People often ask me, “When should I come back?” This is a fair question and an important one. Some people only return to the office when life has become too difficult again. “”Doc, that pain has returned and I can’t play golf”. “I’ve been feeling it for four or five months but just in the past couple of days I find that I can’t get comfortable in bed at night”. “I thought it would go away but it just keeps returning and it seems to be getting worse!” “This is a different pain than last time and I didn’t think it was related.” “I didn’t think you could help so I went to five other doctors, got cortisone shots, did weeks of physical therapy, had two MRI’s and now the surgeon wants to operate.”

These and many more are common comments from patients when they return to my office in acute pain or problem. The vast majority of the time, an adjustment will once again, return them to health and happiness. “I didn’t realize you could help this!” “I didn’t know it was related to my neck!” “My other doctor told me chiropractic couldn’t help this.” “This is voodoo!”.

I hear these and many other comments like these every day. This is why educating patients is almost as important as adjusting them. If you don’t know when I can be of help, you won’t come in to get the adjustment you need to return you to health or to maintain your health. This educational problem is a deep one. In our society, people are generally not taught anything about what we do or even how our bodies really work and therefore don’t realize the results you receive from upper cervical adjustment are even possible. We have always grown our patient population one person at a time. Once you have been adjusted and realized, felt, and lived the restoration that occurs, then you begin to get the bigger picture. This picture is actually bigger than the symptom expression in any one person -they know what it has done for them in the past but many have no idea of the possibilities.

Let’s briefly explore (this is a whole book in itself!) the areas and issues that can be affected by upper cervical adjustment.

Through ongoing research, we now understand that misalignment in the top of the neck changes blood flow through the head in a dramatic fashion. It also changes flow of the cerebral spinal fluid, which lubricates the brain and spinal cord and removes toxins. Many people have headaches and brain fog that seem directly related. Dizziness and equilibrium problems are frequently helped by adjustment. The cranial nerves also seem to be affected by misalignment and many people have found improvement in vision, hearing, TMJ and other facial problems. Many people remark they can’t take a deep breath when they are out of adjustment. Many people have noticed that their blood pressure returns to normal when they get back in adjustment. People report that their esophageal reflux improves when they are in adjustment. Many people report that their digestion becomes disordered when they are out of adjustment and returns to normal once they’ve been back to the office. One of my patients starts burping as soon as they are back in adjustment and this is a sign their gut is working again. We celebrate! I have several patients whose nose starts running and clearing their sinuses right on the adjusting table! (I have tissues!)

Many people have found that they begin to feel depressed when they are out of adjustment and that this will lift almost immediately when they get an adjustment. More than one person has told me they could finally get pregnant after getting an upper cervical adjustment -after trying for years without success. Seizures have often been greatly reduced or stopped all together.

This is just a sampling of the thousands of people who have come through the office over the years. We haven’t even gotten to pain yet. Chiropractic has been painted as “maybe good for low back pains at times” but results in this office would tend to expand it’s usefulness. In the last week I found patients telling me that their horrific trigeminal neuralgia pain was gone. One person related that she had been sitting on doughnuts for years but that she had come in for shoulder pains. After one adjustment her shoulder was 90% better but her tailbone pain was gone! So was the pain in her knee and ankle. Several people were scheduled for surgery. Most of them cancelled it after receiving relief. They had been told there was no other choice, but we are a choice they don’t know about.

A proper upper cervical adjustment restores your body to an optimal relationship with gravity. It restores the ability of your body to function as a whole and not have to scramble to keep up with hips going one way, shoulders another, and head yet another. Fighting gravity is a battle we always lose. Gravity is relentless. The adjustment restores equipoise, that ability of the body to balance easily right on the gravity line, a vertical axis that goes through our middle. It is much the same as a gyroscope. When a gyroscope has enough energy, it spins cleanly and easily. As it loses energy it begins to wobble more and more in an attempt to remain upright. The extra effort decreases its energy further and it increases its wobble until it falls over. The adjustment restores all the ‘pieces’ (head, neck, trunk, hips) back into alignment decreasing the energy needed just to keep us upright. This energy can then be used where it is needed in the rest of our body maintaining and restoring our well-being. We can think better. We have greater agility and ease in moving about. Best of all, we stop the degenerative processes that occur when we are out of alignment, causing joints and muscles to adapt and compensate just to keep functioning, halting the progression of arthritis and chronic muscle spasms.

My experiences have shown me that upper cervical chiropractic is primary health care for human beings. It is a hidden jewel that you have already found and has likely already made a change in your life. Like any precious gift, the more you know about it, the better it can serve you. I hope this piece has expanded your knowledge of upper cervical chiropractic. Now let’s spread the word!

In fact we often mask the truth from ourselves. Only when symptoms become bothersome or begin to obviously negatively impact our days (and nights!) do many people decide to come into the office for care. No one wants to focus on their problems and I don’t recommend that either. Our minds are a powerful tool. Too many of us are prisoners of the ongoing accumulation of negative, self-defeating thoughts we have stored in our minds in the past and continue to generate in the present. For too many of us, we have an underlying negative self-talk going on in our minds. We are literally programming loss and want and sadness and dire circumstances into our minds all day long, each and every day. This immense mass of biased negativity impacts not just our emotions and thoughts but also in profound ways, our bodies and the whole life we live.

Not everyone does this. There are those among us who consciously monitor the quality of thoughts that the mind generates and then consciously, on purpose, begin to change their thoughts. We are often drawn to such people. This is the deal, our minds work like a ROM (read only) drive on a computer. The drive fills up with what we put into it. When new situations arise, it is this database that our minds go to for assistance in understanding and perspective. If the mind is consistently negative, then new events will always be ‘flavored’ with that same negativity. We will see everything that happens to us through the lens of this same negativity.

Prayer, meditation, affirmation, and the conscious desire to be grateful, are examples of ways to begin to shift the balance of thoughts and feelings inside ourselves. We didn’t get to where we are in a day or a week or a month, and we must work on a consistent basis to change this default negativity, but in all times and places, there are people who are doing exactly that. What they have realized is that the past and the future do not exist. All that exists is the present moment. Only in this moment do you have the option to change. You can’t change the past, and the only way to change the future is in this present moment.

