Monday, December 5, 2011

I have patients ask me what it looks like when I adjust. They hear me working at it and feel a light touch behind the ear, but what is going on?
The physics of force generation and transmission is going on...that's what. In the case of the highly refined NUCCA procedure, the force is produced by a complex lever mechanism (simple!) which involves the doctor's legs, arms, back, shoulders and hands all locked in a particular way. To keep it simple, when the shoulders are pulled together (by contracting the long head of the triceps muscle at its origin) force is generated that moves in the direction of the hands. There are some subtleties that are important to get the force to come straight out and not go off at an angle. If the hand is contacting the edge of the atlas at the correct vector (established through radiographic analysis) then the misaligned system will move back to alignment.
...and our patients turn the corner and begin healing...

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Dan O'Brien And Chiropractic



You don't have to be an Olympic athlete to appreciate and benefit from a higher level of health and fitness. Most of the patients at 1st Step Chiropractic in Rockford, IL, are NOT athletic, but report interesting observations like the following; "I was the only one in the tour group that was able to keep going as we walked through Rome!" "I was the only one in the room that was able to keep going as we put together the cookie tins!"
Stand out from your peers...find Rockford's only NUCCA, upper cervical chiropractic practice. 815-398-4500

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Helping Hearing


I get many questions about whether the NUCCA procedure helps tinnitis or deafness. You have to remember that Chiropractic in general began with curing one man of deafness. The trouble is that you must not confuse the task of Chiropractic with the task of the snake oil salesman; Chiropractic works to restore normal physiology to the entire vertebrate system by removing structural interference with the nerve system. Snake oil salesmen want to sell you something to "fix" a specific complaint, like antibiotics for a cough.

In the process of restoring normal function to the entire nerve system, we see tinnitis reduce or vanish, hearing improve, but we also see cases that don't respond. You have to just do the work and see how the body wants to respond. But remember to ask if you want your body to work at its best, and if you do, get under chiropractic care, even if a specific symptom does not go away.
1st Step Chiropractic, 815-398-4500.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Helping Headaches


You can study the Headache books and find many, many categories of headaches. It is possible to understand certain etiologies for headaches without the number crunching; The toxic headache you wake up with, so you have to figure out what you are eating or breathing that your body doesn't like. The cyclic headache is related usually to hormonal changes. The migraine can be triggered by foods, light, or anything else and can begin with a "prodrome," which may be the appearance of jagged lines in the vision. Traumatic headaches occur after a nasty blow to the head. It can fracture the skull or just cause a concussion.
Any of these types of headaches can respond to upper cervical chiropractic. In this Rockford Chiropractor's office, we use the NUCCA procedure to bring balance back into the entire system so that any of these headaches can become a thing of the past.
1st Step Chiropractic, 815-398-4500. How long do you want the headaches?

Friday, November 11, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor: Why You Don't Feel the NUCCA Correction


What kind of hokey stuff is this? You are very likely to ask this question as you are receiving the NUCCA correction. The answer takes us into the realm of physics, geometry and just plain old practicality. (And you thought you were finished with school...)
In this short video, we look at some of the reasons why you are not supposed to feel the correction. But when the correction has occurred, normal physiology of the central nerve system is re-established, which sets into motion normal developmental processes of the entire body and mind.
You won't believe it till you (don't) feel it!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Concise! Our colleague in NJ explains very clearly the chiropractic agenda. The NUCCA procedure is used at our office to manage the nerve system from the "main fuse box."

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Spinal Care for Injuries


People ask me how we would take care of their children injured on the field. You know, the soccer game where he rolled on an ankle or landed on the knee. It hurts, there's a limp. Someone might even have said, "you have a sprained ligament."
But here is where you have to see the big picture. The ligament may require ice, rest, wrapping...and it may improve. But if the spine is out of balance due to trauma, the joints will not interface correctly EVER, and instead of long-term healing, you get long-term breakdown. Instead of a child going from strength to strength, you get your child suddenly looking old, broken, and looking forward to not playing sports at the end of the season.
Is that what we want?
The 1st Step is to correct the imbalanced spine with the NUCCA procedure. This has the unbelievable potential to correct the position of every joint in the body. If some joints are slow to respond, there are other chiropractic procedures we use to bring them back into right relations.
Then we get what we really want...healthy, happy, active children!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor: NUCCA Practitioner

Here are a few things that draw me to the specificity of the NUCCA procedure; any condition you can think of has the potential to vanish once the communication between the brain and body has been restored. Look at this fine website by a doctor in San Diego. It shows some images that express one element of the insult caused by the "atlas subluxation complex." I am talking about compression of the spinal cord. This compression causes two events that have been documented in the research - anoxic conditions in the cord and mechanical disruption of the nerve fibers under pressure. In either case, nerve fibers fail to carry signals from or to the brain.
Not good!
(another thing that I like about the NUCCA procedure is that the adjustment is so subtle, the patient cannot feel it)
So, enjoy Chiropractic in Rockford's center for the NUCCA procedure!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

