Most problems are caused by traumas, minor traumas, repetitive traumas, or big things like car accidents, and sporting injuries. Many of them stem from childhood. I didn’t realize how much until I had a child and saw the things that would cause her to need to be adjusted.

We have little micro traumas that happen. They alter the mechanics of the upper cervical spine. The upper cervical spine is unique in its shape. When you look at the rest of the spine, it has joints that are very interlocking and controlled movement between them. When you get to the very top of the upper cervical spine between the base of the skull, there are C-1 and C-2. The joints are flatter, less interlocking and rely more on soft tissue to keep them aligned and moving correctly. When we have a trauma there’s more likelihood that you’ll get altered mechanics. We call this altered biomechanics, simply meaning the joints no longer move the way that they are supposed to.

Between every joint in the body are mechanoreceptors. Mechanoreceptors constantly tell the brain what’s happening in the joint. The more important the joint, the more the number of mechanoreceptors. Well, just so happens that the upper cervical spine has over 80% of the mechanoreceptors in the entire body. That’s because of the effect on the nervous system. That area can affect parts above as well as down below.

Small traumas cause altered biomechanics. You get a bombardment of signals that keeps firing to the brain telling it that something is wrong with those joints. It’s not something you can feel, it’s not a sensation. It’s a signal between the brain and the joint. This almost becomes like a spilling over effect. It becomes like a traffic jam. Suddenly, it’s like you’re sitting in a traffic jam on the freeway and nobody’s getting through. Just like in a traffic jam, some lanes move, some lanes don’t, some just slow down, but things start to get a little funky.

In your body, messages can get misconstrued. This is hypoafferentation. Messages are getting through slower and more confused. Communication from above down or from below up in the body is not at 100%. They’re not doing their best, and then we start to see dysfunction in the body. This dysfunction can start out slowly and continue to grow over time until it intensifies.

So, my job is to detect these interferences. That is what the scanner shows us. The infrared thermography shows us how the nervous system is functioning once we detect this problem, then the X-ray shows the altered biomechanics and I know exactly how to correct it when needed. Made with the specific correction, we can then recheck you with a thermography scan to see we’ve normalized it. Then all we do is we stand back, and we wait for the body to slowly but surely reorganize itself to get things under control, to begin to adapt and make corrections on its own.

Because your body does all the work, I simply help it along by correcting altered biomechanics, when necessary, based on nervous system function.

I hope you enjoyed today’s very long Science report, but it’ll help you understand why the adjustment can help so many people with so many different things such as headaches, neck pain, stomach distress, focus, and sleep.

Upper cervical chiropractic makes an impact even long after symptoms are gone. You should continue to get checked to ensure that any dysfunction does not go undetected. You’re much more likely to stay on the right track and continue feeling great with consistent maintenance care.