Category Archives: Upper Cervical Care

We are licensed and trained chiropractors, so when people find out I’m a chiropractor, usually their first thing is, “Hey, I got back pain. Can you crack my back?” And I say, “No, because I do something a little bit different. I focus on the upper cervical spine.” Now, why do I do that?

Research shows us that a subluxation, or a misalignment in one of the top two bones in the neck putting pressure on the brainstem, can cause a variety of conditions. If I can take care of that subluxation, or that misalignment at the top two bones, then the body can take care of itself. Let me explain to you how this happens.

An upper cervical misalignment, or subluxation, which is pressure on the brainstem, happens due to a trauma at some point in someone’s life. This trauma could have been all the way back at birth. It could have been a slip and fall as a kid. It could have been a sports injury or a car accident… We don’t know until we take X-rays. However, when this misalignment happens, two things occur.

Number one, like we already talked about, it puts pressure on the brainstem. It is important to note that the brain, the brainstem, and the spinal cord the rest of the way down, have no pain perception. What that means is you could have had a misalignment here for years, even decades, even since the day you were born, and never have any headaches or neck pain. However, if this subluxation occurs, it is interfering with the messages from your brain to the rest of your body. These are the messages that go to your stomach, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, etc. Every single cell, organ, and tissue has these messages from the brain and brainstem.

We like to call the brainstem “Houston Control.” It’s like our relay center. Every single message from the brain to the body has to go through the brainstem, and even messages from the brain to the brain itself always relay through the brainstem. This is why we see awesome results with things like anxiety, depression, panic disorders, and even learning disorders. We see things clear up like Crohn’s disease, constipation, diarrhea, or issues with the gastrointestinal tract. We’ve seen kidney failure get better. We’ve seen your typical neck and back pain, migraines, headaches… Really any condition you can think of, it’s worth it to see if an upper cervical issue could be causing that condition.

We’ve talked about brainstem pressure. The second thing that can happen is, structurally, your head sits on top of the first bone in your neck, or the atlas. When a misalignment at atlas occurs, maybe decades ago, taking this bone outside of its normal physiological space, meaning it’s not where it is supposed to be, it takes the head with it. The brain has its own reflex, called the righting reflex, which forces the brain to always be level. When this misalignment occurs, taking the head with it, obviously taking the brain, too, now the brain is not level. The brain does not like this. It sends messages down the spine, forcing a chain reaction of twisting and turning, bending, and rotating – whatever the spine has got to do to get the head level.

What that looks like overtime is compensations throughout the spine. This is why we see weaknesses in the spine, and these weaknesses basically turn into pain. This could be neck pain, upper back pain, low back pain, all the way down to hip, knee, and foot pain. All due to that atlas bone being misaligned, forcing weaknesses throughout the spine.

We can work on those weaknesses all we want, but the body put them there for a reason. They’re literally compensatory to the misalignment at the top, which is why we don’t want to touch the rest of the spine. We only want to touch the top two bones in the neck because that is the cause of the pain that’s going on, or even the pressure on the brain stem causing a variety of systemic issues throughout your body.

Today, I want to talk to you about cranial nerves. I’ve had some questions recently on why, when we take the pressure off the brain stem, do things just work better? We know in upper cervical care, our results speak for themselves, but we need to back it up with science, and that is what I’m going to do for you today. I’m going to give you lots of vocabulary and lots of science, so we can show you exactly why upper cervical care works. Cranial nerves 3 through 12 come right off the brainstem. The brainstem in a living person comes all the way down to the second bone in the neck. The top two bones in your neck are the atlas and the axis. Since the cranial nerves come off of the brainstem, when we take the pressure off of the brainstem due to an upper cervical misalignment, we can see things improve.

Cranial nerves three, four, and six are the oculomotor nerve, trochlear nerve, and abducens nerve, respectively. These are all nerves that innervate the muscles of the eyes. People with ocular dysfunction, for example, may have interference to one of these nerves. Maybe you see a child and they have what’s called a lazy eye. When we take the pressure off the brainstem, we relieve those nerves to the eyes and the eye muscles, and thus, the eye muscles start to work better, and we see the ocular dysfunction go away.

