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If It’s Not Broke - Don’t Fix It ?

   Some people stop going to their chiropractor when their back pain stops because they think their problem is all gone and needs no more care.

Given the shoddy, limited coverage offered by most of the local hmo’s and managed care insurance plans to the people of the Hudson Valley - this is almost understandable.

The near-sighted thinking of insurance is: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

But, just because it’s not causing you to be in excruciating pain - doesn’t mean all is fine.

Consider this: Heart disease typically feels just fine... You'd never think there was a problem right about up to the point that the guy falls down dead...

What do you think? Do you suppose the guy was really "fine", in perfect health, up to that point? Or is there some small possibility that things were maybe going wrong for some time before that, or ...maybe for several years before that???

A man can have prostate cancer for a long, long time before it even has him getting up 10 times per night to pee, let alone causes him any discomfort.

Same thing for breast cancer. Too bad for way too many women to have absolutely no clue there’s something going wrong until it’s almost too late to help.

How many people are shocked to find out they have diabetes - because they have no pain?

An interesting analogy: If you broke your leg we can all agree - it will hurt (for a week to 10 days), then it starts to not hurt so much and then after 2-3 weeks it’s not hurting at all.

Are you gonna take the cast off then?

If you "buy" into the insurance thinking - it’s time to take it off.

If it’s not hurting... treatment is over, right?

So the thinking: "If It’s Not Broke - Don’t Fix It" worries me.

How do you KNOW it's not broke? What tests are you using to come to that conclusion?  

The "pain test" clearly has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The presence or absence of pain is a totally unreliable indicator of whether or not you have a problem that needs care.

I think it's the precise recipe for the mess this country's general health care system is in right now. 

The Answer? Get checked and tested properly by a trained expert / someone with a degree in the field concerning your possible problems.

                 Hint: The Insurance claims "reps" are not experts in anything but denying claims.

 If the test is negative (ie.:normal) that’s great news and you can rest assured - you have a clean bill of health. If it is positive (meaning you have a problem), It’s not great news but at least you can take care of it early when it is manageable and inexpensive to do so.

 Are you concerned that your back problem may turn into arthritis? Let us check it and we can advise you what the proper steps are to prevent it from starting or getting worse if you already have it.

If you call before New Years and refer to this blog and say: "It’s not hurting but I want to find out if there is a problem"...you will qualify for ½ off of the initial consultation / examination fee.

What’s a Head Weigh?

Depending on who you talk to... the average head adult weighs anywhere from 10-12 lbs.

Try this - pick up and hold a 10 lb. weight in your hand at arm’s length for 5 minutes and see how this feels. After just a few minutes your arm will quickly begin to fatigue.

Now imagine what your neck muscles must go through all day long holding your head up.

In truth, your neck muscles should have an easier time doing this - That’s of course if your neck is in the right shape. If it’s not then you’ll understand why your neck is so sore at the end of the day.

So what is the right shape then?

Your neck, when viewed from the side, should describe a C-shaped curve of 45 degrees of arc. If it has that shape then the hole in your ear will be directly over your shoulder, inline with your hip. In the front view your neck should be perfectly straight - not leaning to either side.

Then all of the forces of gravity will be acting straight downward and you will feel no need to exert extra effort to hold your head up.

Here’s an example: Picture a perfectly straight broomstick sawed off perfectly square on one end. Stand that broom stick on it’s sawed-off end on a level surface. Will it fall over? Not a chance. The reason is that center of mass / weight is pushing straight downward and not to the side. No reason to fall.

Because of the normal shape and positioning of the head on the neck and the positioning of the neck on the rest of the body, that C-shaped curve places the center of gravity or weight of the head in a straight line - so the curve gives it its balance.

If you lose that curve, however, because of a strain or sprain injury (which typically straightens out the curve), it pushes the weight of the head forward.

Once this happens it puts increased demand on the muscles of the neck to keep it, in effect, from falling further forward, That’s when you start to feel the muscles begin to get sore.

Does this describe you?

Not Sure? - Why not stop in and let us check it? It only takes a minute or two and it’s something we can do for no charge if you want to stop in on the fly and then you’ll know if you have something going on that needs to be checked and corrected before it starts causing real problems.

Speaking of head-way... Are we answering Your questions here?   Ask a question - Get an answer.

Trivia question: Get the right answer to this and get a free initial consultation and examination before the end of the year: Question - If you were to hold a 40 lbs. weight at arm’s length - what weight does this translate to (because of leverage), at the lowest disc in your lower back?

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Why Not Go for the Low Hanging Fruit... Instead?

   If you‘ve ever been walking in an apple orchard and suddenly wanted to eat a nice fresh apple right off the tree this will make sense to you.

Would you climb all the way to the tippy top of the tree to grab an apple off of the highest branch or would you at least go over and examine some of the lower hanging ones first, before choosing which one to eat?

Of course, unless you’re ten years old and up for the challenge of climbing the tree - the natural thing to do would be to look for a low hanging one first and then, perhaps not finding one to your liking....then start looking higher up the tree.

I see a similar thing happen in health care. Many people tend to think they need to look under some moon rock for the answer to many common health problems, including many neck and back problems, when a much simpler answer is staring them right in the face.

