Wellness Care: What's In It For Me?

Rockford patients get checked every six months - like in a dentist's office - to make sure that everything stays corrected and the signals from the brain to the body are clear.

Helping the Feet, Legs and Back!

Upper Cervical Chiropractic is a fascinating area to work in. Where else can you affect so many systems of the body - blood flow in the brain, hypertension, cardiac rhythms, back strength, sleep, leg pain....and if I write more, you really will go to sleep...
But what if there are symptoms and the upper cervical region tests clear of interference? Taking a look at the feet is a good thing to do.
Today, I found a person whose atlas was clear, but foot pain and back stress were an issue. I don't expect you to believe this, but I just report what is present, okay?
The left leg had decreased motor nerve supply.
The low back had a segment tractioning off to the right, (L3).
The right foot had several bones out of position (Navicular dropping medially in relation to the talus, Cuneiform 2 & 3 and of course, Metatarsal 3). I corrected the relationship between those bones and that removed the stress from the low back, and by doing so, restored motor control to the left leg.
Awesome system we have, don't we? And it is correctable when it gets out of sync!
But what is the first step to take?

Children's Behavior and Chiropractic

Rogan on left, brother Vaughn on right.

“You gave me a new child!” Those were a mother’s joyful words after she brought her eighteen month old son Rogan for his first NUCCA adjustment with Dr. Barbara Read.

“My son has always been rather angry-spirited in his temperament,” Kim explained. “He would wake up in the morning and instantly—if he didn't get his way, he would lie down and bang his head against the floor, and give other outbursts like that constantly...all day-everyday.”

There were also other signs that Rogan was having problems. “He wasn't babbling or making speaking sounds. I always thought, through my mother's intuition, that something was not right with my son.”
But Kim and her doctors were not quite sure what was wrong. She sought answers to Rogan's problem development in the family's nutrition, her son's vaccine history, and environmental factors.

“I have friends who had talked about their great experiences at the chiropractor and I had heard that they adjusted babies, but I never considered taking him to the chiropractor,” Kim said. “But my mother sees Dr. Read, and she was telling about her practice and how much it has made a difference for her. My husband was completely opposed to the idea, but I thought it was worth a try.”

After one upper cervical adjustment with the NUCCA protocol, Kim reports that Rogan began babbling. And in the month after the adjustment, she identified 10 words that he had learned. “He still has temper tantrums,” Kim reports. “He still has a strong personality, but he is a totally different kid. You can actually get through to him and reason with him.” Those episodes of screaming and slamming his head against the floor have completely been eliminated.

What does Rogan's father think about the trip to the chiropractor now? Kim reports that after the first adjustment, she and the kids spent a week with her parents. When they returned, her husband spent 20 minutes with Rogan and realized he had a new son—a change he attributes to NUCCA care.

Community Service Projects

I told my wife that I was involved with a community service project, and she wondered who my parole officer was.

"No," I said, "not Community Service, but Community Service Project!"

The Blackhawk Bicycle Club has a ride every year attended by avid cyclists from all over the USA. Winding over 60 miles through the Northern Illinois landscape, some adventurers can opt for shorter circuits as well. At the end of the ride, the Club offers a nice lunch at the Rockton Community Center...and this Rockford Chiropractor offers "muscle flushing" for rapid recovery of the tissues from all the exercise.

It's relaxing, people like it, and it gives us a chance to study the effects of simple procedures on the well-being of the community.

In fact, I noticed that those people who received this gentle work that helped move lactic acid through the muscles had a more energetic look about them within five minutes.

Being a notorious question asker, I wondered if that was a result only of the muscle flushing, or if there was a lucky convergence of forces that included diet, overall health and the muscle flushing responsible for this change.

Wondering what the agenda is here? To see the community looking well, doing well.

We begin with restoring communication between the brain and the body with upper cervical care. Using the NUCCA procedure, we can balance the spine and set up conditions favorable for all systems of the body to normalize.

Then, on the weekends, we get involved in other things...

