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Do you suffer from neck pain? If you do, you’re not alone. Nearly 75 percent of American adults will suffer from neck pain at some point in their lives. And, looking at our anatomy, it’s no wonder so many of us do. Though having your head perched on top of your spine gives you a great view of your environment, the set-up is rather like propping a bowling ball atop a tower of blocks. The price? Our necks are prone to injury of the muscles, ligaments, tendons, and joints. But by paying attention to our posture, doing regular stretching and strengthening exercises, and visiting our chiropractors, we can help keep our necks pain-free. Jennings Chiropractic Neurology Clinic has 26 years experience in dealing with these conditions and more.

Causes of Neck Pain

Neck pain ranges from mild (annoying and distracting) to severe (incapacitating). Poor posture during normal, everyday activities such as watching TV, using a computer, reading a book, or talking on the phone can easily trigger minor neck pain. TV watching can be particularly bad for the neck if you’re lying on a couch, with your head propped at an awkward angle for a prolonged period of time. Holding the phone between the jaw and shoulder (rather than in your hand), reading at a desk or table with your head hung over a book, or working with a computer monitor below eye level can also be particularly stressful for the neck. By resting and making efforts not to repeat the offending stresses on the neck, minor neck pain usually disappears on its own within a day or so.

Neck pain that won’t go away or keeps coming back can signal a more serious underlying problem. Subluxations or joint restrictions; injuries such as whiplash; diseases like osteoarthritis, meningitis and tumors; congenital malformation; and degeneration (such as that in arthritis) require more than rest. A trained healthcare professional such as a doctor of chiropractic (DC) can help. He or she can determine whether the cause of your neck pain is minor and easily treatable or more serious and requiring more intensive, extended treatment. Then he or she may recommend chiropractic adjustment, massage, natural anti-inflammatory supplements, and/or strengthening and stretching exercises. In some cases, the DC will refer you to a specialist.

Prevention is Key

How can you avoid the need for treatment in the first place? The first step is to take note of your everyday posture. If your job requires a lot of phone use, consider wearing a headset. Do you slouch when you watch TV? Lie on the couch? Choose to sit upright, in a posture-supporting chair. When studying or reading, avoid putting the book or magazine on a flat surface. Instead, consider using a book prop. And, if you notice your computer monitor is below eye level, elevate it by placing it on top of a shelf or tower.

If you experience neck pain that doesn’t abate within 24 hours, seek the advice of a trained healthcare specialist for the appropriate diagnosis and treatment. And remember, because chiropractors specialize in the neuromusculoskeletal system, they are some of the most well-trained healthcare professionals to consult about neck pain.

What would you consider to be a standard of health? Flexibility. Musculoskeletal, chemical and emotional flexibility. You're born loose and you die stiff. Loss of motion in between is a loss of vitality, and loss of function. Maybe just at microtraumatic/microscopic level most of the time, but it adds up to a point where either you injure yourself pushing your newly restricted limits of joint and tissue tensile strength, or you find you just can't do which he used to do and you don't know where it went.

The key to understanding the technique I use,called Neuromuscular Reeducation, is knowing about adhesions. When an area is injured, whether it's muscle, connective tissue, fascia, tendon or some combination of these elements (as most injuries are) the body handles this inflammatory response of the tissues to trauma, the only way it knows how, through hyperplasia of the affected tissue followed by a fibrous healing, the laying down of a less elastic, second grade, poorly vascularized scar tissue to protect the involved areas. Adhesions form wherever damage and inflammation have occurred. They limit both strength and range of motion. It can be thought of as a K mart grade of connective tissue. This response occurs whether you take anti-inflammatory medication or not.

Every muscle in the body is surrounded by a smooth facial sheath, (connective tissue) every muscular fascicule and fibril are surrounded by fascia that can exert pressures of over 2000 pounds per square inch. Neuromuscular Reeducation is a hands on approach to the evaluation, and structural and functional treatment of the human body and its injuries. Every time we experience a trauma, undergo an inflammatory process or even suffer from poor posture, the body adapts, restricting the fascial layers as well as the range of motion of the involved joints. 

There may be an overall range of free movement, but at a joint or segmental level, irregular biomechanics are being set up by the restrictions. They frequently act like layers of onion; as one set of adhesions is removed, we slowly begin to lose our physiological adaptive capacity. We further lose our flexibility and spontaneity of motion, which sets us up for trauma, pain or restriction of motion.

These adhesions pull us out of a three-dimensional orientation with gravity. As a muscle tendon begins to stretch and encounters an adhesion, the muscle contracts to prevent any further stretching and to protect the area involved. The result is that the muscles involved are not as strong and the range of motion is limited in the involved joint. Adhesions can affect areas that are quite small, sometimes just a few muscle fibers, and other times there can be a number of areas like that scattered throughout a muscle group. If adhesions prevent a muscle from reaching proper extension, the increased stress on the tendons can contribute to tendinitis.

