resilience, find that life becomes painful and difficult almost immediately after a precipitating incident.

Most of you now know that once a set of pains has taken up residence in your frame and stayed for more than three days, it is time to get an upper cervical adjustment to resolve the twisting, the un-leveling, and the resulting pains, spasms, tingling and/or numbness that may accompany misalignment. Other times, the symptoms are manageable enough that people just ‘deal’ with it for weeks or even months before the slow acceleration of pains and other symptoms has become too strong to ignore any more.

Of course some people do not feel musculoskeletal pains but rather things like brain fog, headaches, dizziness, difficulty taking a deep breath, or change in digestion. Some of us have both! Each of us is a bit different in terms of the symptom picture that makes us realize we are out of adjustment. The upper cervical area is important in so many ways and misalignment is a profound insult to the normal function of our bodies and lives.

These deleterious changes are progressive and degenerative. Ignoring them seldom makes them go away. Over months and years of time they can slowly grind the quality of your life away. I am just trying to put words to what so many of you tell me when you come in to see me. You realize the profound effect of a corrective upper cervical adjustment in your own lives.

Many of you also consider the adjustment to be primary healthcare. It is just as important as making sure your organs are functioning properly because the nervous system is the controller for them! Upper cervical chiropractic often greatly helps acute problems such as sciatica or neck pains or shooting pains into the arms or legs but it also operates on a much longer timeframe, ensuring that all of your cells are receiving proper nutrition and instructions. This is long term health, the kind that perhaps will help you live into your 80’s and 90’s and beyond with a sound framework, a sparkle in your eye, and a lightness in your step!

As always, I wish you well and encourage you to stay in adjustment for the value it adds to your life.

Michael Thomas, DC

PS: Spread the word!

A New Year and a Moment of Reflection

I am in the midst of my nineteenth year as your Chiropractor here in Belleview. Like everyone else, so much has happened over the years. Life has unfolded for all of us. Just before Christmas I received an offer that made me examine whether I wanted to continue in this practice. After much agonizing reflection, I realized that I treasure my office and all of you as patients. I am doing exactly what I want to do. After a few days of reflection, I turned down the job offer. The specifics don’t matter but the process of examining the offer was very enlightening for me. Part of me was excited to think about not having to deal with the manifold stresses of working for oneself. It would be sweet to receive a paycheck every two weeks. On the other hand, I saw what I would lose and it wasn’t even close.

What did become clear to me was my own worth and value as a doctor and as a person. Perhaps like others, I had begun to devalue my own qualities because I was focused on the problems and not the opportunities that really matter to me. I got bogged down in the minutia, the constraints, the finances, and forgot that each day I get to come into the office and turn people’s nervous systems back on again. I relieve pain in many, many people. I change the lives of people who otherwise would not be able to maintain their own lives. Through my efforts, many, many people are able to continue in their own jobs and support their own families. I listened more carefully to the appreciation that I receive daily for my efforts from all of you. I remembered that some folks are driving two hours or more to see me. They don’t do that just for my ‘sparkling personality’ ,they do that because the adjustment changes their lives. In this office I can also take the time to sit and talk with people. I can listen to problems. I can tell stories. I can laugh and enjoy my time with the people who come through my doors. Over decades of time I have made real friends here.

I am remembering what got me into practice in the first place. I am remembering that the adjustment is a precious gift that I am honored to be able to offer my community. This life has been an adventure and it appears to have many surprises awaiting me in the future. I became a critical care nurse because I wanted to be of service to people who truly needed help. I wanted to do something that really mattered, even if, in this case, there wasn’t much respect in the outside community for it. Fifteen years at the beside in the bowels of hospitals tending to the critically injured and ill taught me so many things I could never enumerate them all. I learned about life and death. Untold numbers of people died in my hands as I struggled to save them. Many, many others went on to live their lives for another day. Ultimately, the pain of Medicine’s process, the misguided use of drugs to stifle life, the outdated models of physiology under which Medicine still labors, caused me to finally look for an alternative. It simply hurt my heart too much to continue within those constraints.

I began Chiropractic school on my thirtieth birthday. I had found something that was very different from the medical model I had labored within. I found a process by which I could help remove the interference to the power of life. I could do it routinely, all day long. In my own practice, I could treat people with respect. I could listen to them. I could hold their hand or hug them. I could be a whole human being working with other whole human beings and not just hide behind a pair of scrubs, a stethoscope, and a name badge with just my first name on it to protect my privacy. People are more than the problem they come in with. And the problems people have are often linked to the rest of their lives too. I didn’t change professions to move from ‘the gallbladder in 413’, to the ‘type two upper cervical misalignment’. I changed my profession so that I could engage the whole person and act to improve the flow of Life’s intelligence within us. I have done my best to do that in my office and I hope to continue for many years to come.

