Who This Blog Is For: Anyone in Anchorage who has been living with migraines after a car accident or head injury and cannot figure out why they keep returning no matter what they try. If you followed your doctor’s recommendations, gave it time, and the migraines still came back, this is written for you.

How many times have you explained the accident to a new doctor, hoping this one would finally connect the dots? How many mornings have you woken up already behind — the pressure building before you’ve had your first cup of coffee — and just known that today is going to be another lost day? How many plans have you quietly made backup versions of, just in case the migraine shows up again?

If you have been living with migraines after a car accident and no one has been able to tell you why they keep returning, you are not imagining the connection. You are not being dramatic about the impact the original injury had. And you are not out of options. What most post-accident evaluations are designed to find is very different from what may actually be driving your migraines — and that gap is exactly what this blog is written to address.

Key Insights

• The impact force of even a low-speed collision is enough to shift the atlas — the topmost vertebra in the spine — in a way that standard post-accident imaging often does not detect
• Migraines after a car accident that return on a predictable cycle may be signaling an unresolved structural issue at the craniocervical junction, not simply a neurological disorder
• Whiplash and head injuries do not have to be severe to create lasting compensation patterns in the spine that repeatedly trigger migraine cycles
• The gap between the accident and the first migraine — sometimes weeks or even months — is one of the main reasons the structural connection gets missed entirely

Why Do Migraines After a Car Accident Keep Coming Back?

Quick Answer: When a vehicle collision forces the head and neck to absorb a sudden impact, it frequently causes a subtle, microscopic shift in the upper cervical spine. Because this structural misalignment doesn’t involve broken bones, it is routinely missed by standard emergency room X-rays—yet it leaves behind a quiet, underlying strain that repeatedly triggers the central nervous system.

Migraines after a car accident tend to persist for a reason that most post-accident evaluations aren’t designed to find. When the head and neck absorb impact — even in a relatively minor collision on the highway or a parking lot fender-bender near Dimond Center — the force can shift the atlas, the topmost vertebra, out of its normal position. 

That shift doesn’t always show up on standard imaging. But the body responds to it immediately, and that response can quietly set the stage for a migraine pattern that returns again and again.

What makes this so frustrating is the timing. Many people feel reasonably okay in the days or even weeks following an accident. The migraines often don’t begin until later — sometimes a month out, sometimes longer. By then, the connection to the original injury feels less obvious, and the headaches start to get treated as their own separate problem rather than as a signal from a structure that was disturbed and never fully corrected.

We hear this often at Rumsey Spinal Care. Someone comes in months or years after an accident, having genuinely tried everything they were told to try, and what they want more than anything is for someone to explain why this keeps happening. That explanation usually begins at the top of the spine.

What Does Whiplash Actually Do to the Upper Neck?

Whiplash is not just a muscle injury. The rapid back-and-forth force of a collision — even one that feels minor in the moment — places significant stress on the ligaments, joints, and vertebrae of the upper cervical spine. And the atlas, sitting at the very top of that stack just beneath the skull, is uniquely vulnerable to being displaced by that kind of force.

When the atlas shifts, even slightly, the spine compensates. The body’s priority is always to keep the head level — it will redistribute weight, alter posture, and create tension patterns throughout the neck and shoulders to accomplish that. 

This compensation can compress nerves, reduce normal blood flow dynamics near the brainstem, and create the kind of chronic mechanical stress that the nervous system eventually translates into recurring head pain.

For people in Anchorage who spend winters navigating icy roads where rear-end accidents happen with frustrating regularity, this kind of injury is more common than most people realize. And because the atlas shift is often subtle, it rarely gets identified in an emergency room evaluation focused on ruling out fractures and bleeds.

Why Standard Post-Accident Care Often Doesn’t Resolve the Migraines

This is the part we find most meaningful to share, because we know how hard it is to do everything right and still feel stuck. 

Most post-accident care is excellent at what it is designed to do — ruling out serious injury, managing acute pain, and supporting tissue healing in the weeks following a collision. What it is generally not designed to do is assess the precise structural alignment of the upper cervical spine in a way that would reveal a subtle atlas displacement.

For many people dealing with post-traumatic migraine relief — who have already gone through the standard medical workup — this is the missing piece. Not because anything was done wrong, but because the structural question simply wasn’t part of the evaluation.

How a Structural Imbalance at the Top of the Spine Keeps Triggering Migraines

The atlas sits at the craniocervical junction — the point where the skull meets the spine — and this region is one of the most neurologically significant areas in the entire body: 

• The brainstem passes through here. 
• Cerebrospinal fluid circulates here.
• The nerves that regulate pain processing, blood vessel tone, and sensory input to the head all travel through or near this junction.

When the atlas shifts out of alignment and the spine compensates to keep the head level, it creates an ongoing pattern of mechanical stress at this critical location. That stress doesn’t have to be dramatic to be disruptive. 

Over time, the altered nerve pathways and circulatory dynamics in this area can lower the threshold at which a migraine is triggered — meaning that things which never used to bother someone suddenly become reliable triggers.

This is why a head injury headache that won’t go away often doesn’t respond well to trigger management alone. The triggers aren’t the root problem. The structural condition that made the nervous system hypersensitive to those triggers is. 

Addressing the atlas misalignment and allowing the compensation pattern to gradually unwind is what changes the underlying threshold — not just the response to it.

