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Is It Possible To Tell If My Spine Is Out of Alignment?

A common problem in managing a case in chiropractic practice is keeping a person under care long enough to accomplish a true re-conditioning of her neck or spine.

The reason is most people begin to feel better soon after beginning care and the natural assumption is - I must be better  / (think "cured") ...and the patient drops out of care, typically because their insurance isn't going to pay beyond fixing the immediate PAIN.

Well, If there really was a problem to begin with it won't get "healed" / "cured " all that fast. We heal by growing - We heal by the growth of replacement tissue and that takes 6-8 weeks at best.

As an example -A sprained ligament is healed by the laying down of new ligament cells which, incidentally, are always weaker and less resistance to new injury than the original...

What is interesting is that when there Is an injury - IT DOESN"T ALWAYS cause pain. Only 10% of the nervous system is devoted to the carrying of signals that we interpret as Pain. The other 90% is actually concerned with making the body work (think "Function"). An injury or damage to any tissue, bone, muscle, ligament, blood vessel, organ, etc., will always initiate a sequence of nerve transmissions to various areas of the spinal cord and the brain which in turn will start a cascade of nerve signals to other areas which results in various processes begining in the body to protect and heal the injury.

Some of the nerve signals can actually cause things to go wrong or stop working right...

Injure an area in your neck for example and your fingers start to tingle or go numb and weak. Your doctor may tell you that you have carpal tunnel syndrome and want to cut open your wrist to fix the problem that is actually in your neck.

Injure an area of your lower back while carrying in the groceries and the pain may go away in a few days or a week but then you notice that your periods are suddenly worse or your bowels are not as regular as you used to be.

What are we trained to do? ...We take medication or stronger drugs for the symptom instead of looking at what underlying problem may be causing the new symptoms.

There is one area of the brain where we "perceive" and interpret the injury as a pain. If the signals don't reach that area...we don't perceive  and interpret what just a happened as "pain".

         (Good news! - your insurance company says you're fine...no pain = no problem)

Therefore, pain cannot be considered the best or most reliable indicator of whether we have a problem or not.

So, That said, then what can John or Mary Doe do at home to find out  or know whether they have a problem that requires more attention and care?

What do I look for when someone comes into my office? There are numerous tests that need to be done but

There are also simple body language signs and cues that alert the interested observer to the presense of misalignments:   

The first thing I do when somebody comes in is I look at him and observe if the shoulders are level. Is the neck straight or is it leaning to one side?

If so, Is the head tilting to the opposite side?

Then I look to see if the upper body is straight up or if it's leaning to one side. Are the shoulders squarely over the hips or is the left buttock pushed out to one side?

How are the hips? I look at the belt line. Is it level or is one side higher then the other?

How are the feet? - Are they flared out evenly and symmetrically?

From this little bit of information I can tell which side the person sleeps on, which way their neck or entire spine is twisted or bent. Where it's weak and before I even touch a person I can usually tell where they might feel increased pain were I to palpate an area.

Misalignments are the precursors to many potential health and wellness related problems - not just pain. 

You can do the same observations at home. Stand in front of a full length mirror with your eyes closed for a few moments and then open them and observe how you're standing and look for these deviations from normal alignment.

Practice tonight when you're watching the news. Watch the news anchor person and you'll see how she will have her neck tilted to one side and her other shoulder will be elevated. That's not social posturing - She's out of alignment and on a collision-course with an upcoming health or wellness problem.

No, the misalignments you'll see when looking in the mirror won't likely be painful but the word "yet" immediately comes to my mind.

When things are out of alignment, unless it's a result of a trauma, a fall, a collision or lifting injury, etc., it probably won't hurt until later. It may take months or even years.

Does it make sense to fix things early or to wait until it's already deteriorated to the point that it's causing serious health problems?    

The Value of Maintenance

I see many older people in my practice who seem to be doing much better than their contemporaries and and whenever I see trends like that I do a little survey and try to look for common denominators. I aska lot of questions. The oldsters I see who are in the best shape share a couple of common lifestyle activities:

They all get up early in the morning and get busy doing things such as yard work, they go for a walk, go to the gym, go for a swim, mow the lawn, weed the garden.

They read a lot, study new subjects, do cross word puzzles and otherwise keep their minds busy

They drink up to 2 quarts of water each day

they eat less red meat, carbs and junk food   and more fish, and bright colorful fruits and veggies

They get lots a of sunshine

They don't smoke

They drink minimally or not at all

They see a chiropractor and get adjusted regularly. A number of the people in my practice have been getting adjusted since I, myself, was in elementary school  ( FYI - I graduated from high school in 1967)

An interesting statistic I recently came upon showed that approximately 70% of the people in the USA who are over 100 years old have been getting regular chiropractic care all their adult life...

Read that last statement a few times until it sinks in

based upon this survey I did on how well the seniors who mow their own lawn thrive in later years -I bought a new lawn mower this year and decided i would mow my own lawn. I must admit I used to hate mowing the grass- always hated it as a kid. It was always a chore, sometimes a punishment.

Well I decided to try it this year. I found I enjoy it now - no phone ringing in my ear, I can't hear anything but the motor running for an hour and a half. I also think I do a better job than those characters charging me an arm and a leg to do it last year.

