The Importance of Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care

The importance of upper cervical chiropractic care is something that not many know or understand until they have received the care themselves. It is something that is unlike anything else in healthcare today. In order to understand why it’s so different we should probably delve into what chiropractic is as a whole first!

How was Chiropractic started?

Chiropractic is a form of healthcare that was discovered in 1895. It started when a man regained his hearing after his neck was adjusted. In turn the person who adjusted him thought he found the cure to deafness….that was obviously not the case!

Over the following years chiropractic evolved into something that went from deafness to adjusting certain joints of the spine. There was a time during this evolution where they would adjust every single bone in the spine…that’s a lot of adjustments! From here they realized that wasn’t necessary so they started looking for stuck joints.

The stuck joints model is how most chiropractors practice today. There isn’t really an issue with this way of practicing, it is just rather generalized. It is also something that a lot of physical therapists and osteopaths are learning now as well. With practicing this way people are able to get a lot of people well which is great, but what usually happens is the effects of the adjustment won’t be super long lasting.

People find themselves going back over and over again to get adjustment after adjustment to get rid of their aches and pains. When this was developed they realized the same thing was happening. For business this is a good thing but they weren’t concerned about that. They wanted to find something that would last for people. Something that they could do to stabilize someone, and make it so they don’t have to keep coming back week after week, needing an adjustment. 

At this time it was around the 1930s and there was more and more technology coming out. The x-ray was developed in 1895 so they already had that which helped them come up with the idea of getting stuck joints in the spine unstuck. At the same time the developer was searching for something more.

The Shift to Upper Cervical

The search was for something that was more effective and longer lasting. They shifted their focus to adjusting the spine less and less and waiting longer and longer between visits. There started to be an emphasis on the upper cervical area. This is the area located at the very top of the neck consisting of the top two bones of the neck.

The significance of this area is that it is the most neurologically dense area of the body with around 80% of the body’s mechanoreceptors being located in this area. These are receptors that relay information such as touch, pressure, stretching, sound, and vibration to the brain. Because this area is so neurologically dense it was important for them to take that into consideration and realize that more specificity was required when checking that area and when adjusting the area. 

There was a notice of decreased adjusting once the switch to upper cervical took place as well. Instead of getting adjusted over and over people would only need one adjustment that lasted much longer than the prior method. People were also resting after their adjustment for up to 4 hours which was seen to produce a longer holding adjustment and a longer decrease in symptoms people were experiencing. Most of the people coming into the research clinic at this time were dealing with things like seizures, cancer, and other really extreme conditions. 

What we do at The Specific

What we do at The Specific Chiropractic Centers – Naples is strictly upper cervical chiropractic. The reason we say this is because there are a lot of offices that say they are upper cervical but in the end they do a bunch of other things. The problem with this is that you are diluting and almost erasing the upper cervical adjustment. The reason we work with that area as mentioned above is because of how neurologically dense it is. Once we adjust that area we want to leave the body alone and allow it to process the changes that are going on.

At the initial visit we take a very specific set of x-rays. We actually put the head and neck into motion which allows us to see if everything is moving correctly or if there is a biomechanical issue going on with the top bones in the neck. If we find that these bones aren’t moving correctly we then know how the correction, or adjustment needs to be made.

The table we use helps us get the person in the proper position to make this specific adjustment. The person kneels on a pad and bends over the table turning their head to the right or left, this depends on what side the adjustment needs to take place on. From here the adjustment is done by hand and there is NOT any twisting of the head or neck. A lot of people are thankful for this as that can be scary and the way we adjust at The Specific is more effective and oftentimes after people’s first adjustments they don’t even think we really did anything as there wasn’t a bunch of  twisting or popping, or anything like that.

Something that really sets upper cervical care at The Specific Chiropractic Centers apart from a lot of other chiropractic offices, is our analysis. We used computerized infrared thermography to analyze the nervous systems. We realize that a lot of other offices use this technology but usually only during a new patient exam and that’s it! We use this technology at every single visit. It gives us a snapshot into the nervous system and lets us know if it is working correctly or incorrectly. 

If we see that the nervous system is working incorrectly we provide a very specific adjustment as described above. After this we then rest the person for 20 minutes in our resting room which is equipped with zero gravity chairs, neck pillows, and really cozy blankets, this allows the body to process the adjustment and make it so we don’t have to adjust over and over again. After this we do one more scan to make sure that we’re doing our jobs and the body is doing its job. During our initial scan on a visit if we see that the nervous system is working correctly we don’t give an adjustment at all. If we were to adjust on a visit like this we would actually be causing more harm than good. 

Between the way in which we take x-rays and analyze the spine, test the nervous system at every visit, our specific adjustments, and the fact that we may not adjust at every visit we truly are different from a lot of traditional chiropractic offices out there. We work with a wide variety of people ranging from chronic pain, headaches and migraines, add/adhd, anxiety, neurodevelopmental issues, vertigo, car accident victims, and many more things. If you want more information regarding what we do feel free to reach out to us!

Learn more.

Here are a few more posts on how chiropractic care can help those who suffer from headaches and/or migraines.