Resilience is a term that applies to all of our lives. It means the ability of our bodies, our emotions, our thoughts, to ‘handle’ what is happening in front of us in the present moment. Increasing resilience increases your ability to ‘handle’ life. Low resilience means you must constantly protect yourself from the push and pull of life. Lack of resilience diminishes our experience of life and diminishes our possibilities. I have used this metaphor with many of you in the past, but you might think of your life as having a size and shape. Perhaps you could visualize a ‘balloon’. In this metaphor, your life occurs within the confines of this balloon. So long as events stay within these boundaries, you are able to tolerate what comes to you. If for some reason, events move past the boundary of the balloon, you will find that the stresses of life are bigger than you can tolerate. This is when people become symptomatic. They begin to feel the negative emotions, the unbalanced thoughts, the aches and pains that come with being out of balance, of over-extending yourself, so to speak. Even if there were stresses going on that were less than optimal in your life, if they were within the confines of the balloon, you probably didn’t notice any problem. Only when they exceeded the boundary of the space you have made for yourself do you begin to realize ‘something is wrong’.

Negative thinking, lack of exercise, poor food choices, lack of sleep, inability to deal with the ongoing stresses that life can bring all diminish the ‘size’ of your balloon. This can mean that you lose function and ability to be healthy. The good news is that becoming conscious, getting active, eating properly and dealing with our stress, all conspire to enlarge the size of your ‘balloon’. You have more ‘room’ to live your life in peace and comfort. The upper cervical adjustment is one of the most powerful ways to ‘enlarge you balloon’ that I am aware of. By itself, it is incredible in its power to restore you to the life you aspire to. In conjunction with all the factors you have control over (thinking, eating, sleeping, stress management), you begin to have a powerful method for maintaining and even improving your health and your experience of life. Many of you have already experienced this in your own lives. The adjustment can act as a ‘re-boot’ for your life. Reducing postural misalignment and improving blood flow to your brain through the upper cervical adjustment is in my opinion, one of the most powerful healing modalities I have ever come across. The more we learn about it the more incredible it gets, as research is continuing to show.

Even without making any change in your life, the adjustment has the potential to be invaluable. Many of you say you don’t know what you would do if you couldn’t get adjusted. I have been assured many times that if I ever move, I will have a lot of folks following behind me! This is how powerful the adjustment is in their lives. They recognize the primary importance of the adjustment in their life. Life works better for people who are in adjustment and once this is understood, most people want to stay in adjustment!

Some people are even more pro-active. They are careful with their diet. They exercise, they manage their stress and they get plenty of sleep. Life becomes an adventure, not just something to be endured. They generally require fewer adjustments than people who rely on the adjustment to restore them for a few days or weeks until the lack and stress in their lives builds up again and they need another adjustment. We all make choices in our lives. Once we understand the consequences, we can make better decisions. We can consciously improve the quality of our own lives or we can remain the victims of negative thinking and watch our lives dwindle in an ever narrowing spiral of disappointment, pain and sorrow. Yes, life can send tough issues our way. It is in how we respond to these issues that expands or diminishes our quality of life. Are we consciously building the life we aspire to or are we victims of the negativity in our own minds? How are you? –I mean, really?

Michael Thomas, RN, BS, DC

It isn’t enough for a string to be under a bit of tension. It must also be in proper relationship to all the other strings. Our bodies are the same way. All of the muscles must be in balance so that they act in in concert with each other, allowing us to move and act in an efficient way. It is possible for a master guitarist to perhaps find where the notes are on a poorly tuned guitar and play a song. It would take great effort and the notes wouldn’t be at the frets where they usually are found because the tuning is off. We do the same thing when we are out of upper cervical adjustment. When our nervous systems are out of tune, we call it ‘out of adjustment’. We must adapt and compensate to continue to perform the activities of our lives. When the tension is unbalanced, we find one leg going short compared to the other one. One hip may be higher and twisted forward or backward. Our torsos must then lean back toward the middle to keep the forces of gravity from making us fall down. Last, but certainly not least, the head acts to fine tune this fall-back strategy. It is the fine tuning for our posture. We are forever dancing with gravity and when we are in adjustment we are optimally prepared for what life brings to us.

Unlike guitars, we must also be in tune with our environments. We aren’t as separate from our world as we might think. It isn’t enough to be in tune just within ourselves. We must also be in tune with the never-ending force of gravity. Everyone who moves about on the Earth must contend with gravity and its consequences. When we can stand tall, with equal weight on our two feet, with a level and untwisted pelvis, our head on straight, directly above the center of gravity in our pelvis, this makes for the finely tuned instrument we know as an optimally functioning human being! We are forever dancing with gravity and when we are in adjustment we are optimally prepared for what life brings to us. We can then use the minimal amount of our precious energy to act in our lives, saving our resources for other important tasks like thinking and digesting our food.

When we are out of adjustment, the opposite occurs. We must power up just to stand up. We must use more tension in our muscles to keep ourselves upright and move about. Like the center pole in an old pup tent, if our spine is not standing up straight and instead leans to one side, the ropes that are attached to it find themselves with very unequal tension. Tension on one side is ratcheted down, having to literally keep the pole from proceeding on to the ground. The other rope is loose. In human beings this situation also occurs and people can rub their skin and feel a tension and thickening in their necks and shoulders and backs. This is because unlike a rope, our bodies adapt and change all the time. Our muscles become unequal. They get used to this inequality and actually change shape! The majority of our energy is used by our muscles to move us about in our world. When we are out of tune the energy cost accelerates.

When we are out of adjustment, out of tune, our energy is shunted away from important activities like thinking and wound healing and cellular repairs. All the elements in our bodies need to be in tune with each other. Our internal organs serve to create a steady environment within us. They help give the power to the muscles so we can move and interact with our environment. When we are out of adjustment, out of tune, our energy is shunted away from important activities like thinking and wound healing and cellular repairs.

We must use more of our life energy to just stand up and move around. So this is what upper cervical chiropractic patients already know: when we are in adjustment, our life works better and easier. We can think better and we have an ease in moving about. We know life is more fun when we are ‘in tune’ and our life can become the beautiful symphony it is intended.

Michael D. Thomas, RN, BS, DC

The medicines that are trumpeted every day from all manner of media generally act in a way that is similar to cutting the nerve to the finger.  They are suppressive and palliative.  Pain is a messenger that something is wrong.  ‘Killing’ the messenger will diminish your pain but it doesn’t do anything to solve the actual problem.  You just live life in ‘blissful ignorance’.  This is actually true for most cardiac medications among many others.  The ‘heart’ pills do not just go to the cells of the heart and cardiovascular system where you want them to go.  They go to every cell in your body and change functions at that level where ever they go.  These changes can and do cause problems and these are known as ‘side effects’.

