Weather Changes & Your Spine: Why The Rain Can Cause Pain

Rainy days have historically been associated with aggravating arthritis pain. Just ask any senior citizen how they feel on a rainy day and you’ll understand that a poorly aligned spine and changes in the barometric pressure don’t necessarily agree with one another.

But why does this happen? What is it about the weather that can affect how your body feels?

There have been studies on barometric pressure changes as they relate to low back pain and osteoarthritis (OA). The consensus of these studies is that barometric pressure is directly associated with increases in osteoarthritis joint pain.

Overall there is an inverse relationship between barometric pressure and pain, meaning that as the barometric pressure decreases (which is what happens right before it rains), pain begins to increase. This most likely occurs because your joints (especially spinal joints) are enclosed systems that are subject to pressure changes (just like a barometer). As the pressure “goes down” outside, the pressure “goes up” inside your joints.

The point is, you are more likely to feel exactly how healthy (or unhealthy) your spine really is on a rainy day as compared to a dry, sunny day. If you feel well on most days, but feel lousy on a rainy or overcast day, that’s a real clue that you may have developed a chronic spinal misalignment or degenerative disc disease secondary to a long-standing spinal misalignment.

Now you have a better understanding of why older folks typically move to warmer or less rainy climates when they retire, and it gives you some insight as to why some people are so tired, cranky or just plain worn out on an overcast or rainy day.

With the right type of care starting early enough in life, you can keep your spine from undergoing arthritic degeneration and can avoid all the misery, aches and pains that go along with a degenerating spine. That way, whether it’s good, bad or somewhere in between, the weather outside won’t have such a dramatic affect on how you feel on the inside.

Dr. Brian Heer

10 Ways To Get Well On Your Own

Wellness healthcare is a way of life that differs significantly from traditional drug-based care.

When you look at the science of how the body works, you understand that being healthy is not the same thing as having an absence of symptoms or diseases. Knowing this fact, the chiropractic profession embraces the concept that being proactive about your health is the only surefire way to stay optimally healthy throughout your lifetime. If you have to wait for symptoms to occur, you are already past the point of maintaining your health.

The following are the top 10 things every human being needs to do to maintain their optimum health throughout their entire lifetime (whether they feel good, feel terrible, have a serious disease or are perfectly healthy):

1) A Life-Long Commitment to Learning: The more you understand about health and wellness, the more likely you will be to maintain it. New health research comes out every single day in America, so if you aren’t constantly seeking out new information, you are most likely using outdated research to make your healthcare decisions.

That’s why we offer so many ways to become better educated about your spinal and neurological health. (If your only source of health information is your TV, a Google search, or WebMD, then you’re certainly not getting the whole truth when it comes to what works in healthcare today.) You can subscribe to my blog for free at www.drbrianheer.com to stay in the loop with the latest research on wellness. I pull most of my articles from the peer-reviewed research journals, where the most valid and evidence-based information is published by the top scientists in the world. I put it together into easy to read articles that you can use to change your life.

2) Use Our Experience: The recommendations you’ve received are based on our clinical experience treating thousands of patients with similar problems.

Chiropractic is a completely different form of healthcare that is designed to correct the underlying structural condition that is generating your painful symptoms.

It will always take longer to fix the cause than it will to reduce the symptoms, and that’s why it is so important to “start with the end in mind.” If you base you healthcare experience on treating symptoms, you run the risk of allowing the root problem to get much worse.

Just like braces on the teeth require repetitive adjustments to slowly correct the alignment of wayward teeth, chiropractic correction of a poorly aligned spine requires repetitive adjustments over a period of anywhere from 2 months up to 2 years, depending on the length of time the problem has been present. Adhering to the type of care your doctor recommends is essential for long-term correction and for halting the degeneration that accompanies spinal misalignment.

3) Exercise For The Right Reasons: Going to the gym to make your muscles look stronger or to lose weight is fine, but it has very little to do with improving your health. (Fitness isn’t the same thing as health.)

The true purpose of exercise is to create movement in the joints and muscles of the body and to stimulate cardiovascular health. That’s it!

When you lose mobility in any part of the body (spine, bowels, heart, blood vessels, etc.), you inherently lose some level of normal function. Getting proper weight-bearing exercise is essential to bone and joint health. Just walking 20 minutes every other day can be extremely helpful. Research shows that as little as two minutes of intense exercise every few hours throughout the day can have substantial health benefits.

Inactivity and a lack of routine exercise are common causes for poor posture and deconditioned muscles that can allow the alignment of the spine to shift, leading to nerve compromise and spinal degeneration. It is vital to your health that you never let more than 4 to 5 days go by without some sort of intense physical exercise.

4) Nutrition & Water Intake: Nutrition is of vital importance when it comes to how the body heals. Your brain cannot turn low quality nutrition into healthy cells, so while it’s always important to practice healthy eating habits, it’s even more important to eat better when you are healing from an injury or disease.

Processed foods (like white bread, pizza, bagels, pasta, cookies, lunch meat, burgers, hot dogs, bacon, etc.) are the prime nutritional contributors to disease and inflammation. Avoiding processed food is essential to your overall health, and it is extremely important to clean up your diet when healing from any health problem.

Equally important is your overall hydration level. Water plays a key role in the health of your joints, in the transmission of nerve impulses, in cellular waste removal and in hundreds of other body functions. Proper water intake is essential when healing from pain-based conditions, especially problems like headaches, joint pain, and muscular complaints.

