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.