Cranial nerve number five is the trigeminal nerve. The trigeminal nerve has three branches that come across the face, and when we see pressure on the trigeminal nerve, we see something called trigeminal neuralgia – a very, very serious pain condition that has been dubbed the suicide disease. However, when we take the pressure off the brainstem, we see amazing results with those who experienced trigeminal neuralgia.

Cranial nerve number seven is the facial nerve. This nerve controls the muscles of the face. Maybe you’ve seen someone with a condition called Bell’s palsy. Bell’s palsy is a condition where the facial nerve isn’t working properly, so half of the muscles of the face just aren’t working. You will see a drooping eyelid, or the patient can’t smile properly. If you’ve seen a stroke victim before, this is similar to what these people look like. 

Cranial nerve number eight is the vestibulocochlear nerve. “Vestibulo” means balance and “cochlear” means hearing. People who suffer from vertigo, hearing loss, or hearing dysfunction in general and Meniere’s disease may have interference to this nerve. When we can take the pressure off the brainstem and restore the flow of the vestibulocochlear nerve, we see these conditions go away.

Cranial nerve number nine is the glossopharyngeal nerve. This nerve basically innervates the tongue and the throat, and it’s involved with taste and swallowing. 

Cranial nerve number 10 is the vagus nerve. This is the longest cranial nerve in your body. It actually goes all the way down to your gut tract. That’s why when we take the pressure off the brainstem with someone who may have interference to their vagus nerve, we see digestive issues go away. We see heart rate improve; we see breathing issues improve, because the vagus nerve innervates all of these organs. It has a big job with the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the rest and digest part of the nervous system.

Cranial nerves number 11 and 12 innervate muscles of the tongue and the neck. Cranial nerve number 11 is called the spinal accessory nerve. It innervates our sternocleidomastoid muscles and our traps. Patients who experience upper back pain, neck pain, they can’t turn their head very well, and/or they get muscle spasms in the neck likely have interference to this nerve. When we can take the pressure off the brainstem, thus restoring the flow to the spinal accessory nerve, we see this type of condition improve. Cranial nerve number 12 is the hypoglossal nerve. It innervates the tongue, so if the patient can’t move their tongue properly, or they have dysfunction with their tongue, it is likely this nerve is not working properly. We take the pressure off the brainstem and things just work better.

 I think the biggest question we get is: “Does chiropractic really work?” Actually, chiropractic just this a week celebrated 124 years since the very first chiropractic adjustment was administered. It’s been around a while. So obviously chiropractic works and there’ve been people from all over the world that have gotten under chiropractic care and had tremendous results.

    Another question we frequently get is: “Is it dangerous?” It’s not dangerous. Actually, there’s a study that has come out that says they make a big deal out of possibly, after chiropractic adjustments, having a stroke. Well, the research has found that the chances of having a stroke after a chiropractic adjustment is exactly the same chance as getting a stroke without a chiropractic adjustment.

    It just, there’s over 90,000 chiropractors in the world and there are so many incidents of stroke in the world a day that eventually it’s going to happen where somebody is going to go into an office and after an adjustment have a stroke. Well, even if they’d never gotten the adjustment, more than likely the same stroke would have happened. But timing would have it as to where, if you compare the number of people who die every year from medical problems, from medical neglect, from medical malpractice, 784,000 people a year, 784,000 a year die as a result of following their medical doctor’s advice. Therefore, chiropractic is very safe.

    Now people often ask me as an upper cervical chiropractor: What makes us different?” Well, upper cervical chiropractors, number one, first and foremost, are always going to take X-rays because we want to know exactly what’s going on in your spine before we ever touch it. We will not touch you without X-rays, because the only way to know 100 percent sure is to have X-rays.

