I was hiking a trail in Yosemite during Thanksgiving this year.  As I walked along relishing the fresh air and the beauty around me, I soon became aware that navigating a rough trail is very different than walking on flat concrete.  It’s more work.  I realized that I had to use different muscles and expand more energy to walk than I do in civilization.  I had to step over tree branches and put the weight of my feet on different angles to accommodate the rough terrain.  It occurred to me that this is closer to how our bodies are designed to function.  We are meant to be able to easily recruit different muscle groups in order to maintain our balance and to compensate for changes in the terrain as we walk.  Walking on flat surfaces does not use these muscles.

I believe that this form of deconditioning that we all so easily get into – thanks to civilization – is behind some of the injuries I encounter in practice.  I’m thinking particularly of the small innocent movements that result in sudden low back pain or neck pain.  The patient will come in and complain that all they did was bend down to perform some minor motion, they twisted a little, then felt a sharp sudden pain.

The problem is that so many of us are not used to using all those various muscles that help support the body.  As a result, at certain critical times, those muscles don’t fire to support the body when they should and an injury occurs.  For this purpose, I recommend certain exercises to strengthen the core musculature of the body, the postural muscles and to improve one’s balance or proprioception.  Strengthening the core is a great beginning.  It helps add strength to the spine and the entire body.  Even better is to strengthen the core in such a way as to add instability to the exercise thus forcing the body to stabilize itself.  A great way to do this is to perform core exercises with a Swiss ball.  For example, if one exercises their low back in extension on a machine, which has a prescribed motion built into it, many of the postural muscles aren’t used.  But if one bends their waist over a Swiss ball, feet supported against a wall, and extends their back so that their entire spine is straight, now they are using the same muscles to extend the spine plus all the other countless muscles needed to hold them steady on a relatively unstable surface.

After an injury, damaged ligaments tend to lose some of their ability to stabilize the body. This makes a re-injury more likely.  Another great exercise is to work on one’s balance.  The same idea applies – improving the body’s ability to recruit muscles and stabilize itself. Balance tends to get worse with age due to various reasons.  For the elderly, a fall can be disastrous.  A simple and effective way to improve balance is to simply stand on one foot facing a corner.  If you start to fall, you can quickly put one hand on each wall and catch yourself.  Try standing on each foot for a minute.  It’s harder than it seems.  When you get pretty good at that, try doing it for 30 seconds with your eyes closed.  That’s a lot harder. Without the visual feedback, you have to rely purely on the messages coming from within your body.  This is simply a skill that can be developed and, in doing so, can go a long way toward helping to prevent future injuries.

My favorite part of being a chiropractor is working with patients – helping them get better and seeing the changes in their lives.  My least favorite is writing reports and doing the paperwork that seems to come with any sort of modern healthcare practice.

I recently started using a voice dictation software, called Dragon Naturally Speaking, that works quite well.  I can simply speak into a microphone and it gets dictated onto the computer.  The more you use it the more it recognizes your voice and becomes more accurate.  It had one quirk that they seem to have fixed now.  If I left the computer for a while, such that the computer went on standby, the program would freeze up and lose its data regarding my voice.  I had called tech support about it 6 months ago when I was having the problem.  Their advice was simple; I should go through the effort of shutting down the program each time I left the computer.  Seriously!  That was their solution!  It’s like that old joke about the patient who goes to the doctor complaining, “Doc, it hurts when I play the piano” to which the doctor responds, “then don’t play the piano”.

And yet, many people subconsciously do just that in their daily lives.  As they begin to experience pain, they start to limit the activities that worsen that pain.  As this progresses, sometimes slowly over years, their function becomes less and less as they avoid things that cause more pain.  Often this happens without their being fully aware of the process. Eventually it gets to the point where they are doing very little and then that begins to hurt.

So when a patient comes in for care, their main complaint is usually pain.  But I also try to learn about how that pain is inhibiting the patient’s life.  What would they like to be able to do that they currently cannot?  In doing so, I try to establish some functional goals for the patient.  This can vary quite a bit because they are unique to that person.  Some people just want to be able little walk around, maybe do some shopping, without limitation.  Others want to be able to return to the gym and engage in extensive exercise again.  As I work with patients, I encourage them, as they begin to improve, to push the envelope a little bit.  The rate of progress depends very much on a patient’s motivation, as well as, how long the condition has been present before they start care.  But establishing a clear goal is an important part of the process.