We are comprised of trillions of cells.  They combine together to form tissues and organs.  All of these structures work must together in harmony for us to be healthy.  At any moment, our bodies are doing the very best they can with what they have to work with.  Medications (drugs) generally interfere with metabolic pathways inside cells.  They shut down certain functions.  They can shut down communications between cells.  This is the opposite of removing interference and allowing the vital force of life inside you to function without constraint.  Turning life off is not turning life on. 

Sometimes, it is the best we can do.  Being numb may be preferable to living a life in pain.  But what if we listened to the message and understood it?  What if we have more power inside us than we have been told?  What if you didn’t have to constantly control your symptoms with toxic drugs but could actually free the life that struggles to express itself inside you? 

This is the incredible reality of upper cervical chiropractic.  If you have been under upper cervical care for a while you already have experienced this truth.  The adjustment works not because of what it ‘does’, but because of what it ‘un-does’!  Freeing the power of life to communicate freely with all the cells of the body allows the body to work in the optimal and coordinated manner that it was made.  Diminishing function, decreasing communication also lessens the ability of life to find a way back to health. 

You know what the adjustment has done for you.  Many of you say you don’t know what you would do without it now!  No one wants to live with life turned down once they have lived life in adjustment!  Imagine if the whole world had access to this amazing healthcare.  Imagine if everyone felt well and healthy. Imagine the kinds of decisions we would all make if all of our nervous systems were working properly.  Keep imagining and spread the word!

Michael Thomas, RN, BS, DC

“What is to give light must endure burning.”

Viktor Frankl

The winter solstice signals the yearly extreme of the darkness of night as well as the minimum of day.  From this point in the calendar, the light of day will now grow with each revolution of the Earth, incrementally shortening the night, gradually increasing the length of solar illumination each day. This occurs because the spin of the earth is not perpendicular to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun.  This makes the whole Earth wobble, and it takes a whole year to wobble north to south and back to north.

The celebration of the end of one year and the beginning of another, offers us a moment to consider the rhythms of our own life.  Circles within circles.  Circles have neither beginning nor end, but we do.  The rhythms of our lives begin in the womb and end with our last expiring breath.  The cycle of our life is a truncation (shortened version) of the endless cycles around us.  For instance, there is a cycle of atoms and molecules that continuously move into and out of us, exchanging themselves with other atoms and molecules in our planet’s air, water and earth.  Where we begin and end may be more fluid than we usually consider.  The Moon pulls on the liquids within our blood just as it tugs on the water in the oceans producing the tides.  We have relationships with others that we see and talk with as we go through our weeks and months and years.

The gravity that binds us to this Earth causes us to wobble too.  We always move in rhythmic fashion in little micro-orbits around the line of gravity formed by our mass.  The center of our wobbling (our center of gravity), generally resides in our pelvis.  When we stand up on our two legs, our center of gravity is several feet off the ground.  Our incredible nervous systems continually adapt and compensate in order to optimize our positions to best match up with whatever we are doing at any moment in time.  Equipoise, we call it.

While our bodies dance with gravity, we are usually busy finding balance in other ways.  We don’t want to be too hungry or too full.  We try to get the right amount of sleep so we can be alert in the other parts of the day.  We want to be sensitive to others and yet maintain the boundaries necessary for our own emotional and mental health.  We must be active enough to be healthy but not work so hard we begin to break down.   There is no magic action or thought or feeling that always works in every situation.   It is in the balance of all the aspects that life happens.  The relationship between the ‘pieces’ turns out to be more important than the pieces themselves.

This idea is called a systems approach and is increasingly being seen in science as the next step after many decades of reductionism.  In any structure, it is the way the ‘pieces’ are arranged that produces the utility.  Until recently in biology, when we wanted to study cells we would take them and blend them up.  We would then put them into a centrifuge and spin the contents around until distinct layers revealed themselves.  Each layer was then analyzed chemically and in a microscope and we thought we understood a lot about cells.  It turns out that the structure inside cells is essential to their function.  Destroying their structure destroyed our ability to understand them.  It took several decades to figure this out.  It is in the relationship of all the parts that creates the functionality of life.  We are more like verbs than we think.  Even molecules act from their edges. The push and pull of charge and repulsion, tension and compression, light and dark, playing out over time creates the circles of cycles that comprise our lives and all of Life.

What meaning is there in a circle?  In our society we spend a lot of time trying to get somewhere.  A circle always ends up where it started.  This question is one that each of us must answer for ourselves, but the stories of our lives play out in the rhythm of the cycles we encounter.  We can be carried away by the extremes.  We can be bored by the moderate times.  We can suffer through lack.  Our perception, the way we assign value to what comes through our senses, creates the meaning.  Perception is a choice.  We think it is hard wired, we have even been taught that it is hard wired.  It is not.  Disciplined intent changes our perceptions all the time.  (Oh, and so does undisciplined intent!) Our minds are meant to be our servants not our oppressors.

In this moment of moving from darkness to light, we can acknowledge our own cycles of light and dark.  We are not narrowly defined by either our darkness or our light, but rather by how we navigate the between the two in the living of our lives.  One doesn’t exist without the other and neither do we.  As we understand the polarities within ourselves, so we also heal the rifts between us all.  If we can make space in our hearts for our own extremes, perhaps we can find the room to better understand the extremes of others.

Don’t believe all the naysayers.  Don’t let the news steal your peace.  Changing yourself does change the world.  It’s the only way it will change.  You are the balanced center of many forces.  Acknowledge your center and be that balance in your own life and in your actions out in the world.  Make it a happy new year for us all.

Michael Thomas, D.C.

It is the Holiday time of year.  The weather is cooling off, even down here, and there is an air of festivities and perhaps a hint of goodwill in the air.  Challenging times demand more of us just to stay where we are.  It is perhaps, more important than ever to find the spirit of this time of year and examine the past year in anticipation of the coming one.  To begin, we might examine what we are thankful for.  If this last year was as tough for you as it was for me, you might think there is little to be grateful for, but you would be wrong.

A bit of perspective goes a long way.  There are now seven billion of us on our planet Earth.  80% of us live in poverty.  That means most of us can’t take care of our basic needs.  70% are illiterate.  That means that the vast databases and the accumulated knowledge that lives in the written word is unavailable to us and our lives.  Half of us suffer from hunger and malnutrition every day.  500 million of us are in prison, being tortured or close to dying from starvation.  3 billion of us cannot go to our house of worship without risking assault or death.  If you have a full refrigerator, clothes to wear, a roof over your head and a place to sleep you are wealthier than 75% of us on this planet.  If you have money in the bank and also some in your wallet, you are among the 8% of people who do.  One percent of people on the Earth own a computer.  One percent has a college degree.  6% of us own 59% of the wealth and statistically they all come from the USA.  Here in Marion county 27% of our children live in poverty.  The state average is 18%.  If you fall on the fortunate side of these numbers you can certainly be grateful.  If not, you don’t need me to tell you about it.