What a NUCCA Evaluation Looks for That Other Exams May Miss

At Rumsey Spinal Care, Dr. Anthony Rumsey uses the NUCCA protocol — a precise, measurement-guided approach within upper cervical care that uses specific imaging to assess the exact position of the atlas relative to the skull and the vertebrae below it. 

NUCCA uses a detailed structural analysis designed specifically to identify the kind of subtle atlas displacement that a standard X-ray or MRI in an emergency setting is not calibrated to detect.

The NUCCA evaluation begins with a thorough history — including the details of any prior accidents or head injuries, even ones that happened years ago. 

For people who experienced a collision in Anchorage, whether on a commute through Midtown or on a backcountry road near Girdwood, that history matters. The imaging that follows gives Dr. Rumsey precise measurements that guide a gentle, specific correction.

For anyone living with migraines after a car accident who hasn’t had this kind of structural evaluation, it represents a category of care that most people in their situation have never been offered. That is exactly why we want them to know it exists.

You Deserve Lasting Migraine Relief in Anchorage AK: Schedule Your Consultation Today

Alaska summers are short and extraordinary. The light lasts almost around the clock, the trails in Chugach State Park open up, the Kenai River calls, and the weekends fill with the kind of outdoor living that most people in the country only dream about. 

We know what it costs to spend those days managing a migraine instead of being present for them. We know what it means to cancel a hike with family, to miss a float trip, to sit inside with the curtains drawn while the rest of Anchorage is out in the light.

If your migraines trace back to a car accident or head injury — even one that happened years ago — there is a structural question that may never have been asked. Dr. Rumsey and the rest of our team at Rumsey Spinal Care are here to ask it, and to give you the kind of thorough, precise evaluation that looks for what standard post-accident care is not designed to find.

You have already lost enough good days. Find out whether a structural answer has been waiting all along.

Schedule your consultation at Rumsey Spinal Care today.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long after a car accident can migraines first appear? 

This varies widely, and the delay is one of the reasons the connection often gets missed. Some people develop head pain within days of a collision. Others don’t notice recurring migraines until weeks or months later, after the acute soreness has resolved and life has returned to something resembling normal. 

The onset delay doesn’t mean the accident isn’t responsible — it often reflects how gradually the body’s compensation patterns build up to a breaking point.

What does a post-traumatic migraine typically feel like compared to a regular headache? 

Post-traumatic migraines often carry the same features as classic migraines — throbbing or pulsing pain, sensitivity to light and sound, nausea — but they tend to have a distinctive quality that patients describe as feeling “deeper” or more connected to neck tension and base-of-skull pressure than a typical tension headache. 

Many people also notice that certain head positions or movements seem to reliably precede an episode, which points toward a structural component.

Does the severity of the original accident determine how bad the migraines become? 

Not reliably, and this surprises a lot of people. Some of the most persistent migraine patterns we see follow accidents that felt minor at the time — low-speed rear-end collisions, for example, where the person walked away and didn’t think much of it. The relevant factor isn’t the drama of the impact so much as the direction of force and how it affected the atlas specifically. A small shift in a highly sensitive area can create a disproportionately significant downstream effect.

Can whiplash-related migraines also cause dizziness, brain fog, or neck stiffness? 

Yes, and these symptoms appearing together is actually a meaningful pattern. The same structural disruption at the craniocervical junction that contributes to migraines can also affect the vestibular system — which governs balance and spatial orientation — as well as the nerve pathways involved in cognitive clarity and neck mobility. 

When a patient describes migraines alongside persistent brain fog, dizziness, or stiffness that never fully resolved after an accident, it often points toward a single underlying structural issue rather than several unrelated problems.

Is it too late to address a head or neck injury from an accident that happened years ago? 

This is one of the most common questions we hear, and the answer is genuinely encouraging. The structural displacement that follows an accident doesn’t necessarily resolve on its own over time — which is part of why the migraines persist. But it also means the underlying issue is often still addressable years later. 

Many patients who come to Rumsey Spinal Care are dealing with the downstream effects of injuries from five, ten, or even fifteen years ago. The evaluation tells us what is present now, not just what happened then.

To schedule a consultation with Dr. Rumsey, call our Anchorage office (907) 336-0200. You can also click the button below.

If you are outside of the local area, you can find an Upper Cervical Doctor near you at  www.uppercervicalawareness.com

Ergonomics is the science of designing and arranging the things people use so that the people and the things interact in a way that is health, safe and efficient.

Why should you care?

• Avoid developing painful soft-tissue dysfunction
• Experience less discomfort throughout your workday
• Prevent further aggravation of structural or functional problems that are already present
• Feel less tired, stiff, crabby, etc at the end of your workday

The problem with ergonomics as a science is that often the theoretical ideal chair or sitting position doesn’t match up with what’s actually comfortable. And most of us aren’t going to follow ergonomic guidelines that don’t take comfort into account, even if it ends up creating problems down the road.

So instead of focusing on purely scientific ergonomics, we are going to talk about practical ergonomics.

Practical ergonomics takes into account the fact that:

• individual comfort is extremely important
• ergonomic principles developed for a population don’t necessarily apply to an individual
• ergonomic guidelines often don’t take into consideration the particular dynamics of the tasks that need to be performed

When it comes to working at a computer there is no perfect ergonomic design. Abstinence is the only sure-fire solution.