An example of these scar tissue is to consider a tough piece of meat. Typically one needs to pound the meat or tenderize it, to break down the adhesions. Even then the meat is very tough to chew and mostly used in a stew. This is in comparison to a piece of veal which is nice and tender and absent any scar tissue. One of the best parts of this technique is that active people get better faster. It is really a long-term project with the exception of major tears and other injuries people. 

I was first introduced to this technique in 2005 shortly after relocating to the Bay Area of California. I called on a fellow Chiropractic Neurologist to give me a tuneup spinal adjustment. He introduced me to Neuromuscular Reeducation and I underwent several treatment sessions for my old rugby and football injuries. I had never let any injuries or restrictions prevent me from doing any activities that I wanted to do. However I could see in a short period of time that I was definitely looser. I signed up for the weekend course where participants worked hands-on each other. At the end of this weekend chronic nagging lower back discomfort that I had experienced for probably 20 years was gone. My flexibility was improved, my legs looser, I ran faster and was able to lift more weights as when I was much younger.

I am currently involved with a lot of running and continue to lift weights. I can feel when my knees start to act up that I need to do more work on my thigh muscles, a.k.a. quadriceps. I have incorporated this technique into my chiropractic neurology practice and fine that patients get better much faster. I've yet to meet a person that did not have improved range of motion and decreased pain perception in only one treatment.

What is a Chiropractic Neurologist?

Within the Chiropractic profession, there are specialists in radiology, orthopedics, neurology, and physical rehabilitation. A Chiropractic Neurologist is a licensed chiropractor who has completed an additional 3-year course of study in neurology, including coursework and residency-based clinical training, and has passed a comprehensive certification examination administered by the American Chiropractic Neurology Board. There are currently only about 400 board-certified chiropractic neurologists in the world.

A Chiropractic Neurologist is qualified to diagnose and treat a range of nervous system disorders, just as is a regular medical neurologist. An important difference between the two is that the therapies a Chiropractic Neurologist prescribes do not include drugs or surgery. Typical dysfunctions treated by a Chiropractic Neurologist include a variety of movement disorders, including the painful involuntary muscle contractions known as dystonia, stroke, hemispheric brain lesions, and radiculopathy, commonly known as a “pinched nerve.” In addition to providing therapies and treatments, a Chiropractic Neurologist can provide counseling about diagnostic dilemmas and offer advice about the appropriateness of care a patient may already be receiving.

What therapeutic perspective does a Chiropractic Neurologist offer?

There’s an old-fashioned belief that brain development takes place early in childhood and then stops by the time we reach maturity. In fact, recent research has shown that the brain never stops changing in response to input from the environment. Sensory information gathered by receptors in the muscles and joints, for example, can alter the function of brain systems, which in turn affect the function of those receptors. The Chiropractic Neurologist is a specialist in “brain-based” therapy modalities, that is, therapies informed by an understanding of the brain’s role in joint and muscle dysfunction.

Humans have many kinds of sense receptors, which we use to gather information about the world around us and within our own bodies. You’ve probably heard, for example, about the rods and cones in the eye’s retina, which we use for detecting color, shape, and movement. You may not know about mechanoreceptors, receptor cells sensitive to mechanical stimulation such as touch, pressure, and tension. We have mechanoreceptors not just in our skin (for the sense we think of as touch), but also in our muscles and joints for a less-well-known sense called proprioception. Proprioception is the largely unconscious sense that allows your brain to know at all times where your body parts are and what they’re doing, even if you’re not looking or paying attention. If you close your eyes and touch your finger to your nose, your sense of proprioception is at work.

All of the sense receptors connect to nerves that in turn connect to the spine and brain. As sensory input is routed through the nervous system, it alters the function and structure of the brain on an ongoing basis. The brain in turn uses sensory input to regulate the body that houses it, constantly sending information and instructions back to all body parts, including the receptor cells that gathered the sensory information in the first place.

All of the sense receptors, joints, muscles, and nerves, together with the spine and brain, form a single, integrated system in constant communication with itself. Even such a seemingly simple act as walking requires a complex exchange of information among all parts of the system. As you step forward, mechanoreceptors send information to your brain about the position and movement of your joints, which your brain then uses to perform precise calculations, formulating commands to send back to your legs. At exactly the right moment, some muscles contract while others relax, and your weight is shifted in just the right way to let you take another step without falling. You’re never conscious of the information your mechanoreceptors are sending to your brain or the calculations your brain is performing to send the right instructions back to your muscles. All of those instructions depend ultimately on the position and movement of your joints, which are thus integral to your nervous system.