Gratitude isn’t about how much you have, it’s about your perspective.  Being grateful connects you to something much bigger than yourself.  It changes the way you see everything that unfolds in front of you.  We are all interconnected.  What we do, the choices we make, the things we buy, the food we eat, the people we associate with, all make a difference in the world.  Being grateful is a willful act of perspective.  We can be irritated that things aren’t going the way we planned or we can be grateful that we simply woke up this morning.  Our arms and legs worked (If they did.  If not, we are grateful for the ones that do!)  Our brains work.  We can see and hear.  We can move about.  We may have others who care about us.  We may have family that pulls together every day.  We may have a job that allows us to pay our bills and to live the life we choose.  We may have love in our life.  We certainly have the love that we can give.  Love’s origin is inside each of us.  And given the reciprocal nature of love, if you give love out daily it returns in spades.  This is one time that the more you give the more you receive.  This is Love’s secret.

I know from my own journey that living in fear, constantly worrying about survival, struggling to take and hold onto what you want is a lonely and unsatisfying life.  Fear and creativity are mutually incompatible.  Even if you have others around you, survival consciousness is a lonely prison.  Everything that occurs is registered as either more or less for and about you.  “What’s in it for me” is the mantra of greed that has made this planet so inequitable.  On the other hand, there is another perspective.  This perspective comes from an appreciation of the ‘pattern that connects’.  You may be religious, you may not.  This isn’t about theology but it does have a central spiritual component.  We are not just ‘meat machines’.  We are not just selfish clots of desires.  We are not actually independent at all.  We may imagine that we are self-sufficient, but no one is.  We are part of an unimaginable pattern bigger than anything our brains can come up with.  Our lives are connected to everything around us from the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat to the people we interact with.  More than this realization of connection is the realization that we can trust Life.  In the chiropractic work I do it is called the ‘non-interference paradigm’.  It means that we can trust the life inside of us and that our best medicine is removing any interference to it and trusting that the life that created you, that made what would one day become you grow into a cell and from there into trillions of cells (that you are now!).  The life that built and grew your tissues and bones and the nervous system that connects you to all of life will manifest in the optimal way, if it can.  There is always enough.  There is even abundance.

You won’t read this much in the medical literature.  It doesn’t get airplay on the news.  There is no profit in self-sustainability.  There is nothing to buy.   Our health is our greatest treasure.  Without it, nothing much matters.  With it, everything is possible.  Health isn’t achieved by turning life off with drugs.  Surgery can give you some time but it doesn’t generally heal you by itself.  The surgeon can cut but it is the force of life within you that mends the tissues.  The real true and only healer is inside each one of us.  We are not here by accident.  In fact incredible things had to occur for you to be walking the planet at this time.  We have somehow come to see the world as cold and cruel and indifferent but it is us who have those qualities, not life.

Once gratitude has washed its way through our hearts and lives, we find the end of the year to be a moment when we ponder what comes next?  We generally move in the direction we are headed.  What is our direction?  How can we be better people?  As we serve our communities, we ourselves are served in a manifold of ways that we could never predict.  As we are generous with others, generosity is unleashed in our own lives.  As we reject fear and worry, it is replaced by the peace of a kind word, a selfless act, an unlikely courtesy.  And with these sweet moments comes the health we have despaired over.  The friends we wished we had, perhaps even the money we desperately need to keep afloat.  Not because we took it from others who don’t have enough for themselves, but because we allowed it to occur.  We can’t see the big picture.  This is what faith means.

It is in the present moment that this gift comes, and only in the present moment.  If we are lost lamenting the past or agonizing over an imagined future, we miss the possibility that is engendered in the moment.  Each moment that we miss is lost forever.  But the good news is that a new one occurs in the present that is equally pregnant with possibilities and hope and power and satisfaction.  This universe appears to be a well of ever-new creativity.  To drink from this well we must be present now.  We can’t drink the water of yesterday or tomorrow.

Two thousand years ago, a man named Jesus of Nazareth postulated a doctrine of love.  In a most unreasonable fashion, he told those who listened to him that they had no need to fear the future or be tortured by the past.  He said that if one is met with violence that one should return love.  All these centuries later we still can’t quite get our heads around that one.  We come from many millennia of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’.  Gandhi, who many centuries after Jesus, noted that this idea, carried out to the logical conclusion would leave the world blind and edentulous.  He met violence with non-violence as did King and many others who have talked of returning love for hate, but the idea didn’t die with them.  It never dies because it springs full formed over and over in each of our hearts.  What we do with this gift is up to each one of us.  We make this choice every moment of our lives.

As useful as our rational mind is, it cannot conceive of the infinite possibilities that await us each moment.  This mind can only compare our memories of what happened in the past and then give us a ‘best guess’.  This guess is laden with our neuroses and our feelings and of course our ‘rationalizations’.  Our memories are often inaccurate and substantially incomplete.  In this way we are blind to our present because of the baggage from the past.  Healing is always about changing our consciousness.  In upper cervical chiropractic we remove neurological interference at the junction between the head and neck and find that when this Life within us can flow without impediment it sings a much happier song!  In the same way that this work can transform our physical lives, gratitude and love can transform our inner and outer lives.  We are not made to be victims of our mind.  Our minds are instruments we use in this life.  We must be present in the moment to use and not be used by our minds.  Our choices make our lives, one moment at a time.

I will end this essay with a story that I found a few days ago about a man who made a most unreasonable decision.  I give you all a most unreasonable season’s greetings.

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right

March 28, 2008

StoryCorps

Julio Diaz has a daily routine. Every night, the 31-year-old social worker ends his hour-long subway commute to the Bronx one stop early, just so he can eat at his favorite diner.

But one night last month, as Diaz stepped off the No. 6 train and onto a nearly empty platform, his evening took an unexpected turn.

He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife.

“He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, ‘Here you go,’” Diaz says.

As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, “Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you’re going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm.”

The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, “like what’s going on here?” Diaz says. “He asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”

Diaz replied: “If you’re willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me … hey, you’re more than welcome.

“You know, I just felt maybe he really needs help,” Diaz says.

Diaz says he and the teen went into the diner and sat in a booth.

“The manager comes by, the dishwashers come by, the waiters come by to say hi,” Diaz says. “The kid was like, ‘You know everybody here. Do you own this place?’”