    With just the top two bones alone, there are 274 ways just these two little bones can move. We need to know exactly how it’s moved so we know exactly how to correct it.

    The other thing that’s different about most of our upper cervical chiropractors is we have a way to determine when you need it and when you don’t. What we want to do is we actually want to correct the problem, not just keep fixing it and fixing it and fixing it. We want to see that it starts to stay fixed, meaning you’ll start to come in, we’ll check you, and you won’t need to be adjusted, which means your adjustments are starting to hold. We say in the office that “holding is healing.” As we keep the bone in place, the rest of your body follows.

    Another common question we get is: “Is there a cracking sound? Is there something wrong with that? Can that cracking sound hurt you?” No. Cracking is just when the bones move, and they create a vacuum. It creates liquid nitrogen that turns into gas. And that’s just the popping sound. It’s just like if you pop your knuckles. It’s not going to hurt you. It’s just creating an opening in the space that creates a vacuum and turns that sound into a popping sound.

What is an upper cervical chiropractor, and why would I ever need to find one or why would I ever need to see one?

    A cervical chiropractor is someone who focuses most of their attention on the upper part of the neck. Why would anyone focus most of their attention on one part of the spine when you can focus on the whole spine? Well, because what we have found after many, many years of research is that most problems actually start at the neck, and then they go to other parts of the body.

    Now let me explain that to you. If you look at this poster here, this shows the top bones in the neck, and this is how the body is supposed to be. Everything should be balanced. Head level perpendicular to the first bone in your neck, and perpendicular to the ground. Everything’s balanced, right? Then, all the communication from the brain is going through the brainstem, down the spinal cord, and through the rest of the body. It’s innervating the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, and everything is being communicated from the brain through the body, all unimpeded. Everything works the way it’s supposed to, and the body and the head are balanced.

    Now, what could happen is some sort of a slip, a trauma, a fall, an injury, a car wreck, abuse, even birth trauma can throw one of the bones at the top of the neck, the cervical bones, the upper cervical primarily, out of alignment. In this case, the first bone in the neck slipped to the left.

    Two things result. One, it puts pressure on the brainstem, and compresses the brainstem, which can then interfere with the normal messages from the brain to the body. Where? We don’t know. It could be the heart, could be the stomach, could be the kidneys, could be anywhere in the whole body. Those messages get interfered with, and that part of the body doesn’t work the way it’s intended.

    Now, the other thing that happens is that the head sits on top of that first bone so when it moves, and it takes the head with it. It doesn’t have any choice because it just sits on top, throwing it then out of balance. Now, the brain doesn’t like that. The brain responds by sending messages down, now forcing your body to compensate to get the head level. When this bone gets misaligned, it gets stuck. Your body can’t unstick it, so it’ll go down below there and move other bones that it can more freely move. 

    For example, let’s say if it was the top bone in my neck went to my right, your left, this way, then now the brain is off balance. What it’ll do is it’ll maybe force me to drop one shoulder and raise one hip. It will twist and contort my body to get the brain level again. Now if this happens young enough, that’s where scoliosis comes from almost 99% of the time. The body will bend and curve itself all in an attempt to balance that brain and keep the brain level.

    Now what happens is, as a result, you end up with compensatory changes through the body that result in stretched contracted muscles anywhere from the base of your skull down into the shoulder, upper back, lower back, pulls one hip up shorter than the other, and one leg then comes up shorter than the other. Now you have contracted stretched muscles in the lower back, even the hamstrings, calves. As a result, over time, those compensations can result in neck pain, upper back pain, shoulder pain, pain going down the arm, down the back, down the leg, knee pain, and foot pain.

    If you can, imagine your body is designed to be perpendicular to the ground and be evenly balanced on each side. If you start to lose that balance, then your body starts to wear down faster, and it starts to degenerate prematurely. As a result, discs that are normally stacked on top of each other can start to wedge a little bit, which can force a bulge to one side or the other, which can affect the nerves down the arms, down the legs.