 

Take Carolyn’s story as an example: Carolyn has a complaint of neck, arm and shoulder pain that she has had for 7 months. An examination and x-ray evaluation would readily show that she has clearly been developing or building up to this problem for quite some time. Her neck is significantly out of alignment with loss of the normal curve ( refer to the previous post "Is it sudden tear or thread bare"), considerable arthritic decay and countless areas that could be causing irritation to the nerves of her neck which is a most likely cause of her symptoms.

In addition to that, she is 65 lbs over-weight, very out of shape, hasn’t been to the gym in over a year and she smokes a pack and a half per day.

She hasn’t "had the time" to deal with her pains, or she hasn’t wanted to spend the money to have it looked at, or, maybe her insurance doesn’t cover the care, or she was told chiropractic couldn’t help that problem, or she’s simply scared to death at what might be at the root of the problem.

Suffice to say - to this point, she hasn’t had any care at all for this problem yet.

Tomorrow she will see a neurologist who will send her for an MRI and then an EMG. Then it’s off to the orthopedist who will order more tests and then some blood work, and some more x-rays. Next week she will start with the physical therapist who will put hot packs on her followed by ultra-sound and maybe some massage - none of which is likely to do anything but run up a huge bill. Then it’s back to the neurologist who prescribes some muscle relaxers and sixteen other medications. Everybody, (doctors and patient alike) is grasping at straws avoiding looking at the elephant in the room.

All told she’s run up a substantial bill of several thousand bucks and she’s still hurting like mad.

One can’t help wondering if that apple at the tippy top of the tree still looks quite so shiny & red. There were so many to choose from that were so within reach, but she (and the docs too who are enabling her) chose to go for that one apple at the highest branch instead of one of the low hanging ones.

This might be a stretch Carolyn but how about, Go for the low hanging fruit instead:

 1) Stop smoking - Yes - seriously, just quit it. You know it’s killing you and there hasn’t ever been a single study to the contrary.

2) Next: lose weight and get into shape. It’s easier and cheaper than dirt to do.

Need help - Just ask

3) It’s a cinch that your hips and neck are dangerously out of alignment and this is better than 95 % of your problem. Chiropractors have been saying for 115 years that this causes symptoms just like you’re complaining about -

 See a chiropractor and Get Adjusted 2-3 times per week for (really), just a few weeks and you’ll feel like a new person.

Chiropractic is the true Low Hanging Fruit in health care - It’s easy to get. It’s simple and uncomplicated. It’s safe and low risk. It’s in-expensive and most often - It’s more effective when all else fails.

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Was It Sudden Tear or Thread-Bare?

We love our jeans when they’re really worn and thread bare in the knees and maybe even a few holes in the seat from when we suddenly got caught on something that snagged and tore them. You can always tell, though, which is a sudden tear and which is thread-bare. The thread-bare hole usually starts with an area that starts to get thin over time, many, many washes, a few knee scrapes and lots of wear & tear and then you start to see a little skin visible through it all but still numerous threads holding it together. The sudden tear will look like a clean rip, wide open, and you can tell - it just happened, no fraying there.

In our jeans we love the look. It’s cool, a few choice, well-placed holes and bare spots adds character to them.      We also get similar thread-bare spots in our backs and that’s not so good.

Our back may seem to fail almost suddenly and we’ll think... "Gee, it was fine yesterday and today I can hardly move".

Was it a sudden tear or was it thread-bare?

What’s really happening here?

The ligaments and muscles that hold your back together and allow / make it move are made up of soft-tissue fibers that have an elastic limit. If we over-extend that elastic limit a little bit (even once in a while), some of those fibers are going to tear. And then some more tear, and later on, again - Some may say that’s ok, but is it?   Because it's a slow, usually painless process - no one pays much attention to it.

Think about your jeans again - Do you want the ligaments holding your back together to become thread-bare? What do you think will happen if too many of those fibers break?

One of the biggest causes of over-extending that elastic limit are all of those prolonged sedentary postures we take when sleeping, sitting at the computer, driving, watching TV, etc...which we do all of the time. Connect the dots here. These postures are repetitively over-stretching and over-extending the elastic limit of the soft tissue ligaments and muscles that hold your spine together. That’s why they are thread-bare.

There is another very insidious / quiet cause of thread-bare ligaments. When viewed from the side, a normal neck and lower back will have a concave arching curve to it. If there have been injuries or poor posture issues as stated above this curve is typically missing in most people. If the curve is missing or in-correct in the neck the person will appear to be looking slightly downward and if in the lower back he will appear to be stooped forward.

This over-extends the fibers of the discs and other ligaments of the spine and makes them become thread-bare.

Over time, with enough over-extending & "thread-baring" of those fibers - they will start to break through just as in your jeans.

Then one morning as you’re turning your head to back the car or you're putting on your socks or you bend over to pick up the tooth paste cap something (finally) lets go and you think... "sudden tear"?

Not likely - only the pain is sudden.

This scenario is avoidable with a check-up to find out if the shape of your spine and neck is such that it is causing your soft-tissue ligaments to become thread-bare.

Why not come let us check your neck and back for mis-alignments that could be making the ligaments there weak and thread-bare.

The check-up takes a few minutes and we’ll be able to tell you right then and there if you have a problem and different ways to handle it.

For the month of December there is no charge for this check-up if you bring us at least one can or box of dry food for us to donate to a family in need this holiday season.

Forward this to a thread-bare friend - There’s a lot of hungry people out there.