Rockford Upper Cervical Care and Your Nerves

Why do the pupils of your eyes get large when you are enraged? Why do they shrink when you are peaceful? The answer lies in how the brain is "wired" to the parts of the body.

We know that the brain controls every cell in your body. We have known that for over 2,000 years, but have not always used that information wisely. Within the past 100 years with the advent of specific chiropractic procedures, we have been able to use that information to great benefit for the community. Let's look at the eyes and how they tell us what's going on inside...
The two divisions of the autonomic nerve system work in opposite ways - one tells body parts to "get going" and the other tells body parts to "relax...chill out!" In the eyes, the part that tells things to "get going" is the sympathetic nerve system. There are tiny nerve fibers that originate in the lower neck/upper back which travel up the neck, through the head and settle on the "dilator pupillae" muscle. This is the muscle that makes your pupils get big.

Another way to think of the sympathetic nerves is to recall the phrase "fight or flight." When a person is agitated, terrified, ready to go out on stage for the graduation recital, ready to go down the aisle and get married....there's going to be a considerable excitement.

Belladonna: a poison that enlarges pupils

And what I can remember most easily is the effect of Belladonna on the nerve system. Main characteristics of Belladonna (deadly nightshade) poisoning includes furious excitement, hot, red skin, flushed face, excited mental state, dry mouth....all signs of sympathetic dominance. Not least of these signs is dilated (large) pupils. (from Boericke Materia Medica).
Interestingly enough, in the final battle of King Richard III, if his opponent had smacked him really hard on the base of the neck on the left side damaging the sympathetic nerves running his left eye, his attackers would have seen his left pupil suddenly shrink as the influence of those nerves ceased.

His right eye would have retained the large pupil characteristic of someone fighting for his life (showing sympathetic "fight or flight" response) but the left pupil would have had no signal coming from the controlling nerves from the neck that were damaged.
It's too bad about King Richard. His nerves and eye control could not have been helped by upper cervical care at this point in his life. But it's possible that his scoliosis could have been corrected with upper cervical care properly applied in his youth. We see correction or reduction of scoliosis on a daily basis. It is even possible that upper cervical care could have improved his health and reflexes to the point that he could have been able to fight better, not get killed, and maintain control of the English monarchy. But isn't it interesting that the knowledge about the importance of the head was used in a way to expedite the death of King Richard? It was a sword blow to the head that finished him off.

1st Step Upper Cervical Care Center, Rockford, IL. Keeping your head on straight...

815-398-4500

Rockford Chiropractor: Helping traumatic brain injury

I was relaxing in the Sunday afternoon sunshine today, listening to the far-off rhythmic hammering of a woodpecker. Everyone has something useful to do - eating, relaxing, foraging - even birds.
But then I got to wondering why woodpeckers don't suffer traumatic brain injury with all that hammering they do with their heads...
I take care of people who have had head injuries. Motorcyclists, victims of car accidents, victims of sports trauma, are some of the people that upper cervical care helps to restore. What don't we know about the difference between our head and neck structures and that of the woodpecker?
We already know how the connection between the head and neck can be displaced. This displacement is called a "subluxation." A subluxation creates interference with nerve transmission and can lead to pathological changes in joints, nerves, muscles, and the organs that those nerves supply.
When there is a TBI, this subluxation prevents the bones of the skull from moving back into their normal relationships, compressing the brain and causing increased intra-cranial pressures, among other things. Did someone say headaches?
Restoring the relation between the head and neck, removing the subluxation has a number of effects; first of all, the skull bones relax and begin to move freely again, allowing the pressure on the brain to go down. Second, the spine moves back into balance - what is perceived as scoliosis resolves. Then all the signals moving from the brain to the body normalize so that muscles come back to balance, organs function at a higher level....you get the picture...health stops decaying.
So can you answer the question why we don't have woodpeckers dropping out of the sky with concussions?
Taking care of people....1st Step Upper Cervical Care Center, a division of 1st Step Chiropractic, S.C. 815-398-4500.

Rockford Upper Cervical: What the 5th grader's textbook says...

My wife asked me to review this science textbook for potential use by our daughter. "Is it accurate?" she asked. I like testing these books by going straight to the chapter on the nerve system. Read with me....
"Have you ever wondered what causes your muscles to contract or how you can tell the difference between hot and cold? Do you ponder how you are able to feel love or perhaps why you can remember what happened last Saturday? How is it that you can even wonder about these things?
Well, God gave you a special system called your nervous system that enables you to do all these things and much, much more. Without it, you really and truly wouldn't be you. Your nervous system controls a huge number of activities in your body, and scientists are discovering more of its wonders every day." (Exploring Creation with Human Anatomy and Physiology, Jeannie Fulbright and Brooke Ryan. Apologia Science. 2010)
Good start! So why do we forget that everything we do, feel, or think is happening through our nerve system. Did you know that a person's face will display how they are feeling inside? This is partially because our body organs, such as the stomach, send "ouch" signals to a part of the brain that is directly beside the nerves that control your facial expressions! When a person's spine is out of balance, the body organs cannot get good signals to operate right. They begin to cry "ouch!" The face will show this, even though a person cannot feel the distress going on deep inside.
When we restore balance to the spine, all the body organs begin to function at a higher level and the face relaxes. Our patients who are in balance look younger and brighter than people who ignore their nerve system.
Call us at 1st Step Upper Cervical Care Center when you are ready to find out if your spine is in balance - your nerve system depends on it!
815-398-4500

Rockford Chiropractor - Helping the Runner!

