“TMJ” or temporomandibular joint, refers to the connecting hinge between the lower jaw (mandible) and skull (temporal bone). TMJ disorders can be quite painful, making it difficult to eat, swallow, and yawn. Problems here can also contribute to headaches and neck pain.

The image above depicts the location of this joint. Notice how close the first cervical bone (C1), or atlas, is to the TMJ. Because of this proximity, misalignment of C1 can actually be responsible for TMJ pain.

The delicate relationship between the head and neck changes when atlas loses its normal position. A structural imbalance here restricts joint motion and will apply abnormal amounts of pressure to muscles and ligaments. In some cases, this can impair normal TMJ function.

If your jaw “clicks,” this is an indicator that structural misalignment could be present. (Here’s a list of other warning signs that suggest you might be in need of Upper Cervical Care.)

Patients with TMJ problems have a variety of dental options for treatment. While all can be effective, they’re not exactly cheap! Over the years, I’ve cared for patients who attempted these alternatives with/without success prior to finding their way to my St. Louis chiropractic office. Others were simply exploring their options, and looking for affordable solutions.

In early October, a patient came to see me who’d been given a $4,000 estimate for specialized TMJ treatment. While I’m sure that method has had great success with cases of TMJ, the patient couldn’t help but wonder, what if it didn’t work? That’s a steep price to pay for something without much certainty.

I told her that with most cases of TMJ, we’ll be able to know if Upper Cervical Care is a viable solution within 1-3 visits. It just so happened that hers was a case that benefited from our care. After one adjustment she informed me that her TMJ pain had subsided by 50%. Another TMJ sufferer (who came in last month for an unrelated issue) mentioned to me that after receiving his first adjustment, the TMJ pain he’d suffered with over the years had decreased by 70%!

Admittedly, Upper Cervical Care won’t be the solution for every case of TMJ disorder. There have been patients with more complicated TMJ dysfunction who didn’t respond quite as well. But what I like about this approach is that it’s safe, non-invasive, and affordable. TMJ happens to be a condition that will respond very quickly if chiropractic care is the right choice… It won’t be weeks or months of painful waiting to find out.

If you’ve been struggling with TMJ, and you’re fortunate enough to have an Upper Cervical chiropractor close by, I recommend giving them a call. If you’d like some assistance locating a specialist in your area, I invite you to email me, and I’ll point you in the right direction.

One of the common trends I’ve witnessed in women suffering from neck and shoulder pain is that their purses are too heavy!

When I tactfully ask if they feel their purse might be a bit over-stuffed, I generally hear one of two responses…

1. “Yes, but I need everything that’s in there!”
2. “I know, I know… I really should clean it out.”

To my packed-purse readers, I’ll ask which of these responses are you most likely to give?

Do you really need what you’re carrying? Apart from mace or a small safety light, if you don’t use every item at least once per week, it doesn’t belong in your purse! Put the ancillary items in the glove box or stow them in your trunk.

Consider the homeless people you’ve undoubtedly seen pushing all of their worldly possessions around on shopping carts… You’re not one of them. You don’t have to carry a suitcase on your arm every single day. Simplify!

If you’re the “I know I should” type, nothing’s stopping you. Make it a point to cleanse the contents of your purse – schedule it on your calendar if you must, but lighten that load!

To be fair, I give the same type of advice to men who attach a dozen forgotten keys to their keychain, and sit on 3-inch thick wallets, packed with credit cards, membership IDs, receipts, coupons, expired insurance cards, library cards, and wads of cash.

All a man typically needs in his wallet at any given point is his driver’s license, a credit/debit/ATM card, proof of car insurance (which can also be stored in your glove box), and his health insurance card for emergencies.

Lugging around an 8-lb purse or sitting off-kilter absolutely forces the spine/pelvis out of alignment by putting undue stress on muscles, joints, and ligaments. Add to this other cockamamie things people do on a daily basis (like sleeping on your stomach) and you’ve got a recipe for chronic aches and pains.