“No, I just eat here a lot,” Diaz says he told the teen. “He says, ‘But you’re even nice to the dishwasher.’”

Diaz replied, “Well, haven’t you been taught you should be nice to everybody?”

“Yea, but I didn’t think people actually behaved that way,” the teen said.

Diaz asked him what he wanted out of life. “He just had almost a sad face,” Diaz says.

The teen couldn’t answer Diaz — or he didn’t want to.

When the bill arrived, Diaz told the teen, “Look, I guess you’re going to have to pay for this bill ’cause you have my money and I can’t pay for this. So if you give me my wallet back, I’ll gladly treat you.”

The teen “didn’t even think about it” and returned the wallet, Diaz says. “I gave him $20 … I figure maybe it’ll help him. I don’t know.”

Diaz says he asked for something in return — the teen’s knife — “and he gave it to me.”

Afterward, when Diaz told his mother what happened, she said, “You’re the type of kid that if someone asked you for the time, you gave them your watch.”

“I figure, you know, if you treat people right, you can only hope that they treat you right. It’s as simple as it gets in this complicated world.”

Produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.

Michael D. Thomas, D.C.

Note: Tensegrity is the way nature designs structures.  In a tensegral array, the compressive elements are said to be discontinuous.  This means they don’t touch each other.  Bones are compressive structures.  The tensional elements in a tensegrity array are continuous.  This means that the muscles and ligaments and the whole myofascial envelope is continuous and forces are dissipated evenly throughout the entire array.  Dr. Friedman has discussed tensegrity at some length in the past but this is a short explanation.  The reader is already aware of the historical definition for the Atlas Subluxation Complex.

Grostic and Wernsing contemporaneously and yet independently, according to the Orthospinology text, conceived of the possibility that the frontal plane rotation of the atlas under the skull, what we have called atlas side-slip, or atlas laterality, could be measured in degrees (a situation apparently analogous to Liebnitz and Newton who simultaneously but independently discovered the principles of calculus) .  This idea was one significant aspect of Grostic’s basic elemental relationship between the condylar and axial circles (C/A).

Grostic believed that atlas laterality was the primary cause of neurological interference.  Postural distortion is not measured in the absence of at least ¾ degree of atlas laterality.  This confluence of events came to be seen in upper cervical work as cause and effect.

The area is dense with neurology and the dentate (pia) ligaments often attach at the craniovertebral junction.    J.D. Grostic hypothesized a dentate ligament tractionization theory to explain the possible effects of upper cervical (atlas) misalignment.  It appears that even a small amount of atlas laterality is associated with changes in blood flow into and out of the head as well as associated tractional or torsional changes.  It is established that mechanical forces alter function at the cellular level as well as in the nuclei of the upper cord and brainstem.

Current studies in the chiropractic profession as well as medicine are examining the role of upper cervical misalignment and alteration in blood flow (compliance) into and out of the head.  CSF flow may also be altered.  Restoration of alignment appears to greatly improve compliance.  Misalignment is asymmetrical by its nature and therefore affects blood flow differently on each side.

The concept of tensegrity as promulgated by Levin and Ingber (as well as many others) was seen as debatable until fairly recently.  It seems now however, that the literature has been able to define the cell as a tensegral structure, although looking at the whole body biomechanically as a tensegral array remains a bit controversial.  Work has been done to define the pathways used in the array (Thomas Myers- Anatomy Trains).

Our perspective as orthogonally based upper cervical doctors predisposes us to see relationships that are not apparent to others who do not consistently look at the aspects we focus on.  The concept of tensegrity has been empirically accepted by Dr. Friedman who has expanded the concept of bone out of place, segmental misalignments, and other partial examinations of the soft tissue/skeletal system to include the whole organism.  His biomechanical conceptualization regarding the principle of tensegrity in the upper cervical area as well as the rest of the body has begun to make the longstanding understanding that the upper cervical adjustment is a full spine approach an integrated reality.

In a tensegral array there are no actual lever systems because there are no fulcrums.  When in proper apposition, the skeletal elements do not touch each other.  A lever arm must have a fulcrum with which to do its work.  It is the tensional elements (the muscles, ligaments and tendons and the whole myofascial envelope that are under continuous tension.  The skeletal (compressive) elements are discontinuous (separate) in the system.  When a tensegral array comes under axial tension, the compressive elements (the bones) line up with the tensional elements, stiffening the whole system in order to resist these deleterious torsional forces.

Bones do not lock out of place.  They don’t even touch each other unless there is local collapse of the tensegral array.  The tensional elements may, under deleterious forces, buckle or compress.  When this occurs in the low back, there is progressive degeneration of the spinal elements as they attempt to adapt to deleterious forces.  When this occurs at the craniovertebral junction it appears to cause a change in the symmetry of the paraspinal musculature with resulting reset of the individual elements.  This includes the position of the atlas.

We have long realized in orthogonally based upper cervical chiropractic that although the pelvis is the greatest mass in the kinetic chain of the spine, it is not necessary to address it’s misalignment by directly adjusting the pelvis.  We have long found that upper cervical adjustments can affect the whole system and restore alignment to ALL of the spinal elements (with respect to gravity) because the tensegral array that we ‘are’ is neurologically modulated.  A small amount of misalignment in this area is magnified due to its neurologically central location.

Embryologically, the nervous system arises out of the neural tube.  The anterior aspect goes on to form the brain. The caudal aspect becomes the spinal cord and connects to the rest of the body. The craniovertebral junction is the origin.  The nervous system begins right where we go to adjust.

Ghysen commented on the three dimensional nature of the nervous system:

“The central nervous system of all triploblasts is essentially a three-dimensional structure derived from a two-dimensional epithelium.  It is built along three axes, antero-posterior, dorso-ventral, and apico-basal.  Development along each axis relies on its own development mechanisms, and generates its own range of cell specificities.  The central nervous system is, therefore, basically an orthogonal structure.”(my emphasis).

[p. 556. Ghysen A. The origin and evolution of the nervous system. Int. J. Dev. Biol. 47:555-562 (2003).]

[Note: triploblasts are bilaterally symmetrical animals with three germ layers.]

So if bones do not lock out of place, what causes the atlas laterality and rotation that we can consistently measure on x-rays?