The last couple of years have initiated great leaps in understanding concerning this work. I am now the Director of Research for a progressive upper cervical technique named Quantum Spinal Mechanics (QSM3). Many of you are already aware of these leaps forward because I am often excited and yakking away about them. We have also been able to get some phenomenal results with many of you that were not happening before. We have one paper that should go to the publisher in the coming weeks. The next study is just now getting started in terms of data collection and more is on the drawing board. I am also writing a text which I hope will be helpful to the profession. The way that biology currently describes biological function and then addresses it in clinical (medical and chiropractic) terms is a hundred years behind the changes that quantum mechanics made in the early nineteen hundreds. I am attempting to develop a structural biology that is consistent with our findings in upper cervical work and do so starting from basic physical principles.

The idea of consciousness also has arisen in scientific circles. We need to bring the effect of our collective as well as individual consciousnesses to bear on healing too. We have ignored our own consciousness and its defining effects at our own peril for far too long. It is unsettling because we truly seem to find ourselves in a Post-Modern world. The assurance of the past seems far away now and things are not so certain. Many people I talk to now speak of feeling that chaos is immanent. The metaphors that sustained us in the past aren’t working so well now. We are perhaps struggling a bit with meaning in our own lives as our circumstances change.

Instead of lashing ourselves to a deep, immovable foundation, we find ourselves adrift in uncertain seas and now another kind of balance is required. It is not unlike the balance we must negotiate with gravity. The force of gravity is always present and it does not negotiate with us. It is we who must dance with gravity. We are always moving and our balance moves with us. We must find an always moving balance. We must find a stillness in the midst of movement. This is a dynamic balance that lets us do all the incredible things that human beings can do for so many decades of life. This is a letting go- kind of balance. It is an opening that is required, not a closing. If our joints (our centers of motion) cannot line up in an optimal way with gravity they will find other strategies. These other strategies are less efficient; they take more energy, cause more stress and cause changes in the tissues that we call diseases like arthritis and fibromyalgia.

A proper adjustment brings enough energy and direction to the system to allow the centers of motion to re-engage gravity in the most efficient way. The physical and emotional feeling that occurs after adjustment is often one of happiness and ease. (sometimes one finds, after an adjustment that Hering’s Law of Cure is occurring and transitional symptoms occur for a few days, as you all know too.) For most, there is a quiet and an easy strength that returns as muscles and other tissues return to perfect coordination with your whole being. This perfect coordination is part of what we call ‘health’. What we must hold onto now is our own center.

We must not give away our peace. These days it is too precious. Too often, television, radio and print media (which most everyone watches, listens to , and reads daily)significantly influences our sense of reality. We talk to each other about what we have learned. We are presented almost daily with huge crises that we consistently feel impelled to at least attempt to respond to. I know from my own history that too much crisis begins to dull your ability to feel emotion. Cynicism, sarcasm and fear raise their ugly heads. Too often we are forgetting that our peace, our real balance, is only found within our own selves. I am certainly not saying to ignore outside influences. I am saying that if we are internally balanced, calm and are functioning in an optimal manner, we will make better decisions in our lives. When we make healthier decisions, we make a healthier world.

So I am back to my own center and the peace I feel that stems from my decision to continue to live here in Belleview and continue to serve as your upper cervical chiropractor. I’ve got some new ideas and maybe we can be of even more help to you all in the future. In fact, this recent examination of what I am doing here has kindled a new fire in me. I’ll let you know more in coming months in these pages.

Michael Thomas, DC

No Place Like Home

Michael Thomas, DC

When Dorothy clicked her heels together in the “The Wizard of Oz”, she fervently wished to go home again. “There is no place like home”, she repeated. Many of us feel a relief when we get home from our day’s activities and feel comfort in being back inside the familiar walls of our own homes. We feel safe and at peace. We don’t need to read a book or watch television or have someone else tell us we are at peace. We are in the ‘right’ place.

This same feeling of ‘rightness’ occurs for many people who receive an adjustment in the office. An inner knowing occurs accompanied by a feeling that everything is ‘right’ (or is returning to ‘right’!). The upper cervical adjustment creates a sense of well-being unlike anything else most people have experienced. This, more than all the talking we do in the office is what makes long term clients. Honestly, upper cervical work is extremely difficult to explain and only now are we really starting to understand why this return to well-being and health occurs. What is much easier is adjusting someone and letting them feel and experience the difference in their life. This is really the only way that upper cervical chiropractic has grown over the decades it has been available.