I’m lucky enough to live near a wooded area that has some old fruit trees growing wild.  I recently lumbered through the brush and spent an hour or so picking what I could reach.  That brought me back to being a kid when I loved climbing trees.  As I twisted around grasping for that, always just out of reach, fruit, I was acutely aware that my body and my spine felt differently at age 48 than when I was a kid.  Time does march on for all of
us.

And yet it is times like this when I’m glad that I make it a point to get adjusted to keep my spine moving as normally as possible.  I would hate to think of how I would feel if I had never been adjusted.

We all probably know someone who looks and acts 10 years older than they actually are.  And we may know others who look and move about like they are 10 years younger than their true age.  This is the difference between a person’s chronological age: their age according to the calendar – and their biological age:  their age based on how the tissues of their body are functioning.

The science of anti-aging is based on keeping the body functioning well as possible for as long as possible.  Essentially, keeping the body as biologically young as possible even as the chronological age keeps advancing.

I want to focus on joint motion as a critical aspect of anti-aging.  I suppose you could make an analogy to that of a car.  A car will last longer if you keep it maintained and tuned up.  I once had a car that went for 240,000 miles.  It had good genes, it was a Honda Accord.  But I also maintained it well.  I had a friend who had a Toyota Corolla that was beaten and tattered at 60,000.  He did drive it hard, but he never maintained it.  So yes, trauma to the spine will cause damage, but if that damage is addressed the spine will last longer.

A few years back, I had a 30 year old patient who came in for injuries from an auto accident he had just had.  When I x-rayed his neck I was shocked to see severe degeneration throughout his neck.  It looked like the cervical spine of an 80 year old man!  Since it takes years for trauma to a spine to result in degeneration, I knew this had to have come from a much earlier injury.  He said that when he was 8 years old he had fallen and hit the floor head first from the top of a bunk bed.  His neck had bothered him off and on since then.  Obviously that injury had resulted in the joints becoming fixated, or in chiropractic terminology, subluxated.  With that lack of motion, lubricating fluid
did not circulate through the joints or nutrients properly move in and out of
the discs.  Like the mechanical parts of my friend’s Corolla, the joints wore out more quickly.  As I have so often in the past, I wish I could have gotten to him right after the trauma occurred.  I’m sure as an 8 year old he was treated for a concussion.  Then his resilient 8 year old body healed things as best as it could.  I suspect in a day or two he was clamoring to go out and play.  But the body tends to heal with scar tissue which is less flexible than regular tissue.  So the subluxations in the joints resulted in those joints literally aging prematurely.

On more subtle levels, subluxations age us in other ways as well.  On the simplest level, if our joints ache we will tend to exercise less or even move about a bit less during the course of the day.  But, perhaps most importantly, vertebrae that do not move properly affect the entire nervous system of the body.  The brain controls the entire body.  It does so by sending messages down to the body via the spinal cord then out through the nerves that
pass between the vertebrae of the spine. By the same token, messages also come from the body through those spinal nerves and give the brain feedback about what is going on in the body.  If the joints do not move properly, they will tend to cause nerve interference which,
like static in a phone line, will compromise the messages from the brain to the body and back again.  As a result the body will not function at its optimum.  Thus, in a very real sense, a spinal adjustment is not only a tune up for the spine but for the entire body as well.

At its most basic, during an adjustment, a chiropractor such as myself is finding which joints are most fixated (subluxated) and mobilizing those joints – breaking up scar tissue and adhesions to restore normal motion and alignment as much as possible.  As my patients know, I use the ProAdjuster/Ultralign instrument to carefully analyze which bones are the most fixated and then use the instrument to specifically mobilize those segments.

I plan to be an 80 year old guy picking fruit.  Hopefully someone will look at me and wonder who is that 60 year old picking fruit.  Meanwhile I won’t feel a year over 50.

I met a guy in chiropractic school who had been a Navy Seal for years prior to entering school.  As a member of the military special forces, his training had been extremely rigorous – far more than typical military training.  Even among the Special Forces branches, Seals standout as being some tough guys who are intensely trained.  I have no doubt that his body showed the effects of the rigors it had undergone.  When I met him he was probably in his mid to late 30s. 