Since that’s rarely an option, we can make the best of an imperfect situation by applying practical ergronomics, which involves some basic knowledge and a lot of common sense. These principles are neither difficult nor overly time-consuming to implement. With small amount of planning, the common-sense application of these principles can help you work more comfortably, be less crabby at the end of your day, and avoid developing painful structural and functional conditions.

General ergonomic tips for working at your computer

Sitting in your chair

Standing workstations are great, but most people, especially when working from home, will find themselves working at their computer in a chair.

Seated posture causes higher disc pressure than standing or lying down. Spinal ligaments are under less tension when you’re seated, and this results in a lot more muscle activation to maintain spinal stability.

In a rough order of importance, here are some things you should consider if you want to improve your seated position:

1. Lumbar support

A support behind your lower back allows those muscles to relax and can make a big difference in comfort and fatigue throughout the day.

If your chair is countoured nicely, you may find you don’t have to add anything at all. But if you’re a smaller person and the depth of the chair seat is too great, you’ll find that you have to sit forward in your chair. In this case, a contoured lumbar support pillow is great if you have one, but most people don’t. Finding the right combination of pillows, blankets, etc to place behind your lumbar spine can provide the support necessary to allow spinal muscles to relax.

2. Center of gravity

When seated your pelvis rotates posteriorly and the main points of support are the ischial tuberosities (your “sit-bones”, “butt-bones” ,whatever you want to call them). The center of gravity of your upper body can either be in front, directly over, or behind the ischial tuberosites.

In most cases the best position to strive for is one in which your center of gravity is in the middle position, directly over the ischial tuberosities. In this position about 25% of your body weight is transmitted through your feet on the floor and your lumbar spine is either straight or in a slight kyphosis, which is about as close to ideal as you’re going to get in a seated position.

It’s common to have your center of gravity in front of the ischial tuberosities while working seated. Try shifting your center of gravity back a bit and see how it feels. Repositioning your chair and other workspace items can allow you to change your seated center of gravity, and you may find that this makes a difference over the course of your workday.

3. Space under the back of the chair to allow buttocks to slide back

There’s not much you can do about this if your chair isn’t already designed this way, but it’s worth mentioning for the next time you’re out shopping for a new office chair. One of the reasons airplane seats are so uncomfortable is because they lack this feature. Even if the seatback has a contoured lumbar support, you can’t take advantage of it if you can’t slide your rear back far enough. As a result, your lumbar spine ends up being forced into a flexed position when you sit back in the chair, and this increases disc pressure and typically leads to a sore back. Adding some extra lumbar support behind your back can help mitigate this problem.

4. Seat bottom depth

A lot of these factors end up affecting one another. The depth of the seat bottom is going to determine if you can sit back far enough in your chair to utilize the backrest. If you’re a smaller or shorter person you’ll be forced to move forward if the seat bottom is too deep, either due to your legs not being able to reach the floor or because of pressure from the front edge of the chair on the poplieal fossa (fancy name for knee-pit). In either case you lose the support of the backrest, and might as well be sitting on a stool. Here too, your solution will be to put some thought into adding extra lumbar support behind your back.

5. Space to move your feet under the chair

Ergonomically speaking, it’s best to sit with your thighs approximately parallel to the floor and your feel flat on the floor. In this position your feet are going to give help give your rear a break by supporting a portion of your seated body weight. This can make a big difference in terms of comfort all by itself, and if your chair has the ability to incline the seat bottom, it pays to toy around with a slight incline to vary the amount of force diverted to your feet.

That being said, it’s important to keep in mind that the goal shouldn’t be to find a single posture to assume for the entire workday. You should be familiar enough with your chair to be able to readjust it regularly in order to redistribute loads. Having enough space under your chair to move your feet and legs freely helps to accomplish this as well.

Using your stuff

Fine-tuning seated ergonomics would be a lot easier if all you had to do was sit in your chair. When you start to add a keyboard, mouse, monitor, document holder, webcam, and the rest of the stuff you actually need to use for work, things get messy.

The goal of practical ergonomics is not perfection, it’s just making things less messy. One way to do that is to keep in mind a few guidelines to help bridge the gap between your chair and your stuff.

1. Arm position

Your arms are literally the bridge between your chair and your stuff. Ideally you want to be able have your arms hanging naturally at your sides with your elbows about about 90 degrees. If your arms aren’t hanging at your sides, you’re activating the muscles of your shoulder girdle and neck to support your arms. This inevitably leads to neck problems, tight shoulders, and painful trigger points in muscles like the upper trapezius and scalenes.

If the desk or table you’re working at is too high or low for your arms to be able to hang naturally at your sides, see if you can find a different surface to work on, or adjust the height of your chair. This can especially be a problem if you’re a shorter person. One way to try solving this is by finding something to use as a footrest so that you can raise your chair without having your legs dangling.

You also want to try to keep your hands roughly in line with your forearms so that your wrists aren’t flexed or extended. If you can adjust the height of the armrests on your chair, take advantage of this feature and adjust them to a supportive height. Alternatively, consider using a palm or wrist rest of an appropriate size for your keyboard.

Also pay attention to where you place your keyboard, mouse and other frequenctly used items. Keeping your repetitive forward reaches short can make a big difference over the course of a workweek.