I found this vintage Schoolhouse Rock video that teaches kids about how the nervous system works. It’s at least 30 years old, but a valid way to describe brain/body communication nonetheless. Take a look!

On August 10th, 2009, the Webster Groves branch of Commerce Bank in St. Louis, MO was robbed by this man. No disguise, no evasive camera maneuvers. The paltry amount of money he walked out with couldn’t have lasted long… He was captured three weeks later in Tennessee. Now he’ll likely spend the next 25-years in prison.

So here’s my question for you… Did this happen because there’s a shortage of jails in Missouri?

You’re probably thinking, “Of course not, duh!”

Dr. Shawn Dill (Dublin, CA) recently discussed a similar topic during his radio show, and it sparked today’s blog post. Suppose your community began experiencing an increased crime rate… Would building a bigger jail solve the problem?

It’s a reasonable assertion that crime is not due to a lack of jails. When a person thinks it’s okay to commit a crime, that it doesn’t matter if they break laws or harm others, or that “everybody goes to jail” — it shows a fundamental problem with education. Ultimately they didn’t learn the difference between right and wrong, or they simply don’t care about the consequences of their actions, as long as short-term needs are met.

It’s a terrific parallel to a growing problem – Americans are grossly over-medicated.

In The Avalanche of Declining Health, Dr. Brandon Harshe (Commerce, TX) highlights an all too common scenario that patients can experience after they begin losing their health. Side effects from one medication can lead to taking another… then another… and so on, until 50% or more of the medications a person takes are prescribed for no other reason than to combat side effects of their other pills.

Americans are often unaware of (or simply don’t care about) the consequences of long-term prescription drug use. Let me be clear, however – Medications aren’t the problem. Slavish dependency on medication, the belief that “All I need is another pill,” and the mindset that drugs “cure” you – that’s the problem.

Whether it’s an increase in the number of crimes in your community, or an increase in the number of symptoms in your body, the same conclusion can be made: The effect won’t cease until the cause is removed.

Obviously, there will always be crime and there will always be people who are sick and in pain. But I do believe that with improved education and public awareness, both problems can be reduced.

Realizing that you were born with the capacity to be completely healthy is a good start. Convicts weren’t born in prison… and you weren’t born with acid reflux, headaches, sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, arthritis, or Fibromyalgia.

The next step is learning about the things that cause your body to malfunction (physically, chemically, and emotionally).

The final step is removing/eliminating this cause… It’s unfortunate that some prisoners recognize the error of their ways after they’re behind bars. Don’t wait till New Years Day to begin making health-enhancing, life-improving changes. Start today.

]]> http://drtanase.com/2009/10/29/should-we-build-a-bigger-jail/feed/ 2 AT Convicts weren't born in prison... http://drtanase.com/2009/10/28/thyroid-disorders-written-by-guest-author-dr-shawn-dill/ http://drtanase.com/2009/10/28/thyroid-disorders-written-by-guest-author-dr-shawn-dill/#comments Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:38:24 +0000 AT http://drtanase.com/?p=4646 ]]>

There are established benefits to upper cervical specific procedures in impacting illnesses and conditions resistant to other forms of care. Qualified doctors have identified thyroid disorders as one that has experienced a positive response from upper cervical chiropractic care.

The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland located at the front of the neck, next to the windpipe. It regulates the secretion of important hormones (TSH, T3, and T4) as the main source of energy for our body’s cells. Our entire metabolism relies on the thyroid as a regulator for homeostasis, and abnormalities in the gland’s functioning can contribute to conditions and diseases such as autoimmune thyroid, Hashimoto’s, and Graves’ diseases, as well as thyroiditis, thyroid cancer, and thyroid nodules or goiters.

In the past, we’ve discussed the delicate arrangement of vertebrae, cartilage, and tissues like the brainstem that exist within the connections between skull, neck, and spinal cord in humans. In some cases, head and neck injuries are a contributing factor in thyroid problems caused by subluxations in the upper cervical spine. The fragile arrangement of nerves and tissues, including the brainstem, within the atlas and axis vertebra are most often impacted.