You need at least ½ an ounce of water for every pound of body weight. So if you weigh 100 lbs, you’ll need to ideally get up to the level of 50 ounces of water each day. That’s probably much more than you currently drink each day, so you will need to slowly build up to that amount over several weeks or months to do it comfortably.

5) Massage Therapy: Massage isn’t just for relaxation and feeling good. In fact, those are the two least important reasons to get a massage.

The real purpose behind massage is to break up muscular adhesions that are forming around your spine and extremities as a result of your alignment. The goal of massage is to facilitate proper joint motion and reduce stress on your central nervous system, and at the same time induce relaxation of the muscles.

6) Get Adequate Rest: Sleeping less than 7 hours each night is proven to be detrimental to your brain and the ability of your nervous system to function and heal.

Our body rarely heals well during the day when we are upright, moving about and on-the-go. Healing primarily occurs while we are asleep, non-weight bearing, and relaxed. That’s one of the reasons why it is so vital to get the appropriate amount of rest each and every night.

7) Adopt Healthier Habits: Now is the time to think about quitting your bad habits.

As you are working to create better spinal and postural habits, this is the perfect time to reprogram your brain and to give up the caffeine or sweets addiction, quit smoking cigarettes, start walking or exercising more, and work on taking really good care of your body. The longer a bad habit has been around, the longer it will take to change and you have to expect resistance. Just like changing your spinal alignment should take a few months and will have ups and downs, so will changing your dietary habits, losing weight, getting fit, or getting better quality rest and relaxation. You have to start with the end result in mind, and should never focus on how you feel day-to-day when changing an old, bad habit out for a newer, healthier one.

8) Reduce Mental Effects Of Stress: Everyone is stressed out. Some are more stressed than others, but the fact remains that the type of stress our bodies and minds endure today is infinitely greater than the stresses of our parents and grandparents generations.

You must first accept that stress is affecting you each and everyday. Denying that you are under stress everyday is like denying that gravity exists.

Gravity is a form of physical stress that is constantly pulling you down toward the ground and altering your spinal alignment. Deadlines are a form of mental stress that tax your nervous system. Work expects the world of you. Your family expects even more.

Have a healthy relationship with stress by admitting it is there and then incorporating activities into your lifestyle that can help to reduce its effects.

9) Attend To Spiritual Matters: We are all spiritual beings living a human experience. You live your entire experience of life through your nervous system. Every sensation, every sound, every thought, and every movement is directed by your brain and spinal cord. If you don’t have a good handle on your place in this world, you may remain spiritually unanchored and find that your health suffers greatly because of it.

10) Remain Hopeful: Hope is the emotional state which “promotes the belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in your life.”

You must hold out hope for regaining your optimal health and the quality of life you desire. Your body has the amazing ability to heal itself.  We should always give our body the chance (and the time) it needs to heal from the inside-out before we ever drug our body, cut out an organ, or resort to anything artificial or dangerous. You cannot force health into the body from the outside-in, and yet, that’s the core message behind modern medicine.

Remain hopeful and realize that the power to heal is already working inside you. You just have to take away the things that are interfering with your inborn ability to heal, and that’s what the chiropractic adjustment is designed to do on the most basic neurological level.

The Truth About Healing:

Health isn’t really that hard to maintain, but it does require some work. Taking a “wait-and-see” attitude will rarely work out in the long run. You can be reactive when it comes to your finances or your relationships, but you have to be proactive when it comes to your health. You have to do good things for yourself when everybody around you seems to be doing the opposite. You will likely feel like an island (like you are alone and swimming against the tide) because so many people are doing the exact opposite. But that’s what it takes to live a truly healthy life.

You CAN do it, and now you have ten ways to get there on your own. Print this out. Hang it where you will see it each and every day, and use it to change your life for the better.

Dr. Heer

Epidural Injections for Back Pain May Increase Surgery Risk

A study published in the medical journal Spine compared back pain patients who resorted to epidural injections with those who avoided the shots altogether.

The stated purpose of this study was to demonstrate how patients receiving the steroid shots might be able to avoid a spinal surgery, but as it turns out the exact opposite is true.

Over the four-year period of the study, patients who opted for injections showed “significantly less improvement” and 58% eventually required spinal surgery compared to just 32% of the group that avoided the shots altogether.

When you think about the fact that injections are used by many of today’s orthopedists and MD’s for back pain, this type of information becomes increasingly disconcerting.

This was not a study comparing chiropractic patients with medically treated patients, but was instead just comparing those treated with traditional drugs with those who also got the epidural shots. Obviously, feeling better than you really are when you are under the pain-masking effects of a steroid injection doesn’t really stop the damage that is occurring, and according to this study, it actually increases the likelihood of back surgery.

One of the possibly missed points of this study was that even in the group that avoided epidural shots, a full 32% of those studied eventually needed back surgery as well. It would be interesting to compare those in this study with the patients who adopt chiropractic care as their answer, because the number of patients requiring surgery of any type would likely decrease dramatically.

For example, a study from the same journal (Spine) in December 2012 showed that your risk for surgery was directly related to which type of doctor you chose to seek care with initially. According to that study, the risk of a person having surgery after initiating care from an orthopedist was 42.7%, compared with only a 1.5% chance of surgery being needed in those whose first healthcare provider was a doctor of chiropractic.