2. Head and neck position

Computer display placement is one of the major factors that influence head and neck posture. The two main variables to keep in mind here are: 1) forward head position, and 2) head flexion.

The farther you head moves forward, the more strain you place on your cervical spine. Likewise, the more you flex your head foward/downward, the greater the loss of cervical lordosis (the normal neck curvature) and the greater the increase in disc pressure and muscle activation.

Even a small downward flexion of your head can be significant. Set your monitor height so that you’re looking straight ahead (or even at a very slight upward angle). I use Robbins’ 3.5″ thick Pathological Basis of Disease textbook to accomplish this because if I don’t, I get a lot of discomfort between my shoulder blades.

Laptops are a problem. They’re terrible if you have to spend any significant amount of time on your computer, and you’re just asking for problems if you use them on a regular basis for work. Solution #1 is to hook up an external monitor. That’s the best solution.

If that’s not possible, solution #2 is to stack a whole lot of books under your laptop to get it up to the correct height. At which point you’re going to realize that you need an external keyboard and mouse to make this work.

If solution #2 isn’t possible, take the time to adjust the laptop display’s angle, brightness, contrast and other settings so that you can work with the least amount of anterior head carriage and flexion as is possible. Experiment with setting the keyboard at an angle and using a palm/wrist rest as well.

In addition to your computer display, pay attention to how you’re arranging any documents that you have to work with. If possible, try to place document holders at the same distance, height and angle as your computer monitor. If you find yourself contantly going back and forth between viewing a document and your computer screen, it is far easier on your eyes to have them at the same distance so that you don’t have to refocus between objects. It goes without saying that a good lighting environment helps prevent mental fatigue as well.

Wrap-up

The best posture and ergonomic setup is the one that is most comfortable and which can be maintained while taking into account some of these basic guidelines. If you find yourself haphazardly dumping all your stuff on the desk and plopping down in a chair that you haven’t adjusted to fit your physique, you’re doing it wrong.

But it’s not about measuring angles and adopting a militaristic posture either. A basic awareness of your working environment coupled with the common sense application of these basic guidelines can improve both the comfort and safety of most at-home work environments.

As with most things, half the battle is motivating yourself to take the time to do it, which might be as simple as asking yourself a question like: “Do I want to encourage the growth of that little hump at the base of my neck?”

Take Jim, for instance. He knows that chiropractic is good for right arm pain because when he came into the office his right arm was painful and numb, and when we adjusted his neck the problem went away. Jim doesn’t know about the 31 pairs of nerves that exit between the vertebrae in his spine. He doesn’t think about the fact that the nerves from his neck don’t just go down his arm, but also go to the face, ears, throat and thyroid gland. But when I bring those facts up, it doesn’t take him long to make the connection and ask about his youngest kid who has been dealing with chronic ear infections for the past few years. We were able to check the boy’s spine and correct the subluxation that was leading to the weakness that allowed the infection to keep coming back. Furthermore, they were able to avoid having tubes put in the boy’s ears.

Jim didn’t need to understand chiropractic for his own arm pain to get better, but making the connection between chiropractic and his son’s ear infections required an additional level of understanding. That’s why I think it’s important for people to have a basic understanding of how chiropractic works.

Those 31 pairs of nerves that exit between the vertebrae of your spine carry messages between your brain and every part of your body. If a misalignment of the vertebrae in your spine affects the ability of a nerve to carry information from one place to another, you have a subluxation, and that subluxation can cause problems.

The important part in that little explanation is the part about nerves going to every part of your body. People often have no trouble at all making the connection between the nerve system and something like sciatic pain in their leg. But with other problems that are just as dependent on the nerve system, they fail to make the same connection.

For example, Karen comes to my office because she has sciatic pain shooting down the back of her right leg. She correctly assumes that this is coming from a problem in her low back–a spinal problem affecting the nerve that goes down her leg. When we correct the subluxated vertebrae in her spine, the pain in her leg goes away, but after a couple months she also finds that the painful period cramps she has had all of her life seem to have gotten much better. She asks me, “Could this have anything to do with the adjustments?”

The nerves that exit between the vertebrae of her lumbar spine not only go down her leg, but some of them also go to the reproductive organs and can cause period problems. If it hadn’t been for the sciatic pain shooting down the back of her right leg, she never would have made the connection between the nerve system and the painful menstrual cramps. Instead she would have continued to deal with the cramping and any other problems those nerves were causing.

The nerves that are affected by subluxated vertebrae go to many different areas of the body and control all kinds of different processes. Chiropractic adjustments correct the subluxated vertebrae so that the nerves can exert normal control over their targets.

Is there a painful problem or uncomfortable condition you or someone in your family is dealing with? Please consider the health and integrity of the nerve system whenever you are faced with unexplained pain or dysfunction. Chiropractic may be able to help without the use of drugs or surgery!

1. What is NUCCA?
2. Why does NUCCA exist?
3. When should NUCCA be considered?
4. How does NUCCA work?
5. Where can I find a NUCCA practitioner?

NUCCA is a chiropractic technique. Chances are you already know that, but I do have new patients often ask me, “Is this like chiropractic?” And the answer is yes, NUCCA is a chiropractic technique.

A chiropractic technique is simply a method for accomplishing the chiropractic goal. There are a lot of chiropractic techniques. They vary widely in the details, but they all have the same goal, which is the correction of vertebral subluxation.