Minor adjustments to correct these subluxations have been known to have amazing results, and those with thyroid disorders are ones that would logically benefit from such non-invasive treatment, as opposed to surgery or long-term medications. In terms of treating debilitating symptoms that include fatigue, hair loss, dry skin, weight gain, depression, anxiety, and increased heart rate, it would seem a beneficial option worth investigating.

References:

Shomon, M. Thyroid disease symptoms – hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. June 13, 2008. About.com. Retrieved October 5, 2009 from http://www.erinelster.com/ConditionsDetail.aspx?ConditionID=21

Seibel, J.A., MD. Understanding thyroid problems – the basics. November 23, 2008. WebMD. Retrieved October 5, 2009 from http://www.erinelster.com/ConditionsDetail.aspx?ConditionID=21

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About the author: Dr. Shawn Dill is an Upper Cervical doctor practicing in Dublin, CA. He can be reached through his website, www.TheSpecific.com. (This month the Specific Chiropractic Center is conducting an in-depth seminar to discuss thyroid disorders – their symptoms, their complications, and the consequences of the many treatment options. Join us for an opportunity to better understand how the thyroid impacts our overall health, and whether the consideration of upper cervical chiropractic care would benefit your search for a long-term solution for thyroid disorder.)

Last week I got a phone call from a middle-aged female patient who originally came to my St Louis chiropractic office earlier in the year. When I first met her, she was seeking relief for arm pain that radiated from her neck into her hand. Since bowling is one of her favorite hobbies, you can imagine how this discomfort was getting the best of her… so she desperately wanted it to stop.

After receiving her first Upper Cervical adjustment, she noticed significant improvement. In less than a month, her chief complaint was under control. She progressed to a point where she could go bowling without pain, and was holding her correction for 3-4 months at a time.

It’d been about 10-weeks since her last visit, so I was a bit surprised when she called asking to be seen right away. I could tell by the sound of her voice that something was wrong. In addition to the radiating arm pain, she developed a headache that hadn’t gone away for almost a week. She also noticed that her hands and fingers were becoming swollen. If that wasn’t frightening enough, during a trip to her medical doctor that same morning, her otherwise normal blood pressure had shot up to 144/96. (According to the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute, “normal” blood pressure should be 120/80 or less).

When she arrived at my office, we checked her BP again (148/97), and graphed her using a computerized infrared thermography (CIT) scanner (here were the results). I noticed that her neck muscles were extremely tight on both sides of the spine, with marked tenderness in the upper cervical region.

Following the adjustment (here’s the post-check CIT scan), her BP dropped to 130/88… Still a bit elevated, but a welcomed improvement. The following evening, she gave me an update via email: “Dr. Tanase, I had much relief today. It started last night actually… My whole body felt much better all around. Thank you!”

So how did all of this happen? I asked her what may have triggered this experience… At first, nothing came to mind; but then she realized it started almost immediately after returning home from a 6-hour car ride.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with road trips… But over the years, I’ve learned that people who normally hold their spinal corrections for lengthy periods of time can often need an unexpected adjustment after they travel. While admittedly speculative, it’s possible that the cramped driving position she was in during the long drive home could have stressed her head/neck/spine in such a way that the sub-occipital muscles became very unhappy and snowballed into a more unpleasant problem.

Regardless of the exact mechanism of injury, this patient’s misalignment contributed to the miserable sensations she was having. This experience is a prime example of the havoc that one tiny bone at the top of the neck can cause for a person when it locks out of normal position.

It’s also a good example of how the body can overcome health problems naturally when given the opportunity. Remember, the effect ceases when the cause is removed.

Not long ago, a patient asked me, “How do you treat tennis elbow without treating tennis elbow?”