This shouldn’t be all that confusing. I mean, what do you think would happen to people if they chose to get pain injections from their MD at the first sign of a dental cavity instead of getting their tooth fixed by a dentist?

The fact of the matter is that you have to address the structural cause of a spinal health problem in order to reverse it, but there is still a blatant misconception being promoted by the medical/surgical industry that treating the symptoms of your spinal condition (the back pain, leg pain or muscle aches) can have some sort of helpful impact on the actual underlying condition that has developed. Don’t fall for it! Get real. Get chiropractic

How Did America Get So Drug-Oriented?

How did we get to this point where virtually everyone is being sold drugs in the name of “healthcare”? Wasn’t there a time when doctors actually did more than treat symptoms and remove bad organs?

To get an idea of why drugs have become so pervasive in our society, all you need to do is look at the number of doctors whose income is directly connected to the sale of medications.

Here’s the numbers of Doctors of Medicine (MD’s) versus Doctors of Chiropractic (DC’s) in the America:

691,000 = The number of practicing MD’s In America in 2010

  52,600 = The number of practicing DC’s In America in 2010

Those numbers mean nothing until you put them into context with something you already understand. For example, the number of practicing chiropractors is 52,600, which is close to the total number of all of the following fast-food restaurants in America combined:

McDonald’s (14,000 locations)

Starbucks (11,000)

Burger King(7,233)

Wendy’s (5,877)

Taco Bell (5,604)

KFC (5,162)

Dominos Pizza (4,927)

Total = $53,803

We all know that there is a McDonald’s and Burger King in just about every city in the country. That’s similar to how many chiropractors are available to help keep people healthy and prevent them from becoming customers of the medical industry, but it is simply not enough to outnumber the medical doctors who are pushing medicine and drugs day-in and day-out.

Just think about how many MD’s are out there selling drugs as a way of life, considering that there are 13 times more MD’s than DC’s in America alone.

What do you think your chances are of avoiding drugs or surgery when one out of every 13 doctors in our country is medically oriented in nature. These aren’t doctors that are focused on wellness or prevention. They aren’t in business to get patients healthy. Their job description is to “diagnose and treat disease”.

According to a 2011 study, the average Medicare age patient is on 12 different drugs at the same time in any given year. That means that some Medicare patients are on two or three drugs, and that others are on 20 or 25 drugs at one time. If healthy people don’t need drugs, and the average Medicare age patient is on 12, what does that say about the health of these older Americans? Obviously, very few elderly people are still healthy.

Isn’t it interesting that these very same people are usually the ones who don’t visit the chiropractor regularly, don’t eat healthy, don’t exercise, and don’t see anything wrong with taking medicine everyday if their doctor “recommends it”?

When are YOU going to stop and say, “Enough, already…this isn’t the right way to go!”

Healthcare has been corrupted by medicine, drug companies, surgical equipment providers and all the facilities and hospitals that depend on them to stay in business. This is not to say that there are no good doctors out there, it’s just that the profession itself is built around profiting on the misery and illness of its customers. Many of my medical doctor friends complain that they should’ve become a chiropractor, because they think a lot more like we do, but are stuck in a rut of prescribing meds or doing surgical procedures to make a living.

Chiropractic is not a part of Western medicine and has no desire to be associated with it because chiropractic is not about treating symptoms or diseases. Chiropractic is the art, science and philosophy of detecting and correcting spinal problems that can damage the nerves and spinal cord and create disease, but it is not about treating disease.

That’s why the AMA, hospitals, pharmacies and drug companies hate chiropractic. We don’t buy into their business model, and we don’t promote or distribute their products or pills, so they don’t have anything to gain from our profession. But don’t think they aren’t trying. (In 2011, several states introduced legislation to try to get doctors of chiropractic prescription rights, which is a blatant attempt by big pharma to create 52,600 more drug prescribers to help sell their wares. Thankfully, the chiropractic profession stepped up and fought this invasion into natural healthcare and, so far, has won and kept drugs out of chiropractic.)

Underlying this whole fiasco is the fact that if you ask most of your friends who their primary doctor is, you’ll find that many of them consider their MD their “healthcare” provider, even though the practice of medicine really doesn’t have all that much to do with health. Either that, or you’ll hear “I don’t go to doctors”. America has gotten far away from having any real healthcare, and the result is the worsening of our nation that, ironically, boosts the sales of even more drugs as patients conditions worsen and deteriorate.

An MD’s training is in diagnosing disease and treating disease, but disease is a completely separate entity from health, and improving or maintaining your health requires a whole different skill set and objective than the practice of disease treatment. MD’s don’t get schooling in nutrition, exercise or healthy lifestyle choices like the doctor of chiropractic degree requires.

Seeing an MD for your health is like seeing an Oral surgeon for your dental healthcare.

Their job is to intervene once you have gone past the point of being healthy into a diseased state. That’s all that drugs or surgery have the power to do. They are not “magic little beans” that can create health in a person who doesn’t live a healthy lifestyle. They’re just pills!

It is the role of the doctor of chiropractic (or the doctor of dentistry in the example used above) to prevent disease and maintain the health you already have. Without them, you will at some point lose enough health to see damage occur that will eventually require help from the MD (or Oral Surgeon).

You see, we are all born as close to truly healthy as we will ever be. It is from there that we begin to lose health as we neglect or injure our body throughout the years. That process starts soon after we are born, and continues throughout every year of our life until we succumb to breakdown that is occurring, eventually resulting in our demise.