Vertebral subluxation is misalignment of spinal vertebrae. More specifically, it’s a misalignment that involves the nerve system. A vertebral subluxation will always interfere with the nerve system’s ability to function appropriately.

That’s a very basic definition. A more thorough explanation of vertebral subluxation helps to make sense of how it’s able to impact the function of the human body in so many ways. But for our purposes the basic definition will do.

NUCCA is actually N.U.C.C.A. It stands for National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association. “Cervical” refers to the cervical spine, which is your neck. “Upper cervical” is the top part of the neck.

NUCCA is an upper cervical chiropractic technique. It is a method specifically for correcting vertebral subluxation in the top part of the neck, particularly the junction between the skull and the first vertebra (the atlas vertebra).

On the other side of the coin there are full-spine chiropractic techniques. This is the most common type of chiropractic, and the type that most people are familiar with. Upper cervical and full-spine chiropractic are not necessarily opposed to one another–in fact, there is a lot that upper cervical chiropractic and full-spine chiropractic agree upon. The significant differences stem from different understandings of the technical details.

Why does NUCCA exist?

NUCCA exists because of the “technical details” mentioned just above. Getting into the nitty-gritty of those details would be too much for the purpose of this article, but there are several basic factors that I think will make the important points clear.

The most significant factor is that the upper cervical portion of the spine is very different from the rest of the spine. The important differences are mechanical and neurological factors that result in the upper cervical subluxation causing more damage to the central nervous system than any other area of the spine.

The brain, brain stem, and cranial nerves are right next door to the upper cervical vertebrae. When they misalign they can affect the function of these delicate structures in ways that the rest of the spine cannot. All the nerves that connect the brain to the entire body have to travel through the funnel of the upper cervical spine. This places them at risk when alignment of that area is compromised. In addition, the upper cervical spine plays a major role in the maintenance of balance and equilibrium.

It should also be mentioned that the circulation of blood to and from the brain, as well as the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid, is critical to normal function of the brain. Misalignment of the upper cervical vertebrae can affect the ability of blood to get oxygen to the brain and the ability of cerebrospinal fluid to clear metabolic waste.

To really appreciate the unique position of the upper cervical spine, we also have to take into account that in addition to this concentrated diversity of neurological function, there is also a much greater level of mechanical freedom of movement than is seen anywhere else in spine. The range of motion available in terms of head rotation, flexion, extension, etc. is almost frightening when you consider the important structures coursing through the neck.

Under normal circumstances the design of the upper cervical spine provides an amazing balance between freedom of movement and protection of the delicate neurological structures contained within. But when an accident or injury is forceful enough to damage the soft-tissues that normally prevent spinal misalignment, the function of the nerve system can be seriously impaired.

NUCCA exists because the typical methods used for adjusting the spine are not only insufficient for addressing the upper cervical spine, but they can also result in greater misalignment and further neurological detriment when they violate mechanical principles required for the accurate replacement of displaced vertrebrae.

Beginning between the 2nd and 3rd vertebrae in the neck and continuing down the rest of the spine there are a set of joints between each pair of vertebrae called facet joints. Basic and Clinical Anatomy of the Spine, Spinal Cord, and ANS explains that “[facet joints] are rather small joints, and although they allow motion to occur, they are perhaps more important in their ability to determine direction and limitations of movement that can occur between vertebrae.” That is to say, facet joints don’t have a large range of motion. When you put them all together they allow for the appropriate movement of the spine, but individually their movement is minimal. Facet joints also restrict the direction of movement, what we might refer to as “degrees of freedom” of motion. And there are vertebral discs between these segments of the spine which provide further support and limitation of movement. In other words, the spinal joints from C3 on down have relatively small range and freedom of movement.

On the other hand we have the joints of the upper cervical spine which are articulations between the skull and the 1st vertebra, and the 1st and 2nd vertebrae. The 1st and 2nd vertebrae (called the atlas and axis) each

have a unique shape that differs significantly from the other spinal vertebrae. We also have no disc between them, and instead of facet joints there is a complex chain of joints with three axes and three degrees of freedom of movement.

The complex neurology of the upper cervical spine, coupled with its unique morphology and biomechanics requires a specialized approach when vertebral subluxation occurs in this area. The NUCCA procedure is designed specifically to account for the unique characteristics of the upper cervical spine so that a safe and accurate correction can be achieved.

When should NUCCA be considered?

There are two broad circumstances in which NUCCA deserves to be considered as a potential solution to pain and other health problems.

#1. When it just makes sense

You don’t need a advanced degree in biomechanics to realize that the head and neck are particularly vulnerable when it comes to accidents and injuries. Motor vehicle accidents, awkward slips on an icy sidewalk, and rambunctious children ambushing you from behind are a very small part of the list of accidents and injuries that make up our day to day lives. Most of the time our bodies are able to absorb the impact of these events without significant injury. But there are times when the force of impact is too much, and the head and neck are injured in a way that results in vertebral subluxtion.

When problems arise directly following an accident or injury the connection is hard to miss. These are the times that common sense tells us that we should check the neck.

