If you’ve ever been involved in an automobile accident, front-end, rear-end, T-bone, any type of collision with a motor vehicle, I want to express to you how important it is that you get your nerve system, specifically the upper part of your neck, checked out. I would say, 90% of my patients that come to me over the last 26 years have come in as a result of some sort of trauma, like a motor vehicle accident, whichmay have happened weeks, months, even many years later before.
What happens in a typical auto accident is there’s whiplash-like movement where your body stops, and your head keeps going, or your head stops, and your body keeps going. What happens is the bones in the upper part of the neck where the head sits on top of. That head weighs 10 to 12 pounds, so when that force hits, of course, that head’s going to swing back and forth. Well right underneath the head is the top two bones in the neck, the most freely movable bones in your entire body. The whiplash force takes that big heavy head and pulls on those bones forward, backward, or can actually even misalign the head relative to those top two bones. Well, what’s important about that area is that’s where the brainstem comes out. The brain is inside the skull. The bottom of the brain, the brainstem, extends down to the first two bones, then becomes spinal cord the rest of the way down.
The brain stem is so important. It sends the messages from your brain to every part of your body. To your heart, your liver, your lungs, your kidneys, your arms, your legs, every message. Even up into the head, face, and neck. Your hearing, your taste, your smell, your vision, all comes through that brain stem. If one of the bones got misaligned in the upper part of the neck creating pressure on the nerve system, kind of like stepping on a garden hose, you’re going to diminish the normal message from the brain to any one or multiple parts of the body. Over time, those parts of the body start to not work the way they’re intended to work. It could be affecting the stomach so your digestion doesn’t work as it should, or the lower digestion doesn’t move like it’s supposed to. It can affect your blood pressure, it can affect your heart rate, it can affect how well you sleep, it can affect your energy levels. It can affect every part of your entire body because all the messages from the brain to the body go through those top two bones.
Let’s go back to the accident, okay? The accident happens. Typically, at first, you’ll feel maybe a little bit of soreness, maybe some aches and pain, okay? So that’s the muscles that have been stretched or pulled. And as the bones move out of position, the ligaments and tendonsall go with it. They get sore, inflamed, and irritated. So typically, you go to the medical doctor, or the hospital, and typical treatment is muscle relaxers and pain pills. The muscle relaxers make the muscles relax so they’re not so tense, and the pain pills cover up the symptoms while the muscles and ligaments and tendons heal. But they heal, now the bone’s out of position. Muscles and ligaments are what react. Muscles and ligaments heal, but the bones are still out of position. This is going to do two things. One, it’s going to interfere with the messages from your brain to your body, as we’ve suggested. It’s also going to now throw the brain and the headout of balance.
How does the body respond to that? Well, let’s say for me, the bone went to the right, and it took my head that way. The brain doesn’t work when it’s off level. What the brain will do is force your body to compensate to level the brain. It can cause you to drop one shoulder, pull up one hip, forces your body to compensate for creating now new weaknesses that over time can turn into neck pain, upper back, shoulder pain. It can affect your lower back. It can affect the disks that come out so that it can cause pain down the leg. You can have musculoskeletal aches and pains now from an accident that happened possibly years ago. If you’ve ever been in some sort of a motor vehicle accident or some sort of trauma that caused your body to stop and your head to keep going, or your head to stop and your body to keep going, please find an upper cervical chiropractor near you. Get checked to see if maybe that accident from sometime in your past is what’s now created the health problems that you currently have.