In the tensegral model the spinal elements (bones) are passive, they are utilized to maintain shape, but it is the soft tissue elements that are active.  Force is distributed throughout the whole system as evenly and as immediately as possible.  If the neurology has become imbalanced causing the tensegral array to have to deal with asymmetric non-anatomical forces, the whole body distorts.  When the center of mass in the pelvis moves away from the gravity line, the body immediately adapts, usually by leaning back toward the gravity line. The atlas, in its function as a coupling between the head and the C2-pelvis kinetic chain will move to equilibrate the forces of the kinetic chain and the head.  This is an effect not a cause.  (Small mass doesn’t rule big mass in terms of mechanics).  Again, measurement of ¾ of a degree or more of atlas laterality is certainly coincident with postural distortion.

Dr. Friedman is now showing, in an ever growing number of successive cases, that the misalignment we have recognized for the last 70 years is comprised not just of the upper and lower angles and rotation of C1 and 2, but also of a compressive component existing throughout the entire tensegral array that can impede and sometimes preclude correction of the linear elements.  If compression remains in the spine, the attempt to restore the skeletal elements to the vertical axis will only jam the structures into line.  This may and does reduce the neurological component regarding blood flow to the head as well as diminution of the tensional forces affecting the upper cervical spine and brainstem but the entire array can remain under adverse mechanical tension.  This can lead to chronic mechanical issues in other aspects of the array.

Friedman is finding that the bow (of the spinouses) we often see in the frontal plane, the loss of curve (or even reversal of curve in the sagittal plane)  as well was the rotation in the transverse plane all constitute radiographic evidence of this progressive, compressive force.  Another indicator is the presence of more weight on the side opposite the short leg.  The last blog by Dr. Friedman discussed the primary importance of decompressing the misalignment before attempting to restore it to the vertical axis.  We have long done with this type II’s (Into-the-Kink) when we drop the head so that we close the facets on the side opposite laterality and allow the circular forces to restore the lower angle to the vertical, taking the bow out.  Using the weight of the head to decompress the misalignment and restore the lower angle to the vertical axis has long been seen as a successful process.  Type II’s are also known for their emotional aspects which may have become obvious when the decompression opened up the system, literally taking tension off the brainstem and relieving the chronic compression.  However, believing that the atlas laterality is the CAUSE of the problem, we have had a more difficult time with opposite angle misalignments because to decompress the spine one would have to adjust the patient on the side opposite laterality.  If atlas laterality is the cause and not a critically significant effect (with the attendant neurological sequelae), then we would expect atlas laterality to increase and we would have no choice but to stay on the side of atlas laterality.  Indeed, many people have had to accept the continued presence of lower angles that won’t reduce when the head is supported in a neutral plane for this very reason.

Dr. Friedman reasoned that atlas laterality may be an effect of distortion in the whole tensegral array and that decompression of the array could facilitate not just improved reductions but improved stability and truly unencumber the whole system.  Up and open he calls it.  Over the last few months he has been working with many dozens of patients and this in fact is the bottom line.  He is restoring people to the vertical axis and unwinding previously intractable lower angles and rotations.  Properly used, this new system of biomechanics proportionately reduces all aspects of the misalignment including atlas laterality- even if the adjustment is on the side opposite atlas laterality.  Dr. Friedman showed several of these cases pre and post in his last webinar.

The cardinal rule in orthogonally based upper cervical work has always been that we must adjust on the side of atlas laterality.  This rule has been predicated on the assumption that atlas laterality is the cause of the postural distortion as well as other attendant effects of the ASC.  This harkens back to the HIO days when the adjustment consisted of a brief but significant thrust designed to direct and encourage the atlas on its journey back to its normal position.  Long ago we set the thrust aside and began to use the triceps ‘pull’.  Conceptually, we have continued to see the adjustment as directly moving the atlas back under the skull into a normal (midline) position.

The body is however an integrated system.  If you affect one part of the array, you affect the entire array.  The neurological and biomechanical consequences of atlas laterality are not in dispute. This conceptual shift occurs in understanding of the rest of the system.  Restoration of the head and lower angle to the vertical accompanied by orthogonal positioning of the atlas is only part of the resolution of subluxation.  This can be seen in posts which resolve the relationships of head and neck without return to the vertical axis (gravity line).  The elements cranial to the pelvis must coordinate with the position of the pelvis in order to create stability and agility for movement.  Since the pelvis constitutes the largest mass in the kinetic chain of the spinal elements (as well as being the center of mass for the whole body) the spine and head cannot return to the vertical axis if they are not positioned over the orthogonal pelvis.  Instead they will adapt and compensate.  Indeed, the excursion of the upper cervical misalignment is a direct function of pelvic misalignment.  It is a circular relationship since the pelvic obliquity occurs due to altered neurological modulation of the nuclei in the brainstem, which in turn occurs due to adverse mechanical tension from misalignment of the upper cervical spine.

Dr. Cockwill published a paper entitled, “Angular Measurement of the Upper Cervical Spine in the Neutral and Laterally Flexed Positions”, in The Upper Cervical Monograph 5(7):10-12, May 1996.  Cockwill was examining a critical point: “This study is simply an attempt to detect any angular change while the upper-cervical spine is in a state of motion.” (p.10)  The study took three patients and filmed them using the normal NUCCA procedures for nasiums.   After the nasium was taken, the patients were then placed in a (cervically) laterally flexed position (“Requiring the test subject to actively laterally flex the skull until the end range of motion is perceived is important in accurately determining if normal motion is present in this area.”) and the film retaken.  The patient’s heads remained vertical in the head-clamps and care was taken not to change head position.  The atlas laterality was calculated individually by three different experienced upper cervical practitioners.  Change in measured atlas laterality between the first and second nasium was measured to be between one and ½ degrees and four and ½ degrees.  Also noted was that average change in axis spinous was contralateral to the side of lateral flexion by seven millimeters.  The largest change seen was 14 millimeters.  On a 3 inch condylar circle, this equates to a change of 21 degrees.  These results follow the published results of others who have examined normal motion in the upper cervical spine.  Dr. Cockwill listed 15 different peer reviewed, indexed references for this point.  In 1997, Dr. Dickholtz, Sr. replied to these findings in The Upper Cervical Monograph.  He strongly rejected these findings and NUCCA has never examined this idea again.  However, in light of the principle of tensegrity, these findings only make sense.  There are no ‘locking’ joints in the upper cervical spine.  Bones do not touch each other.  Distribution of forces in a tensegral array always equalize throughout the entire system.  This new viewpoint allows a greatly expanded understanding of the biomechanics.