In this integrated system, a change in one part can’t help but affect all the others. For example, the biomechanics of a joint can be altered by injury, poor posture, or repetitive stress, resulting in a condition known as Subluxation. When that happens, a cascade of harmful structural and physiological consequences may follow:

(1) Decreased mechanoreceptor stimulation in and around the joint results in inadequate information sent to relay centers in the brain, which leads to poor control of the muscles. That in turn can lead to weakness in muscle groups such as postural muscles, due not to lack of exercise but to inadequate activation of the nervous system. Given that the brain adjusts itself constantly in response to environmental input, decreased stimulation by the mechanoreceptors can actually result in degeneration of the brain’s relay centers. (2) Lack of movement of a joint results in atrophy of surrounding muscles. The deep layer of muscles around a joint can be activated only when the joint moves. If those muscles become too weak, the joint itself becomes less stable, perpetuating a vicious cycle. (3) In an attempt to compensate for deep-muscle atrophy, muscles closer to the surface tighten and are liable to spasm painfully.

The Chiropractic Neurologist specializes in assessing the health of every part of this loop connecting the joints, muscles, and nervous system, and in identifying imbalances in each part that can lead to problems with the others.

What kinds of treatment does a Chiropractic Neurologist prescribe?

Depending on the location of dysfunction, the Chiropractic Neurologist may work directly on the muscles, joints, or nervous system. Treatments may include chiropractic adjustments, neuromuscular re-education exercises, deep tissue treatments, rehabilitation exercises or stimulation of the auditory, visual, vestibular (balance), or other sensory systems.

What special skills does the chiropractic neurologist bring to the art of joint manipulation?

Many physical medicine practitioners -- including physiatrists, osteopaths, physical therapists, and massage therapists -- have become aware of the benefits of joint manipulation or mobilization. What does a Chiropractic Neurologist have to offer that the others don’t? M

Any practitioner should have a comprehensive understanding of the patient’s condition before performing joint manipulation. Of all the practitioners just mentioned, only chiropractors receive four years of formal training in both the art of joint manipulation and the science of the biomechanics of joints. In addition, only Chiropractic Neurologists have specialized advanced training in the neurological systems interacting with

ENERGYCARE TECHNOLOGIES

Everything in the universe is made up of energy which is vibrating at precise specific frequencies. There are several different energies that exist, such as dense energy, loose energy, erratic energy, and calm energy, which make up either high, medium or low frequency energies. The human body is made up of three parts: the spirit, soul and the physical body. Each part is constructed of various energetic vibrations, which makes up all aspects of health and well-being; these energetic vibrations also influence and control the bodies’ electrical and chemical systems. 

Low energetic frequencies are especially related to the various types of pain that people experience. If your physical energy within your body is blocked or sluggish, you will experience aches, stiffness and pains such as sciatica, headache, fibromyalgia and others. In short: low frequency equals low function and poor health; high frequency equals high functioning and good health. Emotions such as anger, fear, self-rejection, lust etc. have low energetic effects on the body. Emotions of Love, gratefulness, thankfulness for example have high energetic effects on the body. 

By changing your energy you directly affect the way you feel, think and act, which affects your overall well being and health. 

The EnergyCare technology ATRAXLITE corrects energetic imbalances in the body by constantly bombarding the body with good energy which eventually overpower wrong energetic frequencies produced by negative thinking and ill behaviors. By balancing the body´s energy, its electrical channels are increased and eventually cleared, strengthening the electrical meridians or centers by unblocking them. This allows for a releasing of toxins, restoring health to the cell, and thereby offering relief to the pain sufferer. 

Energy is developed, stored and moved in the body through the adrenals, the organs, chakra centres and meridian pathways. The key to pain relief and lasting health is to open the energy channels called meridians, raising the body´s vibration energy and keep moving it at all times through the body; ATRAXLITE achieves this. The person using this technology will become more relaxed, thereby increasing the Oxygen level in the body as they breath deeper. By relaxing, more blood is able to flow to the area, thereby deflating the site. A more calm and relaxed individual is able to rest and sleep more, which reduces stress and helps to recharge the free-flow of energy in the body. ATRAXLITE is a non-invasive form of healing. 

ATRAXLITE can be allocated on minerals and metals to setup a specific programming. This is possible through creating a memory on the material by a process of electro-magnetic frequency absorption. This programming increases benefits in different proportions for every person´s body balance, stamina, strength, flexibility, relieve pains as arthritis, back strains, bursitis, carpal tunnel, tendinitis, migraines faster than the body will normally do. The energy in your EnergyCare product will hold indefinitely and cannot be compromised by heat, cold, x-rays, magnets, or scanners at security checks. There is no minimum or maximum time to use the EnergyCare products, no batteries or electrical power is ever needed, and these products work just as well on animals as well as humans. It is a safe, all-natural approach to increase your energy without harmful secondary effects, and the EnergyCare technology can be used safely by persons of all ages. The energy that emanates from the EnergyCare products penetrates the skin and muscles all the way to the bone. It safely and gently speeds up the body's natural healing process. EnergyCare technology is able to provide your cells, tissues and organs with the appropriate energy that they require to function optimally. 

We carry these bands in the office and to my knowledge we are THE ONLY available source on the West Coast. EnergyCare bands come with a 30 day satisfaction. I can do 3 simple tests to demonstrate an increase in strength, flexibility and balance. Call today to Find out more.

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