Only now are we beginning to understand the improvement in blood-flow through the head and improvement of cerebral spinal fluid flow through the head that accompany the adjustment. Only now are we beginning to understand that the adjustment can balance the control centers in the bottom of the brain that monitor body activities below the level of consciousness. As we begin to understand our relationship to our world, we are realizing that we must be in balance with it, we must be in exquisite coordination with our environment; and primary to that is our relationship with gravity. We are not as separate as we like to think. We are en-nested in many levels of relationship with the world around us.

The upper cervical misalignment and the related postural changes are a fallback mechanism that works to improve the remaining possibilities once we are not able to optimize our relationship with gravity (once we have gone ‘out’ of adjustment). Our bodies always know how gravity is affecting us. The best solution is to align our bodies with the force of gravity. This is why we measure your posture when you come into the office. Moving away from the vertical axis (this ‘line of gravity’) causes an abnormal cantilevering of our body position. When we are misaligned, our pelvis loses its optimal relationship with gravity and begins to tilt and twist. Our upper bodies must counter-lean and twist so we don’t fall over. Our head positions (head-tilt) are often the fine-tuning. Improper relation to gravity takes a toll on all of us. Muscles and ligaments must do their best to keep us upright. At first they tighten and harden, but after a while, they get tired and begin to spasm. We feel this as aching, burning pains that can be sharp or dull, in one place or generalized over larger areas. For some of us, the worst part is the change in brain function. Many people remark on ‘brain fog’. Some people feel emotionally depressed when they are out of adjustment. Things aren’t ‘right’.

Corrective upper cervical adjustment restores your relationship with gravity. It helps to re-balance not just your posture but also the function of all of the systems of the body through its effect on the brainstem. People often express a return to ‘rightness’ after an adjustment. Some people feel it immediately, others take some time. There is an inner peace that comes with the adjustment for many people. In this increasingly complex and uncertain world, feeling ‘at home’ inside your own body is a great comfort and ultimately necessary for long term health. Restoring our alignment with gravity greatly aids in restoring our relationship with our own bodies and the world around us. This inner knowing acts as a foundation for our actions in the world. When we are ‘home’ inside ourselves and in our relationships, we make better decisions. We worry less. We feel stronger and more vital. We trust the sense that ‘all is well’.

There is no place like home.

Health Care or Disease Care?

Michael Thomas, DC

Keeping oil in your car’s engine is easier than rebuilding a blown engine. In the same way, staying balanced, staying in adjustment is easier on your life than waiting until you have an acute problem. Most people will tell me that they knew they were out of adjustment for a period of time before the incident occurred that made their pains something that needs to be taken care of immediately. Sometimes it can be a surprise, but we usually have a sense about our body balance. We know ourselves better than anyone else because no one else is with us all the time!

We brush our teeth daily, most of us routinely cut our hair, we wash our clothes after we wear them. We bathe and shower daily. We can see all of these parts of our lives and recognize the importance of keeping up with them. We can’t see our spines. We only feel them when things have gone wrong enough to cause pains. In fact, the majority of nerves in the body don’t carry pain. They are involved in making things happen (the motor nerves) and feeling what is happening (the sensory nerves). One part of the sensory nerves carries pain but the majority have others jobs.

We are kind of trained by the way medicine works to just respond to calamity, but otherwise many of us feel like our bodies are a kind of ’black box’. Stuff goes in and stuff goes out, but what happens inside is essentially a mystery! No news from the body is good news! When the body starts to talk to us, it often begins with a whisper now and then. These little messages are easy to ignore. If we can’t ignore, we are trained to suppress. A couple of aspirin makes most minor aches and pains go away. When we find ourselves taking drugs on an ongoing basis just to be ‘okay’, this is when many of you ring us up for an adjustment. Of course some of you are stubborn enough to wait until you can’t really function anymore. As with many things, waiting till there is real trouble makes fixing it a bit more involved.

We don’t wait until our engine temperature is in the red before we change the oil in our cars and perhaps we might give our bodies the same respect! Maintaining adjustment, maintaining our body alignment is critical to proper functioning at many levels in the body (and some of my patients tell me it greatly affects their mental and emotional functioning too!), far beyond the feeling of pains we sometimes get when we are out of adjustment.

Although we can use upper cervical chiropractic for ‘disease’ care, helping us when we are in pain and distress, it has even more value by keeping us tuned up so we can fully live the lives we have been given. Getting an adjustment and staying in adjustment is no less important for your health maintenance than brushing your teeth (not just when a tooth hurts!) taking a bath (not just when you are filthy!) or drinking enough water (not just when you’re dying of thirst!) each day. Keeping our nervous systems tuned up with regular visits to the office can significantly diminish the troubles in your life and keep you healthy and happy. Upper cervical chiropractic is real health care.