But there are other instances in which problems take some time to develop, and their connection to a specific accident or injury might be more difficult to pin down. In these cases it makes sense to work along a spectrum from non-invasive to invasive options. Upper cervical chiropractic doesn’t add anything to the body and it doesn’t take anything away. It simply corrects a problem in order to restore normal function in a very non-invasive manner. It’s what you might call non-therapeutic. Sometimes more invasive, therapeutic treatments are necessary. Sometimes medication may even be necessary. At other times surgical procedures are appropriate. We always want to apply the proper solution, but in the process of identifying what that solution is, it’s wise to begin with less invasive options in order to avoid unnecessary application of more invasive procedures.

It should also be pointed out that the accidents and injuries that children experience can result in the same problems that we experience as adults. Except that it’s often more difficult to identify these problems in children because they don’t always have the language and experience to explain what they’re feeling in the same way that adults are able. And because they’re in the process of rapid growth and development, it’s even more important that spinal problems (especially those that affect their nerve system) are corrected as soon as possible. The good news is that the active growth and development of children also results in their being particularly responsive to upper cervical chiropractic care. Once the problem is corrected, kids often heal much more quickly and completely than adults.

#2. When nothing makes sense

Dealing with health problems that no one can make any sense of can be frustrating, maddening and depressing all at once. Bouncing from specialist to specialist and test to test is exhausting, and when no answers result from all that effort it can leave you feeling defeated. Any upper cervical chiropractor will tell you that a lot of their patients are people who have spent years failing to find a reason behind or solution to their problems. They end up at the upper cervical chiropractor because they “tried everything else.”

Sometimes these are chronic problems that just don’t respond to typically treatment. Other times there are multiple problems that all occur at once and seem to have no connection to one another. There are even times when doctors are so stymied that they tell the patient that it must just be all in their head. Cases like this should always be evaluated by a chiropractor that focuses specifically on the upper cervical spine. The broad and far-reaching consequences of the vertebral subluxation’s damaging influence on the central nervous system can and does result in complex patterns of dysfunction in many people. Correcting the subluxation and allowing the nerve system to begin functioning normally can help some of these people begin to recover from problems that otherwise seem unexplainable.

How does NUCCA work?

The NUCCA procedure involves a series of steps that are designed to determine if you’re a good candidate for upper cervical chiropractic care, and to make an accurate and stable correction when that is the case.

Consultation

An initial conversation with the chiropractor is important to determine you past and currently health history. Clearly defining the desired results is important in order to determine if those results can be achieved. The goal is to determine, as accurately as is possible, if upper cervical chiropractic is a good match.

Screening evaluation

If the chiropractor believes that there is a reasonable liklihood of success based on the problems and desired results discussed during the consultation, an examination will be done. The NUCCA examination is a screening to determine if the vertebral subluxation (specifically called the atlas subluxation complex, or ASC) is present.

While symptoms that result form the ASC often differ greatly from person to person, the presence of a phenomenon called spastic contracture is consistently present in all cases of ASC. The screening process is neither difficult nor uncomfortable and involves several structural measurements to determine if spastic contracture is present. These measurements will typically include a supine leg length measurement, and measurement on an apparatus called an anatometer. Cervical thermography and additional postural evaluation is often a part of the process as well.

Radiographic analysis

If both the consulation and evaluation process indicate that an individual meets the criteria required to move forward, the next step is to acquire a set of X-rays. The pre-correction X-rays that are taken for the NUCCA protocol are the most important part of the examination process. They allow the chiropractor to assess the severity and complexity of the subluxation and to measure the direction and degree of misalignment. These are the important details that provide the information required to engineer an adjusting formula that will accurately correct the misalignment factors.

Typically the initial visit will conclude with the acquisition of these X-rays. Some time is necessary for the chiropractor to anaylze the X-rays, so under normal circumstances a follow-up visit will be scheduled at this time. This follow-up visit will include a review of the X-ray findings and the initial correction.

Correction

The first time that a NUCCA adjustment is made the chiropractor will explain the process and what you can expect. This includes lying on your side on a low table with

your head positioned in a particular way on the NUCCA adjusting table. The adjustment is made by hand and is very gentle. As a patient you will feel a light contact just under the ear, but little else. There is no aggressive manuevering or twisting, thrusting or cracking. The time it takes to make the correction will vary from person to person, from as little as a minute to perhaps several minutes in some cases.

Once the chiropractor has determined that the correction has been made, several measurements will be taken to verify this. These measurements will be identical to those performed during the initial evaluation. If the measurements verify that a good correction has been made, the next step is to confirm the correction by taking a post-correction X-ray. The post X-ray is taken after the initial correction only. Subsequent adjusting will not require additional X-rays. If the post X-ray confirms that a complete and accurate correction has been made, the process is complete. If any misalignment remains on the post X-ray the chiropractor will make any necessary changes to the adjusting formula and continue to work toward a complete correction.

Follow-up

Future follow-up visits provide for monitoring of the stability of the correction and the response of the patient. During these visits an adjustment will be made when it is found that the correction has been lost. It is very important that a stable correction is achieved so that normal, uninterrupted nerve system function and structural alignment are present as consistently as possible.

Where to find a NUCCA chiropractor?

My practice, Rumsey Spinal Care, is located in Anchorage, Alaska. At the present time this is the only NUCCA practice in the state of Alaska. I serve people from all over the state, and I try to make a point of being able to accomodate those who aren’t able to get to Anchorage easily, or on a regular basis. If you have any questions or would like to set up a consulation over the phone or in the office, you can contact me by phone at 907-336-0200 or by using the contact form just below.