Friday evening I was mowing the front yard and the handle fell off in the back. It appeared that one  bolt had come out  and the other one, forced to assume the greater load by itself - broke.

It kind of reminded me of what happens to our own bodies when we're not paying attention and maintaining them the way we should. I tookout the tool box and replaced the two missing bolts and went around tightening up everything else.  Guess what? - there were several bolts that had vibrated loose.

Is there a better argument for maintenance?

Jill's progress

I just wanted to bring you up to date on Jill's progress. It's been about 4 weeks since her care began. Jill came in today for a followup visit. I have extended her distraction and cold laser treatments an extra week as it seems that she was still benefitting from it. She reported that she is having a much easier time moving and  her overall pain levels are much lower. She is not having as much trouble moving about on the adjusting table and while she has not begun to tackle her obesity problem - it doesn't seem to be as much of a problem for her today.

On  examination her lumbo-sacral lateral bending and rotation is nearly symmetrical. The subluxation of her sacrum assessed with the Thompson's prone straight leg-raising test shows considerable improvement.

She was adjusted with a side-posture adjusting technique as well as flexion-distraction to mobilize and decompress the lumbar spine. She also received a cold laser treatment.

She is to continue with her exercises as instructed and she is also continuing to go to water aerobic class.

She has improved faster than either of us anticipated and will likely continue to improve if she continues with her care.

She plans to begin take-shape-for-life weight loss program the first week of July which will greatly inprove the chances of her lower back, hips and knees remaining healthy. 

    

Best Sleeping Position

I realized I didn't comment on the other (bigger reason why people have problems with their bed), in my last blog.

It doesn't matter what kind of bed you buy if you use it wrong. Many people come in and say they sleep poorly or they wake up in pain. Let's face it - sleeping time is for rest and if you wake up in pain - you weren't likely resting too much. If a person wakes  up in pain - that's one of the first things I want to ask about...

So, An important question I ask people in my consultation is what position they sleep in because regardless of how good the bed is if they sleep in the wrong position, ie.: on their side or in a fetal or semi-crawl positon they are literally twisting their spine and pelvis the entire night. The spine wants to be in a neutral position. How good do you think your arm would feel if somebody held it behind your back in a hostage position for an hour or two or... 8 hours. That's what happens to your back when you sleep on your side all night.

If you lay a model of the human skeleton on its side you can readily see the stress it places on the pelvis joints and how the spine wants to sag downward. This doesn't happen as much in the living person because there's a great deal more support coming from the muscles and fat that is there also, however you can still see how the stresses and forces are distributed and they do, over time, have an effect.

Why do so many people sleep that way? It started in the hospital when they were born - the obstetric nurse swaddled the newborn baby and placed her in a crib in the hospital nursery face down, head turned to one side or the other...so she would spitup and aspirate it. Nice thinking but probably was never a real problem to contend with. Mom and Dad take baby home and do the same thing and baby grows up sleeping pretty much in the same position as day one.   

That's why I believe there are so many people with hip and low back problems. They sleep on their side and twist the pelvis so that it's chronically sprained.

Also, if you sleep on your side you're going to be compressing the lung on that side and making it more work for your body to breath. Not so much you can't sleep but enough that it will certainly decrease the amount of rest you're going to get

So - What's the BEST positon to sleep in?     Face up, legs stretched out straight or bent over a pillow, arms at your side or folded across your stomach. Try to place a small pillow under your neck only to support the neck and let the head fall back to just touch the surface of the bed...That will be the best neutral, resting position for your body and spine. 

Buying the Best Bed

Thinking that the bed is the reason why their back is giving them trouble, people frequently ask me what is the best bed to buy. My observation has been that the bed is only part of the reason (and the smaller of the two main reasons), why people have back pain from their bed.

To answer the question though as to what is a good bed- think FIRM and supporting. Why? Here's a couple of examples of the extreme opposite to consider and compare. try sleeping on a hammock. you'll wake up in the shape of giant capital "C". Try sleeping in an underinflated air bed or half-filled water bed - think "Sagging" spine.

The spine has a specific shape, conture and configuration to it. That shape plays a giant role in how well it functions, and because of that - how well the nerves inside it function, and thus - (how well the rest of your body, which is controlled by those same nerves inside the spinal column)...will function.

That said - how well can it work if it's twisted and bent out of shape for 6, 8, 10 hours every night.

Therefore, I'll place my bet on the firm supporting bed - one that will hold my shape while I sleep. Now I hear people come back and tell me they went out and bought a nice firm bed...but with the "pillow-top" - I think that defeats the whole entire purpose of the firm supporting mattress underneath because you sink into it just like the other marshmellows.

Here's my suggestion: decide how much money you're going to spend on your new bed. If it's a queen-sized expect to spend about $1400-1500 for a decent one. Go to the  bedding store and say you want the bed with highest coil count ( thus the most support), for this much money. You want one that can be flipped over every other week so you can use the whole mattress and get the longest life out of it for your money. One week you'll flip it and the next week you'll rotate the foot end to the head end.

How long should you keep your bed? That depends on several factors but a good bed should last 8-9 years. I have had patients (seniors), come in and tell me they're still using the same bed they got when they got married right after the war...(World War II). I think they got their money's worth out of it.