The Problem with Skeptics Regarding the NUCCA Procedure

I understand that there are those who have questions about the NUCCA procedure (National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association). Some people actually investigate the procedure - we call them scientists. Some people don't investigate and make up their minds without the help of knowledge - we call them skeptics of the worst kind.
The worst kind because they fail to actually investigate all the factors relevant in the NUCCA work. Factors such as x-ray reliability, analysis reliability, adjusting skills, the value of testing, the value of looking for indicators within a person's nerve system that show the presence of the atlas subluxation complex...
Lucky for many, many people, they don't listen to this type of skeptic, and simply go for what makes sense.
What makes sense is that you need your head to be in communication with your body for anything to work right. The NUCCA procedure does this. Then people heal from conditions as diverse as congestive heart failure, liver disease, fallen arches, TMJ syndrome...and on and on. And it is simply due to the fact that normal physiology has been restored within the nerve system which controls and coordinates all the other systems of the body. Good science!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

NUCCA Procedure in Rockford

Since 2001, I have been actively studying and practicing the NUCCA procedure (National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association). As a violinist, I am accustomed to spending many years working on skills and understand the value of effort applied over time. My patients understand this too!
Instead of thinking that their bodies are like cars - a burned out engine you can replace and then you are back on the road, but your body requires the right treatments applied over time for full healing to occur.
How does this work? I am including a link to a NUCCA site that helps explain the corrective procedure that helps so many people, some with miraculous results.
So, now you can think of Rockford, IL, as a center, not only for precise machine work, but also for precise upper cervical chiropractic work!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Throw It Away Or Restore?


I fixed my car today.

Not just a little fix, but everyone was saying, "270,000 miles on it? Sounds like it's time to let it go!" My '91 Accord was acting like the transmission was giving up the ghost. But I did some research and discovered the key to fixing, not a mechanical problem, but an electronic problem.

So I replaced a tiny, 15 ohm resistor and two capacitors (haven't used a soldering iron for over 20 years...), stuck everything back together again, and the car works now.

I celebrated by cleaning it up real well. Will it last another 100,000 miles? We shall see.

But this isn't just a story about a few electronic components.

This week, I gave a correction to a 92-year old with low back pain. The lumbar spine was twisted and the hips were not level. Most people would have told her, "you have arthritis...at your age there is nothing you can do about it!"

Sounds like pretty grim advice, hopeless...

Good for this patient, she had useful helpers who sent her my way. I corrected the problem (a tiny, two-ounce bone at the base of the skull) and her low back straightened out, bringing the hips perfectly level.

It wasn't a structural problem at all! It was a communication problem between the brain and the body. Kinda like the electronic problem with the Accord. Communication, that's all. Fix the communication, and you can erase signs of the problem.

For the Accord, the problem looked like a broken transmission. For the 92-year-old, the problem looked like an old, broken down backbone. In both, the real problem was a little piece interfering with communication.

I like the pattern emerging here...we don't give up, we look for the underlying problem that is causing all the symptoms. Then health is restored.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Getting to the Real Problem

This was a hole.

The gas company was looking for a leak, and eventually found it under the first patch. But a couple of months later, a sinkhole developed for some reason in the same area. (According to my old friend and engineer, Donald Mosshart, they didn't pack the soil right). You can see the patch over the sinkhole, and you can also see that another sinkhole is developing.

Be thankful that the road crews aren't working as your chiropractor - simply band aiding the problem and letting it recur. Your Rockford Chiropractor believes in getting the foundation set right, so you don't have to keep fixing the "sinkholes" that develop.

So, no matter what you are dealing with - headaches, autoimmune disorders, pain syndromes, ask yourself if the original problem is being corrected.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor Balancing the Body

Our colleague, Dr. Justin Brown, down in Florida, is bringing NUCCA care to people who need help. What sort of conditions respond to this type of care? In this video, people talk about their asthma, poor health, multiple sclerosis, and other wheelchair events being helped by restoring proper head/neck alignment. We are the only office providing this type of care in Rockford, Illinois.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Spinal Balance is REAL!

It was back in 1921, and Dr. Winsor wanted to find out if Chiropractors were right in stating that the spine was important for health. So he performed autopsies on 75 human and 22 cat cadavers. He found they were right. There really IS a connection between slightly curved spines and diseased organs.

Here is the link...

When the nerves come out of the spine, they go to specific structures to feed them with the right nerve impulses. According to the design of the vertebrate, those nerves will exit the spine in specific places. So the top of the back (the first and second thoracic vertebrae) has nerves that run the heart and lungs. Interestingly enough, Dr. Winsor observed that in 26 spines belonging to people who died of lung disease, this region was not aligned correctly.
People who died of heart disease suffered from a misaligned spine in the top five vertebrae of the back (T1-5). The 17 who had kidney disease also had a misaligned spine in the lower Thoracic vertebrae....and so on.

It would be nice if we could duplicate this study to more carefully define "misaligned."

However, the take-away lesson for us all is this: Be sure your spine is aligned. That means have your Rockford Chiropractor check to see if you have the atlas subluxation complex present. It will throw your spine out of balance. We can predictably bring the spine back into balance by removing the atlas subluxation complex.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Rockford Chiropractor - Restoring Health

Regarding upper cervical chiropractic (this Rockford Chiropractor uses the NUCCA procedure), the important issue is to restore normal physiology of the vertebrate. The most efficient way to do that (I am comparing drugs, bodywork, physical therapy, segmental chiropractic and osteopathic approaches and their derivatives) is to correct the alignment of the head with the neck. But then WHAT HAPPENS???

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Safe Hugging (How to avoid irritating your sensitive friends)


Patients ask me how to protect their NUCCA correction when friends and family want to hug them. This Rockford Chiropractor recommends avoiding pressure on the neck. Watch this....