    As an upper cervical chiropractor, we focus all of our attention on this area up here because it is so vital to your health. If we find a problem there, if we can correct it, then those compensations will start unwinding, and the body will start to balance itself, and the communication from the brain to the rest of the body starts to open back up. That’s the same energy though that runs the body, and it’s the same energy that created your body, and it’s also the same energy that can heal your body.

    You were given this God-given ability, we call it an innate intelligence, which runs and orchestrates everything in your body, and if that bone gets out of align, it can interfere with that process, and the body can start to get sick, unhealthy, create disease in the body. If we can find it, and if we can open the communication up, then that process can actually reverse. It can actually start to heal your body. The systems can start to normalize. You start to sleep better, energy is better, your digestion, your immune function. As a whole, your body starts to change back to where it was before this ever happened.

    The upper cervical spine is very, very important, and a very vital to your life, your health, and vitality. That’s why we spend most of our time working on looking at this area, and if we find something there and if we can correct it and get it back in normal position, you’d be amazed how your life can change. 

    It’s definitely worth your while. Find an upper cervical doctor near you. Just get checked to see. Normally within a few minutes we can tell you if you have an upper cervical problem or not. If you do, we’ll explain to you what we need to do to correct it. If you do not, hey, you ruled that out and we promise we’ll do everything we can to try to find you another specialist that we believe is better suited to help your problems. Okay?

    I hope you got a little information out of this. Hope it makes sense to you and I hope one day we get to meet. Have a great afternoon, we’ll see you soon.

One of the most common questions I get when talking with potential patients is, “What exactly is the upper cervical spine?”The upper cervical spine is actually considered the top two bones in the neck, this being the head or the skull, and then the first bone, it’s called the atlas. The first cervical vertebra is called the atlas because the atlas holds up the world, just like the first bone in your neck holds up your world, which is the head, the brain.

Then underneath is called the axis. The second cervical bone is called the axis, and the reason it’s called the axis is because when you turn your head, the first 46 degrees of motion happens between the atlas and the axis, so it’s literally the axis on which their world turns. Now, what’s significant about these two bones is, for one, the head sits on top. So anywhere these bones go, the head goes wherever those bones go. And the brainstem comes out of the head, down through the top two bones, and then from there down it becomes spinal cord.

    Now, that’s very significant because the brain stem sends messages from the brain to your heart, your liver, your lungs, your kidneys, your arms, your legs, even the messages, the nerves that go up into the head, face, and neck, come down here off of the brainstem. Then they go back up through the skull to give you your vision, your taste, your smell, your hearing, and your balance. They control the sensory of the face, and the muscles of the face. All the nerves in the head, face, and neck literally come off of the neck and then go back up into the head.

    The upper cervical spine is very, very important. And that’s why as upper cervical doctors, this is where we focus almost all of our attention on this area here, because it’s so vital to the rest of the body. Now, from a standpoint of musculoskeletal issues, wherever these bones go, the head must go wherever those bones take it. Well, you have something within your brain, it’s called the righting and reflex, and the whole purpose is to make sure the brain is always level or parallel to the ground. If one of the bones in the top of the neck throw the head off even just a little bit, the brain doesn’t like it.

    The brain responds by sending messages down, forcing your body now to compensate until the head levels again. To give you an example, let’s say for me the bone went to my right, your left, and it took the head a little bit that way, now the brain’s off balance, righting reflex kicks in. From there, it might cause me to drop one shoulder and raise one hip, and it’s going to contort my spine, my skeletal system till that brain levels again. It has to because the brain has to be level. Now that creates weaknesses within the spine.

    Over time, those weaknesses can turn into neck pain or headaches. They can affect the nerves at the disc level that go down the arms to the hands, and they cause upper back pain, lower back pain, and even pain down into the legs. Now when that throws everything out of balance, now your hips are out of balance, and now your legs or one leg becomes a little shorter than the other. Over time, this can cause your hips to wear down prematurely, cause your knees to wear down prematurely, and even your feet and your ankles.