Rockford Chiropractor on Vaccines

This Rockford Chiropractor spotted a surprising (or not depending on your level of trust in the CDC) article culled from the website of the International College of Integrative Medicine...
Thorsen Disappears!
submitted by ICIM member Lambert Parker MD:
A central figure behind the Center for Disease Control's (CDC) claims disputing the link between vaccines and autism and other neurological disorders has disappeared after officials discovered massive fraud involving the theft of millions in taxpayer dollars.
Danish police are investigating Dr. Poul Thorsen, who has vanished along with almost $2 million that he had supposedly spent on research.
Thorsen was a leading member of a Danish research group that wrote several key studies supporting CDC's claims that the MMR vaccine and mercury-laden vaccines were safe for children. Thorsen's 2003 Danish study reported a 20-fold increase in autism in Denmark after that country banned mercury based preservatives in its vaccines. His study concluded that mercury could therefore not be the culprit behind the autism epidemic.
His study has long been criticized as fraudulent since it failed to disclose that the increase was an artifact of new mandates requiring, for the first time, that autism cases be reported on the national registry. This new law and the opening of a clinic dedicated to autism treatment in Copenhagen accounted for the sudden rise in reported cases rather than, as Thorsen seemed to suggest, the removal of mercury from vaccines. Despite this obvious chicanery, CDC has long touted the study as the principal proof that mercury-laced vaccines are safe for infants and young children. Mainstream media, particularly the New York Times, has relied on this study as the basis for its public assurances that it is safe to inject young children with mercury -- a potent neurotoxin -- at concentrations hundreds of times over the U.S. safety limits.
Thorsen, who was a psychiatrist and not a research scientist or toxicologist, parlayed that study into a long-term relationship with CDC. He built a research empire called the North Atlantic Epidemiology Alliances (NANEA) that advertised its close association with the CDC autism team, a relationship that had the agency paying Thorsen and his research staff millions of dollars to churn out research papers, many of them assuring the public on the issue of vaccine safety.
The discovery of Thorsen's fraud came as the result of an investigation by Aarhus University and CDC which discovered that Thorsen had falsified documents and, in violation of university rules, was accepting salaries from both the Danish university and Emory University in Atlanta -- near CDC headquarters -- where he led research efforts to defend the role of vaccines in causing autism and other brain disorders. Thorsen's center has received $14.6 million from CDC since 2002.
Thorsen's partner Kreesten Madsen recently came under fierce criticism after damning e-mails surfaced showing Madsen in cahoots with CDC officials intent on fraudulently cherry picking facts to prove vaccine safety.
Leading independent scientists have accused CDC of concealing the clear link between the dramatic increases in mercury-laced child vaccinations beginning in 1989 and the epidemic of autism, neurological disorders and other illnesses affecting every generation of American children since. Questions about Thorsens's scientific integrity may finally force CDC to rethink the vaccine protocols since most of the other key pro vaccine studies cited by CDC rely on the findings of Thorsen's research group. These include oft referenced research articles published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the New England Journal of Medicine and others. The validity of all these studies is now in question.
Citations
1. http://www.cphpost.dk/news/international/89-international/48229-researcher-accused-of-cheating-uni-out-of-millions.html 
2. http://www.safeminds.org/news/pressroom/press_releases/20040518_AutismAuthorsNetwork.pdf
3. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/opinion/06sat3.html
4. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/time-for-cdc-to-come-clea_b_16550.html
5. http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/03/poul-thorsens-mutating-resume.html
6. http://www.rescuepost.com/files/thorsen-aarhus.pdf
7. http://www.cphpost.dk/news/international/89-international/48229-researcher-accused-of-cheating-uni-out-of-millions.html

Chiropractic and Chiari Malformations

This Rockford Chiropractor attended a seminar today that covered some interesting issues in the joint between the head and neck. One of them has to do with a nasty problem known as "Chiari Malformation," of which there are several types, according to how bad it is.
Here's the problem: The cerebellar tonsils, parts of the hind brain, slip down and through the hole at the bottom of the head. Nobody knows how this occurs, but research points to whiplash injury as a likely cause.
When this is present, the brain pushes against the back of the spinal cord and prevents proper flow of cerebral-spinal fluid (CSF). This "precious bodily fluid," is keeping your nerve system fed and working. You brain makes about 500 cc's per day, and it HAS to keep moving down the spinal cord to your tailbone, back up to the head, then draining into the proper drains in the top of the skull. If you put a cork in the bottle, which is what a Chiari malformation does, you have problems.
These problems can include headaches, abnormal pressure on the brain tissue causing Multiple Sclerosis, and something called Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (the medical remedy so far is to install a relief valve in the head).
Oh, by the way, the same trauma that caused the malformation also knocked the atlas bone (C1) out of position. So what's the easiest thing to do?
Find a NUCCA doctor and get a precise, controlled adjustment of the atlas to get it back in position. This can take all the pressure off the brainstem and reinstate normal CSF flow.
I was interested to find that Medical practitioners are finding that this type of patient can get better with upper cervical chiropractic help.
Patient-centered care. What we all want!

Rockford Chiropractor - Tooth Extractions

There's my tooth. Specifically, number 12, or bicuspid #1 on the upper left. I have had an abcess in it since January. Other means to correct it, including immune support remedies, were effective in only alleviating the pain. I came eventually to agree with my Rockford dentist, who barked at me, "You can band-aid this all you want, but you still have to get it out!"

The experience was not fun. I guess I would rather play a violin recital in my underwear, on music that I was sight-reading, than have to go through this again. But I learned some valuable lessons with the experience!

The cranial osteopaths were right when they specified how certain motions in extracting a tooth would separate cranial bones in predictable ways. I could feel the forces pushing and pulling through my upper jaw, face, back of the head and neck. I could feel the strain on the atlas, my first cervical vertebra as I pulled my head backwards and resisted the pressure of the extraction procedure. I could feel the strange reluctance in the tooth, as though it was saying, "No, we have to work together, we're stronger as a team!"

("Thankyou for your service - you're fired!" I thought)

The dentist chair is a favorite place for a person to lose the all-important relation between the neck and the head. It's not your dentists' fault. The forces going into the head can be brutal to the tissues supporting the head and neck. What can you do about it?

First, make sure the head support is properly positioned, neither placing pressure on the neck nor forcing your head down.

Second, if you don't have an upper cervical doctor who can monitor your atlas' relationship to the head, you need to find one! When this relationship goes out, your nerve system cries "ouch!" and pulls up one leg, creates postural distortions and other havoc with your body systems.

So remember, if you must have dental work (you have my sympathy if it is an extraction), be sure to get checked by your upper cervical doctor afterward.

Oh, by the way, I didn't lose my head/neck alignment, and I feel a lot better after a gentle cranial adjustment.