If you aren’t seeing chiropractic doctor more often than your MD, you are either already seriously ill or are heading that way (or you just plain don’t know what a chiropractor does). Just like if you choose not to see your dentist, you are heading toward dental surgery or the eventual extraction of your teeth.

Let me ask this…do you know anyone who avoids brushing their teeth who doesn’t eventually spend thousands of dollars getting them fixed or pulled? What makes your spine any different?

Let me know what YOU think in the comments section below.

Dr. Heer

Prevention Is Not Part Of Medicine, But That Doesn’t Stop Big Pharma From Trying

The world is truly changing. People are no longer looking at drugs as a form of “health” care and most people are starting to focus on what they put into their bodies, how much they move and exercise, and on taking better care of their “human framework”.

It’s about time!

Seriously, is there anybody who really believes that we can stay optimally healthy by just medicating ourselves when symptoms pop-up?

People are moving away from the traditional REACTIVE model of healthcare, and the result is a drop in the number of people resorting to drugs, a decline in hospital admissions, and a drop in preventable deaths in our country.

The bad news here: The drug industry can’t keep selling drugs to people who don’t need or want them, so the newest trend in drug-care is to promote medicine as being more “preventive” in nature. That way, consumers will be more likely to buy pills and other medical products because they might think they are being PROACTIVE instead of REACTIVE. (Aren’t pharmaceutical company’s geniuses at marketing?)

Just look at the big push to vaccinate people for every disease imaginable. Every street corner drugstore has a sign out to “get a flu shot, shingles shot, or pneumonia shot.” Kids are given an average of 49 vaccinations before the age of 6, which is a huge increase from the number of vaccines used just two decades ago.

Walgreens drug store now offers 1,500 “bonus reward points” for getting a flu shot in their store, and yet gives no rewards for buying vitamins, whole food supplements or nutritional products. Why would they reward you for getting a vaccine unless they have an incentive from the pharmaceutical industry to boost their drug sales?

Today’s parents seem to be more concerned about whether little Johnny has gotten all of his childhood vaccines than they are about getting their kids to exercise, eat even just one healthy meal each day, or get adjusted to preserve their neurological health (you know, the things that actually improve immunity).

The trend doesn’t stop with vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies are pushing drugs that are designed as “lifestyle drugs”. They are not created for medically necessary reasons. They are created to treat conditions that “might” happen, or to fix problems that stem from making poor lifestyle choices.

The new emphasis is on “pre-conditions.” Young women are now labeled as “pre-menopausal” and given artificial hormones. People with slightly elevated blood sugar levels are labeled as “pre-diabetic” and given synthetic drugs. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Prehypertension is a systolic pressure from 120 to 139 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or a diastolic pressure from 80 to 89 mm Hg.” For decades, a blood pressure of 120/80 has been the gold standard and the goal of blood pressure pills was to get it to 120/80, but now 120/80 is called “pre-hypertension”.

Don’t be surprised to hear more and more about “pre” conditions, because they are the only place left for drug-based doctors to go to sell their products.

So if all these “pre-conditions” have a cause that stems from poor lifestyle choices, and the precondition is not related to a deficiency of medications or pills, how can any doctor in good conscience promote drugs as a viable and responsible answer?

The answer is a “financial” one.

If all lifestyle-based health conditions come from poor nutrition, a lack of routine exercise, damage to the spine and nervous system, or poor lifestyle choices regarding the use of drugs, alcohol, cigarettes and the like, how on Earth will taking drugs improve that person’s lifestyle or help them make better choices?

One main reason why drugs have taken over what used to be “healthcare” is because people have turned their care over to doctors who specialize in disease treatment (i.e. medical doctors). A typical MD’s education is focused on learning about what drugs to give for what types of symptoms, and a typical medical practice consists of asking the patient what bothers them and then prescribing something that makes them less aware of that bothersome issue. Where along the course of today’s medicine does ANYONE evaluate your “health” (or the lack thereof?)

Why does anyone visit an MD looking for something other than drugs or surgery? Do they think that they are going to spend time dishing out advice about how to live a healthier lifestyle? In a simple analogy, you wouldn’t visit a butcher shop to ask about how to live a healthy vegetarian lifestyle, would you?

The only way today’s medical providers make a living is to treat sick or diseased individuals with drugs or surgeries, so all of their training is focused on this unique sub-specialty of healthcare. The problem is that people need to engage in healthcare way before they ever become the person with a disease or symptoms, and most of us have been raised to believe that an MD is the person who does just that. Sorry, but that’s just not in their DNA. It’s not part of their training. Maybe one day it will be, but then it will no longer be appropriate to call what they do medicine, because real care for our health wouldn’t use any drugs at all.

“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in diet, exercise, and the cause and prevention of disease.”  –Thomas Edison

If healthcare only begins for a person after they start to experience symptoms of damage, then it shouldn’t be called “healthcare” because at that point it really isn’t about health at all.

According to CDC stats, in 2011 82.2% of all adults went at least once to a medical doctor. In total, there were 1.0 billion medical office visits. That same year, there were 3.7 billion (3,764,698,318) retail prescription drugs filled at pharmacies (data from The Kaiser Family Foundation). That means that for every visit to the MD, there was an average of three drugs given out at each visit to each American.

Do we live in a world where every symptom needs a drug (or three)?