The primary finding here is that resolution of the atlas to orthogonal position does not constitute the entire answer to postural distortion and the other pathological consequences of upper cervical misalignment.  It is a critical component but incomplete by itself.  As historically utilized, the lines of misalignment on the films do not capture the entire process.  The bowing of the cervical spine, in the frontal plane is not adequately expressed by the marking of a line between the top and bottom of the cervical spine.  We have long made this line and that is what we tend to see when we look.  The frequently attendant bowing of the spinouses on the nasium is underappreciated as a significant indicator of distress in the system.  This bowing can still be seen on films where the head and lower angle line have returned to the vertical.   We have been looking at the lines we draw for a long time.  Perhaps it is time to re-examine what we are seeing.

It is also critical to acknowledge the importance of the pelvis in calculations regarding the biomechanics.  Upper cervical work has long noted its effects to be body-wide.  This has never been seen as a segmental adjustment at just one level.  However, the greatest potential resistance in the system (kinetic chain) is the pelvis.   It has the greatest mass and the center of gravity is centered within it.  This is an objective reality of the body.  If the pelvis is not centered on the vertical axis, the cranial components of the skeleton are unable to center on it.  They must adapt and compensate for the mis-position of the pelvis away from the vertical axis (gravity line).  In addition, the pelvis must be taken into consideration when the listing for spinal correction is calculated.   There are times when the upper cervical spine and the pelvis are counter-rotated to each other and a force that corrects one aspect has a much different effect at the other end of the chain.  Dr. Friedman’s biomechanics addresses this issue in a thorough and systematic manner.  This is not a simplistic plea to just ‘turn people over’.

Part of this misreading of the situation occurs because the nasium film as taken by NUCCA (and the other orthogonally based upper cervical techniques) only allows a relative position of the head, atlas and lower angle.  When the head is clamped in the center of the film by the self-centering head clamps any actual relationship to the true vertical axis arising from the center of mass of the pelvis is altered.  Therefore any return to the ‘vertical axis’ on the post nasium is without reference to the actual center of mass of the pelvis and may constitute local correction of the upper cervical elements (as defined by the line drawings) but not restoration and integration with the primary mass of the pelvis.  This why Dr. Friedman has altered the positioning protocol for x-ray placement to ‘build’ the film from the base (center of mass on the vertical axis) and not requiring  that the atlas be centered on the pre film.  This represents the actual excursion of the atlas from the true vertical axis (arising from the center of mass).  If a proper corrective adjustment has been delivered, the post film should find the atlas in midline on the vertical axis arising from the center of mass.  Dr. Gregory stated more than once that he didn’t care if you adjusted the big toe -if the post film showed proportional correction.

This work has always been driven by empirical results.  Dr. Friedman uses his practice as a laboratory to search for ways to improve the adjustment.  Long ago, it was common knowledge that the world was flat and if you sailed west from Europe that you would fall off the world.  It was once common knowledge that it wasn’t necessary to wash your hands between patients.  The spread of puerperal fever (childbed fever) was epidemic and loss of life was rampant.  Semmelweiz suggested washing hands between patients.  He had the audacity to suggest that doctors themselves might be transmitting the contagion.  The medical profession destroyed him and he eventually went insane and committed suicide.  It took more than 200 years for England to begin feeding their sailors citrus to prevent scurvy after it was recognized as a deficiency.  Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” All of us are blinded by what we think we know.  We tend to see what we believe and not the other way around.

The profundity of upper cervical correction has been shown in hundreds if not thousands of offices over many decades.  This new insight does not lessen the importance of the atlas.  It does help to integrate understanding of the atlas with the rest of the body and provide a more efficient way to reduce interference to the nervous system and restore the power of life in people.  The clinician who reads this has two choices: one, ignore this idea which is different than the way the work has been conceptualized for the past 70 years, or learn the biomechanics and see if it’s true.  Maybe we can do better.  Isn’t that why we came to upper cervical work in the first place?

Twain said something else that might be of pertinence here:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore.  Dream.  Discover.”

What I wanted to write about today is an idea.  In Chiropractic we have called it “The Big Idea”!  This big idea is present not only in Chiropractic, but we have certainly based our work upon it.  The idea is that life is sufficient unto itself.  Most often, it does not need any help.  What it needs is the freedom to express itself.  The life inside of us is connected to all of Life.  While this has always been a spiritual concept, it is now also becoming a scientific one.  We are not separate little clots moving about on a dot of dirt in an empty universe.  The picture of us, the Earth and the whole Universe is looking much more like aspects of one immense integrated whole. 

The same mathematical equations that can chart fluctuations in the stock market, map out the path of blood vessels in our tissues, and describe the shape of snowflakes, can also chart the distribution of stars in the galaxy.   We are learning that there is communication between molecules, cells, tissues, and within the whole person we had never dreamed existed.  It extends out beyond us to others and perhaps to the farthest reaches of the universe.  Electromagnetic fields extend to infinity.  The matter of this reality seem to be composed of standing waveforms of immense numbers of frequencies all coordinated together.  The better we can look at matter as our microscopes and methods become more sophisticated show that what we thought was solid is not.  It is vibrations that maintain themselves!  Immense amounts of information can be (and are!) contained within the frequencies that create the matter of our interconnected universe.  There are possibilities for our lives and for all of us that we haven’t even begun to dream about yet. 

Within this new understanding is Chiropractic which has claimed for more than a hundred years that this is true.  How we take care of our infirmities is dependent upon how we see ourselves.  In medicine we have based our understanding from a study of what goes wrong.  All of medicine is based in impeding or stopping the process of dis-ease.  To use a big word, it is a pathogenic orientation.  Chiropractic is based in the opposite approach.  To use another big word, it is a salutogenic approach.  By this we mean what creates health?  How can we support Life?  What sustains and improves our health?  In Chiropractic we find that removing the interference to the power of Life will allow optimal health to return.  We really can trust Life.  One approach chooses to stifle, to palliate, to suppress the symptoms of dis-ease.  The other removes interference and trusts life to find its own way, to unfold as it has for untold millennia. 

At this point I want to note that when events occur that cause significant disruption of our health, medicine can be an incredible lifesaver.  When symptoms are going to kill us, suppression or palliation of symptoms is welcomed by everyone.  This is where medicine shines, in the acute care of critically ill people.  This suppressive treatment can save lives and give the innate power of life within each of us the time to rally.  However, as a lifestyle, it leaves much to be desired.  Turning off the symptoms with toxic drugs simply leaves the body with fewer possibilities.  Killing the ‘messenger’ (the symptoms) doesn’t change the reality it just means you are now unaware of it.  Most cardiac medications are suppressive and palliative.  They actually do very little to help any of us regain health.  They just shut the message off.  This isn’t a hopeless statement.  It is a statement that this path does not lead where most people would choose to go if they had a choice.  What choices do we have? 

