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“But I was never in an accident!”. I hear this when sharing the X-ray results at Report of Examination Findings for new patients. We can see very plainly, the spine was injured, it isn’t in normal alignment and many times, because years have gone by, there’s now arthritis at the level that was traumatized.
Here is a normal image of the neck from the side. This person is 75 years old. No arthritis. No disc degeneration. She has been under chiropractic care most of her life. In this office for 16 years now.
And here on the left is a typical image how people show up here with upper back, neck pain, carpal tunnel, headaches… etc… You can see the neck has lost its curve. And also a focus of sharp departure from the normal alignment indicative of local trauma to that area. In addition, the extra white and pointy areas on the bottom front of the vertebra and decrease space between the vertebra, tells us that the injury was many years earlier and was left uncorrected. The image on the right is the same person, corrected, not completely but fairly well for her age and the arthritis present.
Sometimes the injuries happened in childhood, literally stunting the growth of a vertebra, leaving it smaller than those above and below it. These are like trampoline injuries, or car accidents that force the head to the chest and compresses the vertebra. Refer to top image and yellow arrow. You can see that segment is shorter than those above or below.
This can happen full grown as well, in which case, that person remembers the incident because it hurts way more as an adult and literally represents a spine fracture. Very close to paralyzed. For kids, the vertebra are still cartilaginous and they “give” a bit with the same level of trauma. It damages the cells that are actively growing the size of the vertebra, called the growth plates. If that happens in the last few years of growth, the rest of bone growth (vertically) is missed and arrested at the size it was at the time of injury. So, you can do some math, calculate the proportional size of that vertebra and roughly predict when it happened.
The challenge with all of these is it leaves the spine not mechanically working properly and therefore, unable to relay correct messages to the brain about where the body is in space. As a result of that, the muscle tone is off, too tight or too lax or too much left and not enough right contributing to scoliosis. Meanwhile, inside the spine is the whole spinal cord and this increase tone around that segment is transmitted to the spinal cord itself, affecting organs and processes distant from the site of injury. For instance, a C7 injury to the back of the neck can affect the thyroid on the front of the neck. A C5 injury to the neck can affect the diaphragm.
Orthopedically, the injury causes the joint to lose range of motion. It is this that causes osteoarthritis. Injury to a joint, loss of joint motion and time passing creates arthritis. People frequently believe arthritis is just normal for old age. It’s pretty common but it’s not normal. Since it’s difficult to be 70 or 80 years old and never damaged your spine, it’s extremely common to have arthritis in the neck or back. Particularly for people older. Heck, if the injury was so traumatic it killed you, you wouldn’t have survived to old age to ponder how the heck you got arthritis at C5 but not C2. When C2 and C5 are both 70 years old. Localized arthritis is trauma induced, less than lethal, and you lived a couple decades longer for it to become scar tissue and transformed into bone spurs. which we can see on the x-rays as arthritis.
Fascinating, right?
But, what do you DO about it? Left alone, those segments are trying to fuse. 2 bones turn effectively into one. Or, sometimes 3 to 5 bones turn into one. To stop it, you must be adjusted regularly. Otherwise, the process continues and range of motion is lost, damage to the nerves ensues, the spinal cord becomes involved and the person develops a list of complaints and disease process in ADDITION to the damaged spine.
Somebody told me this week that a room at nursing home costs $8,500 per month. And, that they said was the least expensive one they found for their mother. Some of you may remember our Cruise Ship or Nursing Home, Saturday seminars. That’s the crux of it. Nursing homes are booming because we as a culture are sick and getting sicker. Largely due to the ideas like the one above, being sidelined in favor of expensive disease treatments and Mayo level ‘whiz bang’ experimental drug trial medications.
If you want to be wealthy, probably ask people who are wealthy what they did to become wealthy. Not the guy who prepares the taxes. If you want to be healthy, probably ask the people who are healthy what they do to be healthy. Not the guys who treat diseases of people who are not healthy.
Treating disease is a fabulous skill and I’m glad those people are there. But on the whole, you’d rather not require that skill. In order to avoid that, you will need to adopt a lifestyle that looks different than the people who need that kind of help. Your friends and family who are sick and doctoring, going to the Mayo and this or that specialist, did not see a chiropractor regularly.
It's never too late. You can always do better. The body is amazing. It wants to thrive. It requires only a bit of help.
Dr. Barrett
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