Outside of Alaska the availability of NUCCA chiropractors varies from state to state, but a good place to start looking is the NUCCA website, located here. You’ll find a map-based tool that can help locate NUCCA chiropractors in the United States and even a few elsewhere.

If the reason for instability is due to a correction that’s not as complete as it could be, then at least you have something that can be improved upon. But sometimes you’ve got a great correction that should hold well, but for some reason it just doesn’t. You’re careful with your sleep position, work positions, you stop sparring with Chuck Norris on Friday nights, but nothing seems to help, and you’re having to get adjusted more frequently than you should.

I’ve heard a lot of theories (and excuses) for why this happens, and I’m sure that some of them are legitimate. I’m equally certain that it’s a very individual thing and no one remedy will apply to a broad range of people.

Here I’ll add to that list of theories with something that I haven’t heard brought up specifically, and which I plan to test with a sample size of one.

First some background.

A patient who started care in the middle of 2015 with some pretty severe spinal problems. Severe degeneration in the neck, to the point that a couple of segments had fused completely; 4/5 lumbar discs severely bulging; days at a time where legs didn’t work and just had to stay bedridden; loss of bladder control; and more!

“This person should be consulting with a surgeon!”, you might exclaim. Yes, yes–been there, done that. They are not interested in surgery, and trust me, you are not going to convince them otherwise.

Turns out that we’re dealing with an out of pattern type II with a plane line higher than Tommy Chong, and an angular rotation of 6.5° with a laterality of 2.5°.

Happily, the initial correction went really well for (what I consider to be, at least) a pretty intimidating misalignment. Next visit should be a miracle recovery right? Wrong. There was a very interesting reaction after the first few corrections. I’m hesitant to exclaim “retracing!” after every little thing that happens after a correction because it seems like the term is very often abused or used as an excuse. But this was clearly a case of retracing that involved a previous (and initially unreported) brain stem stroke that had occurred about 7 years prior.

Following the initial period of neurological equilibration, and continuing up to the present, things have gone very well for this individual. No more days without the use of lower extremities, no more loss of bladder control, 80%+ improvement in all areas of pain–a very successful case in my estimation.

The strange thing is the stability of the correction. During the summer months, it will hold for a month max – maybe not even a month – before needing to be adjusted again. But during the colder, winter months, it will hold for 3-4 months at a time.

What’s the difference? According to this individual, a heating pad is used on the neck during the winter months, and this allows the neck to “self-adjust” during the night. Apparently this self-adjusting phenomenon is recognizable when it happens. And apparently it is due to the heating pad because during the summer months (when it is too warm to use the heating pad), this does not occur.

Initially I was skeptical that this “self-adjusting” was really something that was happening, but it became clear that it lined up with how well the correction was holding. The pattern has repeated itself again this year, so I’m left wondering what exactly is going on, and how to re-create this scenario during the summer months.

By chance I was reading through the “Scalene Muscles” chapter in the Travell & Simons trigger point text, and one of the points they bring up under the “corrective actions” section is that “Chilling the body, especially when resting, reduces peripheral blood flow and can lead to increased skeletal muscle irritability.” They suggest using an electric blanket in bed or wearing a high-necked sweater or scarf in bed. Also suggested is the application of a moist heating pad over the scalenes for 10-15 minutes before going to sleep at night.

The possibility seems likely that this might be the mechanism behind this individual’s pattern of holding. Another suggestion made by Travell and Simons is the elevation of the head of the bed by 3-3.5 inches in order to prevent the chest from riding up around the neck at night. The elevation creates a mildly steady traction on the scalene muscles that also allows for adequate venous drainage and lymph flow. They also remark that scalene dysfunction usually can not be permanently extinguished without this elevation of the head of the bed.

I’m optimistic about this being a solution to this particular holding problem. We haven’t had a conversation about it yet, so I don’t know if this person will be willing to forgo the heating pad during the rest of this winter in order to test out the bed elevation theory, but at the very least, once summer rolls around we’ll give it a shot and see if this might be a solution to the problem. I will report back on the success or failure of the experiment.

From my own observation, trigger points in the scalene muscles are fairly common. This is one more thing to keep in mind when trying to figure out why the person who should be holding their alignment.

One of the great missed opportunities in the history of chiropractic health care is it’s failure to pursue the success it had established in the realm of mental health care.

From the 1920’s to the 1950’s a number of chiropractic institutions operated as care facilities for the mentally insane. Clear View Sanitarium and Forest Park Sanitarium are probably the most well-known. The records of these facilities illustrate the fact that chiropractic (properly applied, of course) is extremely effective in the treatment of psychological disorders–things like schizophrenia, dementia and sundry violent and delusional behaviors.

Unfortunately, a combination of poor leadership in the chiropractic profession, along with the birth of suffocating governmental regulation, resulted in virtually all of this being flushed down the memory-hole.

In the Current Year, it’s virtually impossible for chiropractic, on any substantial scale, to compete with mainstream medicine’s monopoly of the care of those suffering with mental illness. And by “care”, I of course mean the medication of millions Americans into a state of mental operation which quickly and effectively subdues any aberrant behavior that might be considered socially unacceptable.

Yes, it’s truly amazing what passes for “progress” in the world of modern health care. Even the farce of Freudian psychoanalysis would be preferable to rolling the dice with the heavily advertised anti-psychotic medications which are aggressively dispensed without regard to any reasonable measures of safety and effectiveness. But, you know, it would just be too uncomfortable to talk about anti-psychotic medication and high-profile mass shootings in the same sentence.