Tell me what you think in the comment section below.

Dr. Heer

MD’s Say Health Screenings Are Worthless

A recent study that appeared on Medscape addressed whether “general health checks” by medical doctors resulted in a reduction of disease or mortality.

According to that study, published on October 17^th 2012, general health checks and screenings for asymptomatic adults did not reduce either overall morbidity or mortality.

The authors stated that “the absence of a reduction in cardiovascular and cancer mortality suggest that general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial.”

From a chiropractic perspective, looking at how the body functions and the true purpose of the symptoms, one has to wonder if the problem isn’t the checks and screenings but more about how we address treating those issues once we find a problem.

In fact, one of the opposing views put forth by Dr. Stream, and MD and the chair of the board of directors at the American Academy of Family Physicians, was that maybe medical doctors are “merely measuring the wrong things.”

Perhaps it is not the health check or screening that is to blame, but the choice of treatment that is used once we find a problem that is inappropriate.

The standard use of drugs, pills or other outside-in treatments that attempt to mask the effects of a health problem could very well be what’s allowing morbidity and mortality to remain unchanged in spite of more screening procedures.

Let’s look at this hypothetically:

If there was a fire, you could blow away the smoke all day long, but the fire is still burning and damage will continue to occur until the fire is put out. You can “treat” the symptom (smoke) by blowing it away with a big fan, and the smoke will certainly appear to be going away, but the fire down below (the cause) will continue to burn and create more damage and more smoke. You would then need to bring in more and more fans to handle the increased smoke levels.

Treating the effects of a patients health problem (whether it’s masking their pain, reducing their sniffling, or altering their blood chemistry so that their “numbers” will appear normal) will have little to no bearing on stopping the cause of a health problem from getting worse.

Think if in the above analogy, instead of the word “fire” we said “disease” and instead of the word “smoke” we said “symptoms”. Getting rid of the symptoms of a health problem has absolutely no ability to get rid of the disease that caused them. If you really think about it, it makes no sense at all.

This is the fundamental downfall of medicine as it is practiced today. The paradigm of treating symptoms and expecting an improvement in actual health is crippling our country. You can’t fix disease by treating its effects, and yet, that’s what the largest field of healthcare does every day.

The “health checks” and “screenings” these doctors were using included questionnaires, physical exams, blood studies, imaging, stool testing, and assessment of cardiovascular risk factors.

You see, the “health checks” that they utilized weren’t really looking to evaluate the patient’s health at all. They were screenings for finding early disease or risk factors for disease. In other words, they weren’t looking at anything that would evaluate the patient’s overall level of health or their ability to heal. They were looking for patients who already had early signs of disease (which is past the point of prevention and past the point of being healthy) and then calling it a “health check”.  

Let me ask you this: If a woman receives a mammogram and finds early cancerous cells, is that mammogram “preventative” or a “health check”, or is it merely early intervention for a disease that is already occurring inside of her body? Sure it might help to stop that already existing disease from worsening or spreading, but it still shouldn’t be labeled a “health check”. It is a check for early disease, nothing more and nothing less. Health has been absent for a long time once enough cancerous cells have formed to be found on a mammogram. Mammograms have no protective or preventive abilities, so they should not be considered “preventive medicine”. And yet, if you look at your insurance plans short list of “preventive services”, guess what you’ll find listed in the top few?

If a child gets examined by a school nurse to look for scoliosis and finds a 30 degree curvature has developed, is that “preventative” or is it “finding an already existing problem that just isn’t symptomatic yet?” Health has been altered for a while before the spine adapted enough to become curved or deformed, even though that child may have very few signs or symptoms of poor health or lowered immune resistance.

If a man has his blood pressure or cholesterol checked, and it comes back with high levels that require drug treatment even though he feels fine, is it a “preventative” screening, or is it an “early intervention” for an already existing health condition like high blood pressure or hypercholesterolemia? Health has already been lost by the time your blood work will reflect that there is any problem. Blood work is not a screening for health, it is a screening for disease.

The authors did report that health checks performed by typical medical providers could cause more harm than good, and that “all medical interventions can lead to harm.” This has always been true about treating symptoms and using drugs as a form of healthcare. When you treat a symptom without addressing its root cause, you are essentially “faking” yourself into thinking you are healthier than you are. The danger lies in being unaware of your real level of dysfunction because your doctor has filled you up with enough drugs that you don’t feel the problem that your body is so desperately trying to make you aware of.

The authors also stated that “health checks of healthy people are a recent phenomenon” for the medical side of healthcare and that “increased expectations (exist in consumers) that many diseases can be prevented or discovered before there is irreversible damage. However, studies such as this one suggest that these expectations may not be met,” they add.

The only true health checks a person can receive are the ones that evaluate them when they are already healthy, not just symptom-free. In the world of chiropractic spinal healthcare, preventive care is essential, more so than in any other aspect of health.

For the authors to extrapolate that “all” health checks are worthless is to extend the research done on drug-based healthcare to all other forms of healthcare, which simply isn’t the case and isn’t being very truthful.

I know of no other way to monitor the health of the spine and nervous system than through the use of objective diagnostic testing, such as x-ray analysis. No questionnaire, blood work or stool testing can tell a person how healthy or unhealthy their spine is, but an x-ray can show where the alignment of the spine is slipping, many times years before any symptoms, pain or disease processes have begun to occur as a result of that spinal dysfunction. The problem in medical care is that the only time they utilize an x-ray is when they suspect a fracture or malignancy, not for the routine evaluation of your spinal health.