    On top of that, the brainstem we talked about sends all the messages, so if the bone gets out of alignment it can interfere with the message to your heart, your stomach, your kidneys, your arms, and your legs. If the brain doesn’t get the full message to that part of the body, it doesn’t work the way it’s intended. As a result, you can have organic problems as well. Digestive issues, sleep problems, energy, immune function all can happen from just something being out of alignment at the top of the neck.

    Now, as far as saying, “But I don’t have any neck pain.” Well, the strange thing about the brainstem, the central nervous system, brain, brainstem, spinal cord, is that it doesn’t have any pain perception. You could have had a bone out of alignment at the top of your neck for years without having any kind of neck pain or headaches, but it can be interfering with the messages that go to one or multiple parts of your body. It could have thrown your body out of balance, creating weaknesses that now are affecting your knees, or your hips, or your back. It’s worthwhile to have this area investigated.

    Find an upper cervical doctor near you and let them go in and check you. Within just a few minutes, we can usually determine whether you might have a problem here that could be affecting your health in a negative way. If you do, we’ll explain to you what we need to do to try to fix it. If you do not, hey, at least you ruled that out. We promise we’ll try to find another specialist that we believe that can help you.

We are often asked, “What kind of conditions, what kind of ailments do Upper Cervical Chiropractors treat?” Well, that’s a good question. Actually, we don’t treat any ailments.  We don’t treat conditions, because what we want to do is correct the underlying cause of the health problem, not necessarily treat the condition itself.

To treat a condition is basically to treat the symptoms. What we do is, we treat the patient. We want to maximize whatever your full potential is, to make sure that your body can function as its optimal level. Now, as that happens, a lot of times patients come into us with a wide range of conditions that respond really well to what we do, but we’re not treating the conditions. We don’t treat fibromyalgia, we don’t treat multiple sclerosis, or diabetes, or digestive disorders. We don’t even treat neck pain and back pain. What we do is we check the body out to see if there’s some underlying problem, a cause that could, as a result, lead to a wide range of conditions. Then, if there is, we correct the cause, allowing the body to actually do the healing.

No Doctor has ever healed anyone in the history of mankind. All healing comes from within. People that treat conditions are actually just treating the symptoms, which usually mean they’re eventually going to come back. What we want to do is find out if there’s a problem within your body. If there is, if we can correct it, we don’t change what we’re doing based off of your particular symptom or condition. We do the same thing for every person, it just so happens that your cause may be creating one condition, while the same cause in somebody else may be creating a different type of symptom, or disease process. At the Upper Cervical Spine Center, we’re not going to treat you for your condition.

We’re going to treat you for you. We’re going to make sure that your body’s lined up perfectly, that your nervous system’s functioning at its optimal potential, because the nervous system is what actually heals you.  Interference to the nervous system is what creates these problems. If we can maximize your potential, get the nervous system functioning fully at 100%, then your body’s going to work like it’s supposed to, the way it’s designed to. In the process, we often see these types of conditions or symptoms to start to disappear. Get to an Upper Cervical Doctor, just let them check you. At the very least, maybe you can prevent developing conditions like this.

Female Host – If you live in chronic pain, you know how terrible it can be, and if you feel like you’ve tried just about everything to make it go away, sit up and pay attention to our next guest.

Male Host – Welcome Dr. Ray Drury with Upper Cervical Spine Center to the show. Hello, sir, and how are you doing today?

Dr. Ray Drury – Doing great. Doing great. Thank you for having me.

Female Host – Of course. Welcome to Charlotte Today. It’s great to see you. Let’s start by talking about chronic pain. Unfortunately, it’s something that so many people suffer from. Where does it come from? I know that’s a general question because it’s different in each case-

Dr. Ray Drury – Right.

Female Host – … but in … but where does it come from?