At first, I wasn’t sure if she was telling me a joke, or if she actually wanted to know… but before I could answer, she added, “Because since I’ve been coming here, I no longer have tennis elbow… and you’ve never even touched my elbow.”

To answer this question we must first identify the problem…

Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis, occurs when there’s inflammation at the outside of the upper arm near the elbow that causes pain or soreness. It can result from repeated motions of the wrist or forearm (think of the motions involved with using a screwdriver). While commonly experienced by tennis players, anyone can develop it.

A similar condition known as Golfer’s Elbow can also occur on the inside of the elbow (medial epicondylitis). Golfer’s can experience tennis elbow, and tennis players can experience golfer’s elbow… Trippy.

Inflammation of the area is responsible for these distinct pain patterns. But where does inflammation come from? Inflammation is an immunological response to injury… and guess what controls this immune response? The nervous system.

As soon as I made that connection, it “clicked” for the patient and she understood. That’s because she knew firsthand that it was my job as an Upper Cervical Chiropractor to evaluate and improve the function of her nervous system. Sometimes people forget that nerves travel everywhere in your body, even to the elbow!

Interestingly enough, another patient came in that very same day and said, “I might need an adjustment today because my tennis elbow is acting up, and I know that whenever that starts bothering me, I should probably come here and get checked.”

Still many people are oblivious to the relationship between their health and nervous system. It’s tempting to think about our aches and pains in a compartmentalized manner. So it seems appropriate to visit a physical therapist, an orthopedist, or even a massage therapist before considering a trip to the chiropractor.

Whether you have chronic tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, or some other type of elbow, don’t let the name of a condition fool you. While many cases of elbow pain can benefit from localized pain-relieving therapies, other cases can also achieve lasting relief as a result of improved nervous system function. It’s less about treatment, and more about balance.

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There are five different patient-positions that chiropractors can choose from when adjusting a person’s neck. The photos above depict each of these positions.

1. Supine: This is the term used to describe when a patient is lying face upward. This is the most commonly used position amongst chiropractors for neck manipulation. It’s the “twist & pop” style taught in every chiropractic school in the world, and is commonly used in conjunction with the “Diversified” adjusting technique.

2. Seated: This position is most often associated with the Gonstead technique, and is performed while the patient sits on a chair or bench. There’s less of a “twisting” effect, but an audible “pop” is generally heard/felt.

3. Knee-Posture: Also known as “Knee Chest,” this position is used by a small segment of Upper Cervical chiropractors. Patients kneel on the floor and lean forward, placing their head on a padded bench. While the photo above doesn’t show this, the patient’s head is turned to one side during the adjustment. Three techniques currently advocate this position: Kale, KCUCS, and IUCCA.

4. Side-Posture (Lateral): This position is also used almost exclusively by Upper Cervical chiropractors. The patient rests in a neutral position on their side. It doesn’t involve any twisting or popping, and many consider it to be the most gentle of the five. Several techniques utilize this position including Blair, Palmer Upper Cervical Specific, Atlas Orthogonal, Grostic, and NUCCA.

5. Prone: This position is most often used during thoracic (mid-back) manipulation. However, some Diversified doctors elect to use it when addressing lower cervical vertebrae. Techniques that use this position include Activator Methods and Pro-Adjuster.

Believe it or not, I’ve met patients who were under the impression that there’s only one way to adjust the spine. In reality, there have been hundreds of methods tested over the past 114-years. I cannot say that one method or technique is “better” than another, but speaking from personal experience, I know that certain techniques and adjusting positions have different effects on me. I’ve been adjusted with every method described above, but I prefer to receive side-posture adjustments.

In my St. Louis chiropractic office, I choose to provide side-posture adjustments exclusively… I am of the opinion that this position is most effective when correcting atlas misalignment.

If you’ve been to a chiropractor before but weren’t ecstatic about the results, don’t give up! Where one method fails, another can succeed! So find a different doctor who uses another technique. Remember, “it’s not the ‘TIC, it’s the ‘TOR.“

I read an article today entitled, Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Healthcare. It revealed an interesting statistic… Four billion dollars per year is spent in the US on drug ads.