His particular story, what convinced him to go into chiropractic school, was an experience he had toward the end of his military service.  As a result of everything he had put his body through, he had developed significant hip pain.  The military doctors had scheduled him for surgery.  I can only imagine that any surgery to his hip would have likely spelled the end of his military career.  In any case, just before the surgery he went to visit a friend of his in Florida.  The friend insisted he see his chiropractor.  Since he was only there for a week, the chiropractor saw him every day and adjusted his hip for that entire week.  By the end of the week, his hip was feeling 90% better.  He went home, canceled the surgery and eventually enrolled in chiropractic school.

As a chiropractor, I hear stories like this all the time.  Studies that compare one group of patients that are treated with chiropractic and compare them to similar cases that are treated medically with drugs or surgery or physical therapy tend to find that chiropractic care is cheaper and has better outcomes – especially long-term.  This holds true for comparisons between workers comp cases or auto accident injuries.  All this has relevance in decreasing runaway healthcare costs.  You definitely want to go with a less expensive treatment that is more effective.   And yet, the greater importance in my mind is the human suffering involved and the loss of potential.  It’s one thing to say that a certain type of treatment saved the insurance company or the patient X amount of dollars.  It’s another thing to try and measure the difference between a life of chronic pain versus freedom of movement without pain.  As I work every day to get people out of pain, in some cases chronic pain that they’ve had for years, I do reflect on the repercussions the pain has on their lives and those around them.  Certainly, a person with pain may not be able to do everything they want in their lives, or if they can, not enjoy those activities as much.  At the same time, it also affects those people around the person in pain.  If mom’s headaches are bothering her, it’s likely to affect her relationship with her children and husband.  Grandpa may be so cranky all the time because his neck and low back pain are hurting him and he knows people are tired of hearing about it.

As chiropractic continues to grow as a profession, I look forward to a world in which people are functioning at their best, free of pain, and able to enjoy a vibrant healthy life.

I was in San Francisco a few weeks back and, on a whim, I decided to walk up the Lyon Street steps.  These are a beautiful set of steps at the end of Lyon Street in the Marina that ascend rather steeply while passing beautiful gardens and large expensive houses.  They’re actually a favorite exercise spot for many people.  As I climbed the steps being passed by spandex clad 20 and 30-somethings running up and down the steps, I noticed an elderly couple making their way gingerly down the steps.  They were well dressed and obviously out sightseeing.  I was impressed with their fortitude, but I was really struck by the condition of the woman’s spine.  She had a classic tortipelvis.

This is a condition, if you can picture it, in which one half of the pelvis twists backward and the other half twists forward.  In the woman’s case, this resulted in the left side of her pelvis dropping down and back with the spine above it twisting around to compensate resulting in a high left shoulder.  As she walked, I could see the restriction in her pelvis and spine which affected her overall movement.  I can only imagine that she must have been in some type of chronic pain and yet she trudged onward.

I was tempted to approach her and recommend chiropractic.  I might know someone close to where she lived.  But I held back because in situations like this in the past, when I’ve approached perfect strangers, they sometimes tend not to be too receptive.  And still, I regret not saying anything.  Even if she thought it odd that this tall person she had never met was giving unsolicited advice, it might well have planted a seed that could have resulted in her getting help.  She might have asked a friend about chiropractic and gotten a good recommendation.  And, of course, I think of so many people like her who don’t know that there is a solution to their chronic pain or limitation of activities.  Since most people take the advice of friends and family, rather than strangers, these are the people we can help most.  Patients reading this have seen the benefits of chiropractic first-hand so I encourage you to tell those around you about chiropractic.

I’ll always be grateful to the friend of mine who, 20 years ago after I complained about low back pain, said that I should see her chiropractor.  That’s a seed that definitely took root for me.

Disc injuries often respond quite well to Flexion-Distraction Traction. This is a form of traction to gently decompress the disc in order to help heal disc injuries without requiring surgery.

The discs, which are the shock absorbers between the vertebrae, are often involved in low back pain. If an injured disc presses on a nerve, it can cause pain to radiate down one or both legs. By gently opening up the disc space with Flexion-Distraction Traction, pressure is taken off the nerves and the protruded or “slipped disc” can be repositioned and allowed to heal.

In my experience, some of the more excruciating episodes of low back pain come from a disc injury. By combining the gentle adjustment of the Proadjuster with Flexion-Distraction Traction, we have an excellent chance of facilitating the body’s natural ability to heal.