Amelia
was born in typical fashion. Her mother labored for over 24 hours,
pushed until Amelia’s head became visible, and then was assisted by the
doctor, who pulled Amelia the remainder of the way into the world by her
head. Amelia’s father was amazed as he watched the birthing process
because when the doctor pulled, he noticed that his newborn daughter’s
neck was stretched and twisted like a rubber band. Basic tests all
being normal, she was given a clean bill of health and went home soon
after. Her dad could not help but wonder, though, “Were the standard
post-birth exams thorough enough?”
He
was right to wonder. According to Abraham Towbin, M.D. (Harvard
Medical School), “Life for the newborn depends upon the preservation and
healthy functioning of the brainstem and spinal cord at the level of
the upper neck,” an area adversely affected by the sort of pulling that
Amelia and nearly all other infants experience during the birthing
process, either by the doctor’s hands (normal or C-section), forceps, or
suction. German medical physician and researcher, Gottfried Gutmann,
found that up to 80% of newborns suffered subtle upper cervical spinal
(neck) injuries during delivery and that, despite the prevalence,
typical exams almost never identify them.
Amelia’s
conventional pediatrician assured her dad that his concerns were
unfounded, even when he brought up a condition that he had read about in
medical texts that some call “traumatic birth syndrome,” which is
caused by the aforementioned upper neck injury and its impact on the hub
of the nerve system (the brainstem) positioned where the head and neck
meet. Traumatic Birth Syndrome has been connected with a variety of
both common infant symptoms such as ear infections, colic, and sleeping
trouble, as well as generally thought to be more serious diagnoses.
Her
dad thought little of it thereafter, only occasionally recalling what
he had read when Amelia was learning to walk and would repeatedly hit
her head so hard on the floor and furniture, and then later when she
started testing her limits as a toddler and could rarely escape a month
without a tear-inducing head trauma. After all, she was not bleeding,
she clearly had no broken bones, and she was conscious; Amelia’s mom
insisted on a hospital visit after a few head to floor hits that could
be heard everywhere in the house when they happened, but routine medical
checks cleared her of anything obviously wrong.
It
was her mom that began to become more curious about the relationship
between these head traumas and her daughter’s health when Amelia started
having headaches during her early school years. Her nephew had
suffered numerous concussions and, as a result, she learned that many
concussions, particularly mild ones, happen earlier on in life and go
undiagnosed.
By
a 500:1 ratio compared to the rest of our lives combined, physical
traumas in general occur most often from birth to roughly age 10.
Parents are taught only to be concerned with the pronounced and
immediate effects, but the subtler, longer-term aftermath associated for
instance with the loss of head/neck alignment – which basically wraps a
bony band around part of the brainstem, restricts blood flow to the
brain, and causes the entire physical frame to adapt in compensation –
is just as significant, albeit often delayed a few years to even decades
(it should never be forgotten how resilient the body is by nature and
how long it can maintain for you a largely even keel). It does not
require a concussion-inducing head trauma to cause an upper cervical
spinal misalignment; 95 Gs of force is an impact consistent with
concussions, but it takes just 4 Gs of force to lose head/neck
alignment.
Equilibrium
depending as it does on the eyes being level, a function of the head
being perfectly balanced on top of the neck, the muscles throughout the
body constantly compensate (returning the head to being relatively
level) following a trauma that causes head/neck misalignment – what
those in the Upper Cervical Chiropractic field frequently refer to as a
brainstem “subluxation.”
Amelia
was in middle school when she started suffering from Migraines.
Traditionalists in healthcare quickly talked her mom out of exploring
anything “outside the box” in the standard headache years and had
insisted that the best route for Amelia was drug treatments, later
upgrading the strength of the pharmaceuticals to counteract the
worsening Migraine symptoms. She would go onto be diagnosed with
Fibromyalgia and live in chronic pain through her twenties before her
world was rocked with talk of her having Multiple Sclerosis at age 35.
When she was in college, Amelia’s car had been t-boned and totaled, her
arm broken, and fortunately her head CT scan was negative, but again no
one looked for the subtle yet incredibly influential foundational
head/neck misalignment.
Just
as three degrees separate flying to Washington, D.C. instead of New
York from Los Angeles, a shift of the upper cervical spinal anatomy of a
few degrees or millimeters fundamentally alters functional capacity
from the effect on the brainstem, the first organ created during
in-uterine development and the cell tower of the human body network,
directing the traffic on the information super highway that is your
brainstem, brain, spinal cord, and nerves (your central nervous system) –
in addition to the foundation-shifting effect it has on the body
structurally.
Physiology
(how things function) is dependent on the correct position of the
anatomy. It is basic applied science to recognize that the incorrect
position of the anatomy negatively changes the physiology – a
foundational shift in the upper neck caused by trauma years earlier and
consequently gradual declines in resiliency are linked to nearly every
pain condition, to autoimmune disorders, to premature physical
breakdown, etc. – and then to develop a system of identification and
correction like that used by Upper Cervical Chiropractors. Structural
imbalance can be identified in a few minutes via the trained eye, the
brainstem being compromised is easily identifiable through a technology
called thermography, and the details necessary to determine how to
correct these findings can be discovered via specific x-rays or 3D CT
scans.
Rewinding
back to the beginning of Amelia’s story, what if someone was on hand to
assess the status of her head and neck alignment within hours of the
birthing process, and what if she was later assessed periodically for
head and neck alignment like kids have their teeth checked by a
dentist? The first step to implementing such a logical part of basic
health assessments is awareness of trauma’s significant long-term
influence on the ability to be healthy. Amelia’s story and the millions
like hers are mostly preventable if the subtler effects of trauma are
corrected shortly after the trauma happens.
Thinking good things for you, as always,
-Dr. Chad
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