When you have reached the point of saying, "enough is enough," and are ready to do something about the pain, consider finding a NUCCA practitioner to help you.
The National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association serves the community by developing and teaching a specialty procedure that began within chiropractic over sixty years ago. So what does a NUCCA doctor do and what do they look for?
Step 1 - meet with your doctor and have a thorough consultation. He or she is looking for evidence that you are interested in doing something positive with your health and life. Also, you are met with detailed questions about how things feel and your history of accidents or surgeries.
Often, the doctor will immediately recognize certain groups of symptoms as characteristic of the condition known as the atlas subluxation complex. Among those are symptoms of jaw pain, headaches, neck pain, or even at the other end of the body; plantar fasciitis and tight hamstrings.
The atlas subluxation complex is a failure of the normal relationship between the skull, the atlas (first bone in the neck) and the neck below. When this is present, blood flow into the head is impaired, nerve flow out of the head is restricted, and the information from the neck joints to the brain sends wrong signals. Essentially, you have a "short" in the wiring.
Step 2 - the doctor will check your comparative leg length with you laying on your back. The short leg phenomenon is commonly thought of as "just the way people are!" However, the actual incidence of the anatomical short leg is estimated at from 1/700 people to about 1/2000 people. It is basically not a common problem. What people really have is the atlas subluxation complex that is making one leg LOOK short.
While you are on your back, and as the doctor is checking your leg length, you will be asked to turn your head to the right and then the left. If you have an actual anatomical short leg, the length will not change. If you have the atlas subluxation complex, your leg will relax and go even as you turn your head to one side. When you turn your head to the other side, the leg usually gets a lot shorter. (It has to do with the control center in the brain stem)
This simple test is an indicator that the pressure on the spinal cord is right there at the top of the neck. When you turn your head one way, the pressure is alleviated. When you turn it the other way, it is exacerbated.
Step 3 - The doctor will check the hip and shoulder tilt with a specially designed level. Most of the time, we will see that the low hip is also the side of the short leg! Go figure! If the short leg is only because of the tilting of the pelvis, then the high hip would be the same side as the short leg. So the short leg is sometimes related to spastic muscles in the low back, and sometimes related to wildly altered distribution of the nerve signals to the muscles.
Shoulder tilt can be related directly to the atlas subluxation complex, but it can also be related to the wrong prescription of glasses, malocclusion of the teeth, an old shoulder injury such as a separation of the acromio-clavicular joint, or some other distortion in the upper back. The important thing is to look and see what distortions your body is displaying.
These first three steps will show the doctor that, whether you have symptoms or not, you DO have the atlas subluxation complex. That is not good. It is compared with having undiscovered hypertension, heart disease or cancer. These are all serious problems that can kill you if you do not fix them!
Step 4 - The doctor will take accurate x-rays of your head and neck. These pictures reveal not only the pattern of the misalignment, but also give the doctor clear and accurate physical data about how to correct the problem. The pictures show whether the atlas shifted to the left or the right, whether it twisted forward or backward, and where the neck and skull moved in relation to each other. The pictures also show how much these bones moved into their different positions. All of this quantification is important because after the correction is made (step five) more x-rays are taken to measure how much reduction took place. A reduction of 90% usually means a person will have great results, although reductions of only 10% have also been shown to produce good results. The important thing is to look and see!
Step 5 - The doctor will make the correction. Most of the time this will be on a different day to give the doctor time to study the x-rays. You will not feel the correction, due to the light and controlled forces that are used. You will lay on your side on a special table that lies close to the floor. This low position allows the doctor to get his/her back on the correct angle for your unique misalignment pattern. With hands gently positioned next to your ear, at the edge of the atlas, the correction is made. Some doctors make more sounds of effort than others. You may hear grunting, huffing and puffing as the doctor tightens up the leg, back, shoulder and arm muscles, or you may hear nothing. It depends on the "finesse" of the adjusting doctor.
Once the doctor is satisfied that the adjustment is sufficient, we go through steps 2-4 again to find out if the postural distortions and leg-length discrepancy cleared. As mentioned, after the first correction, new x-rays are taken to prove that the misalignment complex moved appropriately to the right position.
About one percent of the time, a person will feel all better immediately. About four percent of the time, a person will feel very uncomfortable as the rest of the joints, tendons and ligaments in the body begin to move back to normal position and tension. Usually this clears within a week. About 45% of the population will begin feeling changes within a few days, and about 50% will need to wait for several weeks to begin feeling the changes that have taken place.
In summary, these five steps can be the only things separating you from a life without pain. If you are ready for a change, instead of looking for a chiropractor, look for Rockford's NUCCA chiropractor.
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