Sadly, many of today’s adults are using chiropractic healthcare just like traditional medical care. Just like the mammogram analogy, they are seeing their spine in a state of degeneration before adopting care on a routine basis. They aren’t getting routine check-ups every six months to see exactly how well or how poorly they are doing, and they aren’t adopting appropriate steps to prevent their spine from going through decay. Some of them aren’t even taking their spinal health seriously until blatant evidence of a degenerative disc or arthritis shows up, as if we can somehow undo the ravages of time and spinal neglect.

Imagine if we extrapolated medical thinking to our spinal healthcare needs. What would happen if we only checked spines after a person turned 40 years of age (like in colonoscopies)? How healthy would anyone be if the first time we got a spinal evaluation was after we were already an adult with disc decay and we were already in pain?

I’m here to tell you that this is exactly where we are in the U.S. when it comes to our spinal health. Most, if not all, chiropractic patients are presenting for treatment after a symptom occurs, and usually after everything drug-based has failed to help them. This is simply inexcusable with the knowledge we have now and the diagnostic capabilities we have to uncover spinal habits long before they create any damage.

The sooner you accept that the current medical paradigm of waiting for symptoms is outdated, unscientific, and just plain wrong, the better. Failing to see past the nonsense that “preventive checks” are unimportant could cost you a lot more than just dollars and cents down the road.

Be proactive. Your future health depends on it!

Dr. Heer

What About That Bad Disc On My X-rays?

People come to the chiropractor for varied reasons. Many times, it is for a painful back or neck-related condition. While this isn’t the right reason for a person to seek out chiropractic care, it is one of the most common reasons why people visit a chiropractor.

In almost every case we evaluate, the patients pain comes from a condition called a subluxation (a bone improperly positioned in a way that it compresses, irritates or inflames the nerves that exit the spine nearby), and it can occur with or without any obvious x-ray findings of disc decay. Other times, the patient has developed a degenerative or thin disc because of a long-standing alignment habit that has worn it down over time.

Either way, the pain the patient is experiencing is the result of the spinal misalignment remaining uncorrected for far too long.

When a chiropractor evaluates the health of your spine utilizing x-rays, he or she can always see evidence of damage or misalignment in the area of your chief complaint, but that’s not the only thing they typically find. In fact, it is very common to find other problems with your alignment in completely unrelated areas of your spine, some in places you have never felt pain before.

So how can this happen? How is it possible to have a degenerative spine without any symptoms?

Well, by now you have probably learned that your spinal alignment isn’t something you can “feel”. You have most likely found that your alignment had been bad for a long time before you ever became aware of any symptoms of the problem. The reason for this is that the spine has an amazing ability to adapt and compensate for injuries.

Unlike the bones of your arm or leg, where there are only two or three joints where movement (and compensation) can occur, the spine has 24 moveable joints. If one of the joints of your leg were to get locked up or out of alignment, you would be unable to walk, stand or move without it being noticeably different. Your spine can be locked up at more than one joint and still not allow a noticeable difference in overall mobility, because the other remaining joints will make up for it. This is why it is hard to feel if your spine is well-aligned or not, and it is one of the main reasons why so many people get really bad before seeking out any treatment. Without symptoms, the only way you can know is through an examination or x-ray that looks for alignment problems, but how many people know to get checked for problems when they feel good?

“So doctor, what if my x-rays reveal a bad disc in an area above or below the one that is symptomatic? What if I have a “symptomless” misalignment that’s going to decay with time?”

You have to understand that what is on your x-rays is “what’s REALLY going on” with your health. There are no symptoms that are reliable indicators of whether a person’s spine is healthy or not, and just because you don’t feel bad today doesn’t change the fact that an area of your spine is breaking down. Whether you feel good, bad or indifferent, the fact remains that what is on your films is what really matters. Just like some people don’t listen to their doctor when they talk about how high their blood pressure is, or how high their cholesterol is, there will always be chiropractic patients who don’t listen to their doctors recommendations until a new crisis comes up.

Some people want to wait until enough misery occurs that they just can’t avoid it anymore. Some only show up when their pain is so bad that drugs and prescriptions can’t help it. Others stay so focused on their one symptomatic area that they forget the other problems that need treatment, so much so that some of them stop treatment when the painful area improves, even though there is no proof that we have corrected the symptomless problems at all.

This is a really BAD IDEA!

MRI studies have proven that the majority of people have multiple disc bulges in their spine, and the most common age for a disc bulge is in your early thirties. Even though many of these people with a disc problem may not have any symptoms, they will eventually become symptomatic as they continue to engage in bending, lifting and moving activities associated with normal daily living. As the size of a dormant disc bulge increases, so does the likelihood of it compressing nerves and becoming something the patient can feel.

Some disc injuries occur from frivolous activities that wouldn’t normally hurt an otherwise healthy spine: picking up a pencil off the floor, lifting something out of the trunk of a car, bending down to tie your shoes, or lifting the end of a mattress in order to tuck in the sheets.

It should be pretty easy to visualize how a poorly aligned joint that feels fine could get pushed over the edge and become a severely painful disc bulge from one of the simple activities listed above, but many patients try to blame the mattress or pencil for their problem instead of realizing that the problem was there before the activity that “generated” or “aggravated” their pain.