If four billion doesn’t sound like that big of a number, let me help put this amount into perspective for you. If your annual salary was $40,000 per year, it would take you 100,000 years to earn enough money to buy that kind of advertising. The combined advertising dollars spent by Google, Coca-Cola and Starbucks, is still a billion dollars less than these pharmaceutical companies.

The Nielsen Co. estimates that on a daily basis, an average of 80 drug ads are displayed each hour on American television. That’s over 700,000 TV commercials per year convincing you to “ask your doctor” for drugs!

The question I have is… Why is this necessary? Americans spend more on health care than 190 other countries. With the highest number of doctors and hospitals in the world, shouldn’t we have this whole “Medicine” thing in the bag by now?

You’d think so… but a report from the World Health Organization says otherwise. WHO pinned the 37th Place ribbon on America for overall health, above Slovenia and Cuba. Shameful, in my opinion.

So where did things go wrong? I think the part of the problem stems from allowing pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers. Prior to the 1980’s, this wasn’t allowed by the FDA, mainly because no one really thought patients could understand the complicated lingo of pharmaceutical science.

But a slick-talking ad-man came up with an industry-changing idea. Why not go against the grain and market directly to the patients? They hoped to earn $34 million dollars from this crazy new approach. $800 million dollars later, they knew they were on to something.

Writing today’s blog post reminded me of a conversation I had with a highly respected pediatrician here in St Louis about 12 years ago. He acknowledged the drug-ad problem and felt Americans were severely over-medicated. He said, “I’ve been practicing over 30 years. During the first half of my career, patients never demanded medication. But now, that’s all they want… and if I don’t give it to them, they’ll just hop around from doctor to doctor until they get it. They’re going to get it from somebody, so I have no other choice but to meet the demand.”

According to ProCon.org, only two countries in the world legally allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise “direct-to-consumer” – USA & New Zealand (NZ ranks 41st on the list).

I’ve always felt that the most effective drugs don’t have to be advertised. Think about it… When was the last time you saw a TV commercial for any brand of antibiotics? And have you ever seen a TV commercial for novocaine or morphine?

Instead, the ads you see are targeting people suffering from conditions like depression, anxiety, and obesity… and none of the drugs actually “cure” the problem.

But they do create life-long customers, and that’s what you can buy with four billion dollars.

Migraine headaches have continued to stump medical researchers for decades. Treatments that work well for some patients don’t work at all for others. Chemical triggers for some people, like chocolate or red wine, aren’t necessarily the same triggers for all migraine sufferers.

While science is yet to fully understand the exact cause of migraine headaches, current findings demonstrate vascular and neurological mechanisms. Evidence suggests that during a migraine, dilated blood vessels are sending nerve signals to the brainstem and sensory cortex causing central sensitization. This forces patients to feel pain from sensations that are normally not painful (like pulsating blood vessels), as well as pain that’s resistant to peripherally-focused medical treatments.

The image above shows the base of the skull where the brainstem passes through the foramen magnum. The root/vine-like tubes seen here are blood vessels. This picture demonstrates important blood vessels of the head and their proximity to the upper cervical region. It also depicts the intimate relationship between the the first cervical bone (atlas, C1) and the brainstem.

For almost a decade I’ve been speaking with headache/migraine sufferers about chiropractic care, and more specifically, the Upper Cervical adjusting procedure. Through these conversations, I’ve realized that a lot of people have attempted some form of full-spine chiropractic manipulation (with mixed results), but very few knew about Upper Cervical Care, and were never told there was a difference.

Upper Cervical doctors have a distinct biomechanical and physiological perspective that other health care providers do not offer their patients. Our unique analysis of the relationship between the head and neck is what enables so many migraine sufferers to get lasting relief.

So if you suffer from chronic migraine headaches, Upper Cervical Care is certainly worth consideration.

If you’d like help finding a specialist in your area, email me and I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.