First, we have to choose to be the driver of our own lives.  How many people just passively accept the pills and procedures medicine (and our doctors) demand?  How many of us ask questions?  How many of us do the due diligence to investigate the possibilities for ourselves?  Do you really think that a five minute visit with a doctor is enough for him/her to understand the complexities of how life is breaking down for you?  If we take on the responsibility for our own lives and have sought out answers on our own, then we are in a vastly better position to ask the right questions and make informed choices about our lives and our healthcare.  We have to make the choice to be present in our own lives.  What is more important? 

Yes, this means you must make efforts.  It means you must be willing make changes in the way you live your life.  It means you must be patient as the changes you make remake you.  It means you must pay attention to your own life.  Your healthcare should be a partnership between you and your doctors.  I will reiterate, you are the one in charge.  If you are asleep at the wheel then no one is driving the bus.  If you don’t take on this primary responsibility then you can’t complain when life leaves you broken down on the side of the road. 

What is the goal of your healthcare?  Do you just want the symptoms to go away?  That is one choice.  It does lead to certain consequences.  In the example of cardiac (heart ) problems, lifestyle, nutritional and stress management can completely turn your health around.  You can regain your health.  Turning life off is not the answer to turning life on. 

The upper cervical chiropractic care you receive in this office is based on removing interference at the base of the brain.  This area is filled with centers that control every aspect of your life.  Restoring normal, balanced function to your brain and nervous system is one magnificent and powerful way to restore health and the life you live.  This is much more than just turning off the pain of sciatica or headaches.  Relief is great but there is more to life than being numb.  This world needs every one of us operating at full capacity.  You have chosen a road less traveled by coming here for care.  I believe that the balance created by the upper cervical adjustment is primary health care.  This is the Big Idea. 

Spread the word.

 One big constant in our lives is gravity. Gravity is so familiar that we hardly even think about it, like water to a fish. We maneuver through our lives and our conscious minds never thinking much about the effects of gravity unless things go wrong. Our bodies however, are always thinking about gravity. We have an amazing number of receptors that monitor gravity in our bodies. They are now called ‘graviceptors’! Our bodies must constantly be aware of gravity so we can maneuver about in our world.

 The way we check to see if your body is responding in the most efficient way to gravity is to stand you up on the Anatometer. Gravity can be thought of as a vertical line that bisects you when you are standing upright, from the top of your head down through your spine and pelvis, continuing to the ground between your feet. When we are properly aligned with gravity, we have an ease at rest or in action. The Anatometer measures how closely we are matching gravity with our posture. When our pelvis is level and untwisted, when our spine stands straight up over our pelvis and our heads are in proper position on top of our spines, we are in the most minimal stress and minimal energy expenditure position possible. It indicates that the messages from our senses are working properly and we are well coordinated with gravity and the rest of the world around us.

 When we stand up on the Anatometer and we can measure that the pelvis is unlevel and twisted, that our upper body is leaning on one direction or the other and our head and neck is askew, we realize that was are out of upper cervical adjustment. The centers in the brainstem that coordinate our function in the world and within ourselves become impaired. We are doing research that is currently indicating that upper cervical misalignment of the vertebrae in your neck cause the blood flow patterns through your brain to change. We are finding that venous outflow from the head is changed and slowed. This means more new oxygenated blood cannot get into the brain as fast as it needs to give the nutrition and oxygen to these hungry tissues. A change in the structure of the neck changes the function of all the centers that are affected and this affects the whole body, your whole life. We measure the posture as an indicator of balance in the nervous system because it is easy for us to do so. We cannot measure the changes in function of the other centers (nuclei) in the brainstem that help to control virtually every system in the body. The brainstem is the part of the brain that controls the automatic or ‘autonomic’ aspects of our body functions. This means it controls things like heart rate, respiratory drive (desire to take a breath!) blood pressure, being awake or asleep, and of course posture, among others. The brainstem acts to ‘tune’ the basic life processes so we can go about and live our lives without ever thinking about how much acid we need in our stomachs to digest the apple, how much insulin is required to get sugar into the cells, or a host of other activities that are controlled at the autonomic level. This is real health. It is the balance over the long course of our lives that creates the health we enjoy, or wish we had!

 So although many people think of muscles and bones when they think of upper cervical chiropractic, it really involves your whole life. It is life affirming medicine! I don’t know of many other things in life that remove interference to the power of life in the way that this procedure does. I truly believe it is primary care. Many of you do too, because you will stop by the office to get an adjustment before you go over to the medical side and start getting sent to specialist after specialist. Often we have found over the years that the problem is functional and caused by being out of adjustment. Once you are back in adjustment, problems often fade away and it is not necessary to ingest toxic drugs to shut down the messaging system so you don’t feel the pain or the dizziness or whatever symptom is occurring because the body has gone out of balance.

 When someone has gone out of adjustment, perhaps due to an injury, the body will still go ahead and heal. It just heals out of adjustment. This means the posture is chronically misaligned and you heal that way. Muscles do the best they can by attempting to hold you up against the twist forces that begin when the body begins to react to being out of adjustment. Essentially, when you are out of adjustment the body tends to compress downward in a twisting almost spiral pattern. (Like tightening up a screw-top on a pop bottle.) When the weight of the body moves off center, the muscles must pull hard on one side to keep you from falling over. If they stay tight for a long time, they become fibrotic, toughening and thickening up to try an do the job it has to do.

 All the organs in the body are twisted too and their function is impaired to some degree. This means that if your body is a bit twisted, you can’t take as deep a breath and over time your oxygen levels change. All of the organs are dependant on normal blood and nerve flow. When these change, the function of the organ changes. Small changes can be cumulative over time. People who are out of adjustment often remark on ‘brain fog’. This is altered neural function affecting the brain itself. Small changes can make big differences over time. Look at how rain carved out the Grand Canyon!

 This is why the upper cervical adjustment can work like a miracle at times. Many of you have come back into the office or called us on the phone to tell of the amazing turnaround that occurred after the adjustment. As great as it is for us to hear this, and it is! -even more powerful are the long term effects of staying in upper cervical adjustment. The quick description is: HEALTH! Our bodies are made to work properly. Interference keeps our health from being at its optimum level. Chronic function at less than optimal levels is chronic disease. Medicine’s answer is all too often suppression or palliation (turn off the signal or make you numb). Life doesn’t have to be turned down or turned off! This is the miracle of real chiropractic. Life can be fully lived. This is the care we are so proud to offer you in this office!