Many disc injuries occur from the exact same alignment problem mentioned above simply wearing down over time as opposed to getting acutely injured or inflamed from some sort of quick lifting or twisting motion.

People who sit or stand in one position for long periods of time have a higher incidence of lower back and leg pain because the discs tend to flatten out with many hours of weight-bearing. Overweight individuals experience frequent disc, back and leg pain because of the same problem, as their extra weight creates even more strain on the spine.

While there are many approaches to treating a degenerative or bulging disc, including things as conservative and safe as the chiropractic adjustment all the way up to the most invasive and risky procedures like spinal fusion surgery, the fact is that your spinal problem belongs in a chiropractic office long before it should ever be treated by a drug-doctor or surgeon of any sort.

The hierarchy of spinal healthcare is always conservative, common sense care first, followed by more invasive treatment second, followed by surgical intervention last. And that’s only if the right things are done at each step of the way. No one should be seeing an orthopedic doctor simply because of a symptom. Orthopedic surgeons are the last person on the totem pole who should be referred to by doctors of chiropractic or physical therapists AFTER conservative care has been tried and has failed. This is no different from oral surgeons being referred to by dentists at the appropriate time, AFTER conservative dentistry has been tried and failed.

So, what about those bad areas on your x-rays?

Your chiropractor’s main job is to take care of your ENTIRE spine…so let them do their job, whether you have pain in that area or not. That’s how you keep a silent disc problem under the radar, and that’s how you avoid another health problem down the road.

Dr. Heer

Astronauts Five Times More Likely To Develop Disc Degeneration

As a chiropractor, I have a distinct advantage of knowing what it takes to keep a spine at its healthiest.

I also get to see a lot of people who have failed to learn what it takes, and because of it find themselves riddled with spinal degeneration, painful arthritic joints, and a whole host of disease processes that stem from spinal nerve compromise.

As doctors who specialize in prevention, we are constantly reminding patients of the destructive forces of gravity and how it can slowly decay a poorly aligned spine over the years.

But what about the BENEFITS of gravity on the spine?

In chiropractic school, I remembered hearing about astronauts and how they had a very high risk for disc degeneration. I always wondered why that would be.

I thought, “Shouldn’t weightlessness HELP the spine?”

I mean, if pressure over time was one of the main causes for degenerative arthritis in a poorly aligned area of the spine, shouldn’t taking gravity away from the spine be a big help?

Well, incredibly…the answer is NO!

NASA scientists, in preparation for advancing its human spaceflight sector, addressed the heightened risk of musculoskeletal injuries that threaten most astronauts and discussed their concerns at the Spinal Deconditioning Injury Risk Summit in August 2012. They now have Doctors of Chiropractic on their task force to address this growing concern, which left uncorrected could hamper the possibility of human spaceflight.

Research has shown that astronauts and space crews are FIVE TIMES more likely to develop a herniated spinal disc than the general population. (That’s a significant increase in risk, don’t you think!)

So what gives? Why are astronauts at a higher risk of spinal degeneration?

The answer lies in understanding the purpose of the spine in the first place. The primary role the spine plays is in protecting the spinal cord and nervous system from damage. Contrary to popular belief, the spine isn’t just there to keep us upright. If that were the case, it would be designed more like a steel pipe, where nothing could bend it or compress it.

The reason our spine is composed of multiple segments is so that our body can bend, twist, flex, rotate and lift in order to do the things we need to do to live each and every day. Our spine has to sacrifice stability for mobility in order to be able to adapt to postural loads, physical stress and gravity, while at the same time providing an environment for the nervous system to function within that allows clear nerve transmission to all the organs of the body.

Our spine was made for use on OUR planet, but not for weightlessness in space. So the problem is that we have a spine that needs to have gravity’s forces acting upon it in order for it to function properly and stay healthy. I know that seems counterintuitive, but it’s true.

This is when the use-it-or-lose-it analogy comes in. Discs get their nutrition from small movements that occur when the bones of the spine are normally aligned. If there is no gravitational force acting against the spine and discs, they begin to decay from lack of intersegmental movement and nutrition. Disc degeneration is the next step in this cycle once a joint stops moving properly.

The same thing happens on Earth, but because of the exact opposite reason. When a spine endures years of gravitational resistance, combined with poor postures and any traumatic injuries to the skeleton or extremities, it tends to become misaligned at one or more levels and those are the levels where degeneration and disc decay will begin to occur.

That’s why there always needs to be a balance between too much force and too little force on the joints of the spine.

Thankfully, very few of us will ever travel in space. But that doesn’t let us off the hook.

Our degeneration will likely occur from failing to get adjusted often enough or routinely enough throughout our lives. For most of us, it will simply be neglect or ignorance of our spine’s need for chiropractic that leads to damage and decay.  For some of us, it will happen from an inescapable injury that is beyond our control, like a car accident or sports injury.

One way or another, the spine needs help to remain healthy and well-aligned. NASA knows it, and now you do too!

Dr. Heer

Who’s The Healthiest Person?

Quick Quiz: Of The Three People Below, Who Do You Think Is The Healthiest?

 Person #1

• 12 year-old boy
• Obese For Past 6 Years
• Now Exercises Daily
• Eats Standard American Diet
• Has Occasional Back Pain
• Chiropractic Only When In Pain

 

Person #2

• 30 year-old male
• Thin Body Type
• Exercises Daily For 15 Years
• Eats Standard American Diet
• No Pain Or Symptoms
• No Chiropractic Care At All
• (figures he doesn’t need it if he feels good!)