What happens when you have a balanced spine, your brain is communicating well with your body, and yet, when you get into a stressful activity (like running) something doesn't feel right?
We have found that there can be hidden misalignments that will only show up when you place the body into a stressful activity, like running. Then we can do something about it!
One person needed a remedial lesson in tension release to get his lungs expanding properly.
Another person needed an ankle bone adjusted to the correct position for the knee to work right.
Another needed a leg bone to be re-positioned to get the leg to move fully.
What's your running issue?
If you are not a runner, do you need a closer look in your activity-of-choice?
Come to the Runner's Clinic on Tuesday, September 16, 2014, hosted by 1st Step Chiropractic, S.C., Rockford's only center for upper cervical health care (NUCCA procedure).
815-398-4500

Are You a Gluten Gnostic?

The Gluten Myth 

Tim O'Shea, DC

This is getting out of control – hysterical, unreferenced disinformation about gluten.  Another market driven by mythology, joining the ranks of dairy, fish oils, carbohydrates, vaccines – buzzwords directed by systematic error.

Demonizing gluten has spawned a whole new industry, evident in entire aisles of gluten-free products in today’s supermarkets everywhere.  It’s big.  It’s part of the Alternative Lite program – the militantly uninformed who read a couple things off google and then act like they just discovered the Holy Grail of nutrition, and the cure for all disease. Which they will now condescendingly share with the rest of us.

Most of us know that gluten is the proteinaceous part of the wheat kernel. In itself it is not toxic or allergenic, but a necessary component of an integral whole food, which in many civilizations has been part of optimum human nutrition for the past 100,000 years.

The main deceit in the new anti-gluten frenzy is that if a food contains gluten free grains, or else no grains whatsoever, it is automatically a nutritious valuable whole food.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

It’s about reading labels.  Stroll down the gluten free aisle when you’re not in a hurry and just start randomly pulling items off the shelf.  Read the ingredients.  All of them. The majority of gluten free products contain allergens,  chemicals, and neurotoxins including HFCS, hydrogenated oils, refined sugar, to name a few. 


These are the same culprits that contaminate the principal American processed food diet, and define it as non-nutritive and toxic.  Who are the largest contributors to the gluten free aisles?  The big names we all know—the global purveyors of processed and packaged enzymeless nutrient deficient foods.  For them, Gluten free was just another niche buzzword marketing device that needed to be covered.  And they have done a masterful job, not just in the US, but globally.

We talk about Jeffrey Smith’s pioneering work on GMOS in the Nutrition seminars, both live and online.  Just saw him lecture last week at CalJam.  His new work cited proof how changing to a non GMO diet ended gluten sensitivity.  Why might that be?  Because there’s no such thing as gluten sensitivity. What they were sensitive to were GMOs and the above processed ingredients, seen in virtually all gluten free foods.  Cut them out, the patient improves.

When people say they got better after eliminating gluten from the diet, they did.  But gluten wasn't why.  It was eliminating all the above additives in the processed foods, foods that also contained wheat.   

Whole grains, including wheat, have been important sources of B and C vitamins, as well as protein and complex CHOs, for most cultures from time immemorial. No need to change that because of some social-media-driven trendy pop myths.


Time to re-visit Weston Price.

Everybody’s not going to get this.  Fine.  The survival of the Correctly Informed. 

Rockford NUCCA Practitioner Helping Headaches

Everyone is saying it's all in your head and you'll never get better, right? Those headaches that started maybe a year after you had a whiplash injury. You didn't think you were hurt because nothing was broken, right?
We are finding that after a trauma, there is an association between the upper cervical misalignment (called the atlas subluxation complex) and a serious problem that looks like your brain is falling out of your head! It is called "cerebellar tonsillar ectopia," and is so subtle that many radiologists will not notice it on the MRI. When you look at this picture, (the left side of the picture is the right side of the brain) you can see that the left part of the brain is pushing the brainstem from left to right. Do you think that might constrict some blood vessels and cerebral spinal fluid, preventing normal fluid flow and oxygenation of brain tissue? This particular patient's radiology report was "normal."
Well....
Symptoms improve with the correction. Now we are looking for stability, which will come over time, it always does.
In our study group this past year, we have been looking at this phenomenon and seeing how the upper cervical correction (we use the NUCCA procedure) seems to be the best way to help with that.
Who do YOU know that has had whiplash injury and chronic headaches? 815-398-4500.

Rockford NUCCA Chiropractor Helping Myasthenia Gravis

LaVerne began NUCCA care in 2008. After 6 months, he described changes in his body..."I'm feeling stronger," he wrote. Myasthenia Gravis is considered an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks its own nerve endings. You can think of it as though the muscles cannot "hear" the signal coming from the brain. Medication is the only remedy, according to the predominant practice in the USA today. However, we know that the immune system is being managed by a particular center in the brain (solitary tract nucleus) which is taking information from other areas in the body. Now if the body is twisted and out of balance, do you think that it will be giving distorted information to the brain?
With the NUCCA procedure, we are able to bring balance back into the spine and entire body. Interestingly enough, the immune system likes this. We can see evidence of this in the fact that LaVerne reported being off all his medications in October of 2013, and he feels fine!
What a fine example of how the body can heal itself when we restore balance in the body! If you're ready to get balance back into your body, call us at 815-398-4500.