“Intruder
alert! Intruder alert!,” the home security device blares in the middle
of the night, the system triggered by a breech designed to warn of a
challenge to your safety. “Go back to bed, put in your ear plugs, and
forget about the alarm,” would be a rather strange next automated
response.
We
take seriously the signs of a threat when it comes to the place that we
live, just as we heed the warnings of the smoke detector or the check
engine light in our cars; we have been taught that not to pay immediate
attention is to take an unnecessary risk. These innovations in
protecting ourselves, like many inventions of the modern age, borrow
concepts from the inner-workings of the human body, and therefore one of
the greatest curiosities in recent human history is that we have not
been taught to recognize the equivalent warnings that our bodies are in
distress; rather, we have been taught to ignore them.
The
average person has over 75 trillion total cells in his/her body. Each
cell performs roughly 200,000 tasks every split second; an infinite
number of things just happened in your body while reading the preceding
ten words. Every eight minutes, every six weeks, and every four months,
respectively, the make-up of our stomach linings, livers, and blood
supplies are replenished cellularly; our bodies are living, breathing
regeneration machines. When a child is born, a popular and very true
statement, “It is a miracle!” is frequently expressed, but it remains a
miracle from cradle to grave. We have to learn to trust that
“each patient carries his own doctor inside [and] that we are at our
best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to
go to work”¹ and we have to teach our kids to learn to trust that too
because, unequivocally, health depends on it.
How
the key organs that govern the manner in which the body works is a
fascinating topic that every child should be learning about in grade
school; it is basic applied science. The central nervous system is the
power supply, and it carries electrical energy to each part of the
body. Intriguingly, the hub of the nerve system, the brainstem – our
plug into the “source” of electrical energy and the single most vital
part of the entire human body – is physically situated in the single
most delicate structural area of the entire human body, right where the
head and the neck meet inside a bone nicknamed the “Atlas” (the first
cervical vertebra, or C1), which is actually the only bone of around 200
overall to be held in place just by muscles instead of the standard
bony locks that prevent movement well beyond normal ranges.
Another
peculiar trait about this above-mentioned, particularly unique
anatomical feature is that the opening within the Atlas where resides
the brainstem – the cell tower of the human body network, the nerve
system's Houston control, the body's switchboard operator – is the most
narrow part of the spinal column (bones), but the brainstem is actually
the thickest part of the spinal cord. Also, the upper cervical anatomy
does not fully develop until roughly the 19th year of life,
approximately ten years after experiencing, beginning with birth itself,
the vast of majority of the physical traumas – by about a 500 to 1
ratio of the first ten years compared to the next 70-80 years combined –
that could potentially alter the head and neck's normal positional
relationship (alignment).
Thus,
when symptoms like neck pain, headaches, lack of mental focus, or
dizziness (among a litany of others) arise, they are not insignificant
and they should not be ignored. They are your body's way of
communicating to you that something is beginning to prevent its ability
to thrive, and that in order for it to continue performing all of the
automatic, subconscious tasks on its endless list so that you can do
whatever you consciously desire without issue, it needs you to fix the
problem that it cannot or find the person who can help facilitate the
necessary change.
Our
bodies do not ask much of us, but on occasion they need help removing
the various forms of interference to their function. Sometimes, it is
as simple an issue as the top bone in your neck has gotten wedged
underneath the skull's base because of when you hit your head on the
cabinet (or one of the myriad other common traumas in our lives), and
after years of keeping the internal assembly line moving along with
decreasing efficiency, that misalignment is acting like a rubber-band
becoming more tightly wrapped around your brainstem and it needs to be
removed so that the most important part of your body can get back to
doing its job properly, without impediment.
Due
to the Atlas being in held in place only by muscle, it lacks the
structural design to be effectively re-aligned without precision down to
the nearest degree and millimeter. The foramen magnum (big hole) at
the base of the skull must line up with the C1 vertebra like two water
bottles matched end-to-end because even the slightest shift can create a
serious mess. Upper Cervical Chiropractic solely concerns itself with
identifying, correcting, and re-correcting when necessary this
foundational misalignment so that the brainstem can be relieved of its
compromised state and so that the nervous system can subsequently
re-engage at its optimum, guiding your body back to normal.
We all desire to be symptom free and
to be as healthy as possible, but in order to achieve those results, we
have to pay attention to our bodies. The longer we wait to discover
the source of the warning signs or pleas for help from our bodies and
instead medicinally “shush” them, then the longer it will take get
well. We have to take action and be engaged participants in our own
health, seeking direction from professionals, like Upper Cervical
Chiropractors, who are trained in the art, science, and philosophy of
eliminating that which stands in the way of your body optimizing its
health potential.
Thinking good things for you, as always,
-Dr. Chad
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