 

 

Person #3

• 28 year-old female
• Overweight For Past 15 Years
• Exercises Daily For Past 2 Years
• Eats Mediterranean Diet (No Processed Food)
• Occassional Headaches/Body Aches
• Routine Chiropractic Care For Past 5 Years

So, Who Is The HEALTHIEST Of These Three People?

 

THEY ALL EXERCISE on a daily basis, but the 12 year-old boy and the 28 year-old female do cardio work and weight training everyday, while the 30 year-old male just lifts weights.

THEY ALL EAT about the same number of calories each day, but the 28 year-old female is the only one who avoids the Standard American Diet (ex. The Food Pyramid).

THEY ALL HAVE A SPINE, but the 28 year-old female is the only one who goes to the chiropractor to maintain the health of her spine, and the 12 year-old boy only gets adjusted when his back gets bad enough to become painful. The 30 year-old male has NEVER been to a chiropractor, because he believes that “you only go to doctors when you feel bad or have a symptom”.

Traditional medicine would view these three people and conclude that because the 30-year-old is thin, works out, eats a typical Western diet and has no symptoms is the “HEALTHY” one. Most people would see the obese and overweight people and think, “Obviously, those two must be the UNHEALTHY ones.”

However, what we can’t tell from their pictures or their lifestyle choices is “How Are They Functioning Inside?”

For that, we need something more objective, like blood work, an x-ray, or some other non-subjective assessment method.

Here are the x-rays of these three people, to show you what is truly going on “below the surface”.

12 year-old boy’s spinal x-ray

Person #1

The 12 year-old boy, while he is obese, has a very slight misalignment in his lower back that will unlikely worsen, provided he maintain his spine in its current state for the next several decades. This same spinal problem would degenerate and worsen over time without chiropractic, and would eventually damage or compromise the function of his nervous system, leading to all kinds of serious health complications or disease processes. So even though he has occasional back pain and is clinically obese, he is still not the least healthy person of the three.

 

30 year-old male spinal x-ray

Person #2

The 30 year-old male, while he is thin and does work out all the time, has developed a severe spinal alignment problem that is not symptomatic. His nervous system must compensate considerably just to keep him upright, and the lack of any noticeable symptoms will pretty much ensure that his condition gets worse before he knows there’s a problem. So even though he is “the picture of health” from the outside, and does what everyone has been programmed to believe is “good for you”, he will likely wind up being the one who dies at an early age from the ravages of spinal degeneration and the diseases that accompany a degenerating nervous system.

 

28 year-old female’s spinal x-ray

Person #3

The 28 year-old female, while she is overweight and has a history of chronic headaches, still has a relatively well-aligned spine and a healthy functioning nervous system. She learned about chiropractic for the wrong reason initially (her headaches), but then quickly adopted chiropractic as a way of life and has subsequently changed her spine for the better. She also avoids the Western dietary choices that contribute to so many of today’s most prevalent diseases. While she looks “less healthy” from the outside than the 30 year-old male mentioned above, she is truly healthier where it counts (on the inside) and overall, she is by far the healthiest of the three.

 

We’ve all been sold on the concept that you can “tell how healthy someone is by looking at them”, but that’s just another myth that doesn’t hold up to science. The leading causes of death in our country are all symptom-free problems at first, and they only reveal themselves at the end of the disease process once enough damage has occurred, so evaluating your health through symptoms just doesn’t work (and yet, that’s the practice of traditional medicine as we know it today).

Health is a factor of how well the body can respond and adapt to the stresses that act upon it. That’s it! Everything else just contributes or takes away from your good health. That’s why (when it comes to real health) the state of the spine and nervous system is the MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR of how your body heals.

Dr. Heer

Amazing X-Ray Changes Following Chiropractic Care

The following are x-ray films of a 13-year-old male patient who underwent a corrective-based 12-week treatment plan.

BEFORE CARE

AFTER CARE

 

He was adjusted 3 times a week for the first four weeks, two times a week for the next four weeks, and once a week for the last four weeks. The entire treatment plan was finished in just twelve weeks, and his long-term corrective changes were nothing short of amazing.

BEFORE CARE

AFTER CARE

  This is just an example of what is possible when a patient attempts to correct their scoliosis and spinal alignment with chiropractic rather than opting to use orthopedic bracing or surgical intervention. Not only does his spine look much straighter, but he has also seen a dramatic improvement in his posture, his spinal mobility has been restored to full range of motion, and he reports that he just “feels better than he has ever felt before”. 

BEFORE CARE

AFTER CARE

How many kids who wear a barbaric spinal brace or opt for invasive spinal surgery ever report improvements like this as a result of their treatment? In reality, spinal bracing and spinal surgery both reduce spinal mobility and proper joint biomechanics, pretty much ensuring that spinal degeneration will ensue in those areas of lost mobility. Bracing and surgery limit a person’s ability to restore their full range of motion and a large number of scoliosis patients report a worsening of their spinal pain following invasive surgery.

The point is, there are options outside of mainstream drug and surgery healthcare that can create real and lasting correction for spinal alignment, and chiropractic just happens to be one of the safest and sanest ways to accomplish that objective.

Don’t you owe it to your loved ones to share this information with them?

You just might change a life!

Dr. Heer