Dr. Ray Drury – So, first I hope we can all agree that pain doesn’t come from a lack of pills, okay. So, for example, somebody has headaches. It doesn’t come from a Tylenol deficiency. So, taking something like Tylenol is never going to fix the problem. It just kind of temporarily masks it. So, you don’t know it’s there, but it’s still there.

Dr. Ray Drury – So, where does pain come from? So, pain’s your body’s like alarm system or its cry for help. For example, if you put your hand on a hot stove, right? Real quickly, your body hollers at you like hey, dummy. Move your hand. Okay. So, pain is actually your body’s way of trying to say hey, something’s not right. Something needs to be addressed. Covering it up, masking it, rather than correcting the cause doesn’t really make a whole of sense.

Female Host – Right.

Male Host – So, you find out what is the root cause, where it’s coming from, and then you find out how to go ahead and take care of it. Can you explain about that?

Dr. Ray Drury – Okay, yeah. So, for example, if you have migraines or headaches, neck, back pain, even nerve pain, right, that goes down the arm, down the leg-

Male Host – Sure.

Dr. Ray Drury – Um, there’s something amiss, some internal stress within the body that’s creating those symptoms. So, what we do is we want to try to find out uh where is that stress coming from? What’s creating that stress? If we can remove that stress on the body, then it quits hollering at us, right? Then the pain starts to subside, and your body can heal natural.

Female Host – I had a friend, um, who used to come see you. She would drive from Ashville to come in and visit you, and I thought, boy, that’s a long way to drive. Then I find out you have patients literally from all over the world. Patients who are coming from Mexico, Canada. Why do you think that people are traveling such a distance to come see you? What makes you different, your practice different, your office different?

Dr. Ray Drury – Okay, so, at the Upper Cervical Spine Center, we focus primarily on the upper part of the neck. Uh, we use the latest in technology like uh infrared thermography, which helps us to narrow down exactly where the problem is. We do, uh, advanced imaging like digital x-rays, uh, to find out exactly how the bones are out of position so we know exactly how to correct them, and most recently we’ve added a uh cone beam 3D scanner which actually gives us a three dimensional image of the spine, which gives us a better idea of how to more specifically correct the problem so that it heals faster and stays put longer.

Female Host – Because a lot of the pain we’re experiencing elsewhere in our body could be something that’s happening right here.

Dr. Ray Drury – Well, so, from the top down, the whole body will compensate, and then all the nerves from your brain to your arms, legs, even your internal organs go through the top of the neck. That’s how a problem there can affect globally.

Male Host – Okay, why is it such an epidemic of people having pain? When we get older, is it something a little bit more pervasive after you get older?

Dr. Ray Drury – Yeah. So, prevention is key, right? I mean, there’s no preventative medication, right? You can’t take a drug to prevent a problem, but the more your body stays aligned, the better you can deal with gravity, stress as we grow older, and so the more fit you’ll stay, the better … the less pain you’ll have.

Female Host – Uh, you wrote a book called the Best Kept Secret in Healthcare. It’s now an Amazon bestseller. Um, there we see it right there.

Dr. Ray Drury – Right.

Female Host – Um, you must be very proud of that work (laughs).

Dr. Ray Drury – Absolutely. I was kind of surprised Dana wasn’t talking about it earlier.

Female Host – (laughs)

Male Host – (laughs)

Dr. Ray Drury – But, uh, yeah, absolutely. So, uh, actually it was a four-time bestseller, and one of the categories was alternative health, which is a huge category. So, yeah. Very proud. We’ve had a lot of people reading the book.

Female Host – I think a lot of people are tired of just like you said masking the pain with medication. They might feel better temporarily, but it’s not fixing what’s really wrong.

Dr. Ray Drury – Exactly right. That’s our whole key. If we can get the underlying problem corrected, uh, you know, we literally put ourselves out of business, right? So, people come in, they get feeling better,and don’t need us anymore. That’s our goal.

Female Host – Thank you so much. It’s great to see you.

Dr. Ray Drury – Thank you for having me again. Good to see you again.