However, one thing you do see a lot of in a chiropractic practice is the resolution of the less extreme manifestations of mental illness: things like depression and anxiety.

As a rule these are not individuals seeking care expressly for depression or anxiety. These are people who have other problems – physical problems, usually – who also happen to have depression or anxiety. The real twist is that the physical problems they are seeking care for are often actually a result of their depression. And when chiropractic effectively addresses the cause of their depression, their physical symptoms resolve.

The patient walks away thinking that chiropractic fixed their physical ailment (and maybe they realize it may have also have helped with their depression, but don’t count on it), when in reality chiropractic addressed a fundamental problem affecting that patient’s mental health, thereby resolving their depression. I’m not sure if that meets the technical requirements for irony, but it must be close.

The unfortunate result is that a lot of people who are helped by chiropractic with mental and emotional disorders never really make the connection. So the link remains relatively unrecognized in the general public.

Which is a good reminder for chiropractors. It might seem clear to the chiropractor that the resolution of an anxiety disorder was clearly the result of a patient’s chiropractic care, but as Dr. Barge puts it, “…many a patient with right leg pain that recovers under chiropractic care knows one thing and one thing only…you’re good, chiropractic’s good, for right leg pain…they’re not too sure about the left.”

The roadblock in the way of chiropractic’s ability to (re-)demonstrate its effectiveness in the more extreme types of mental illness, I think, is the fact that a lot of these types of disorders are very scary. And when fear is a part of any equation, it usually means that the situation is prone to manipulation.

Mainstream medicine has basically gotten itself into an uncontested position when it comes to the treatment of mental illness because 1) they excel at, and have the pharmaceutically-generated funds to manipulate the mindset of the public, and 2) the pharmaceutical treatment of mental disorders is extremely effective.

Unfortunately the treatment these people receive doesn’t make them any healthier. It doesn’t make them “well again.” What it does is quickly subdue the jarring behavior or disruptiveness of the individual. That is its effectiveness.

I’ve never had to take care of a family member or friend with something like schizophrenia. I can’t imagine the physical and emotional toll it must take on you. But I would imagine that for a lot of people it wouldn’t take long to accept just about anything that would give some seeming relief to the situation. And pharmaceutical treatment has the ability to provide that relief.

Chiropractic care has the ability to get a lot of these people well. But it’s not well known, and I would argue that it would be more difficult to manage.

On the upside, you would have a lot of these people actually getting well and becoming functioning members of society with the ability to enjoy their lives again.

There’s another side to the mental illness problem that’s often swept under the rug, or is at least just as ineffectively managed as those types of mental disorders that are considered “health problems.” This is the connection between mental illness and criminal behavior.

Identifying a bipolar disorder as a health problem is one thing. But the situation gets a lot more difficult when faced with criminal behavior. I don’t think it would be accurate to say that all criminal behavior is related to something that can be labeled as a “health problem”, but it’s clear that there’s a connection between the two.

This recently published study from the Canadian Medical Association concluded that men and women who had suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI) were 2.5 times more likely to be incarcerated than those who hadn’t. That’s not new information either. There are a lot of studies that show this same link.

Clearly there is some connection between criminality and health. The problem is how to address it. A lot of the ideas put forth tend to be reactionary. And while I don’t have a problem with that type of approach per se, I would argue that a better approach would be to address the types of injuries that are potentially associated with criminal behavior before the criminal behavior actually takes place.

Concussions, mild and severe traumatic brain injury, and even seemingly innocuous head injuries can and do create displacement of spinal vertebrae–particularly in the upper cervical complex that consists of the head and upper two bones in the neck.

These displacements are often small, and a visit to the emergency room isn’t going to identify them. But they can have significant effects on both physical and mental health because of the disruption they can cause to neurological integrity and fluid dynamics in the brain-box.

A competent chiropractor can identify and correct the displacement of these vertebrae in order to correct and prevent the physical problems associated with head and neck injuries. More importantly, when corrected promptly, chiropractic can prevent these types of injuries from leading to mental and emotional issues that are commonly associated with head injuries.

By all accounts, mental illness is a growing problem in the United States. Unfortunately the system that monopolizes the treatment of mental illness is ill-equipped to deal with it in a way that actually restores mental health. This leads to a population that is increasingly over-medicated.

Maybe the most unfortunate effect of this trend is that it’s become so accepted that it has trickled down to the youngest members of our society. We now have countless numbers of children who take medication to address mental and emotional problems. Many of these children will live their entire lives taking medication that changes the way they process the world, themselves and the people they interact with. Some of them will be okay, and some of them will do things that they never would have contemplated had they not been living for years in an altered cognitive state.

Chiropractic offers an alternative to this destructive trend that can address the underlying dysfunction for many individuals suffering mental and emotional disorders.

So it’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything here in my NUCCA practice blog. The truth is that I just haven’t felt like it over the last few months. It turns out that having a kid basically rewires your brain and you forget all the things that used to be high on your priority list–and if it doesn’t, you’re probably a bad parent (so at least I can take some comfort in that).

I have to give credit to the guys out there who consistently post new content in their blogs. I don’t know how they can keep up with it. I know a couple guys who regularly write their own stuff, and I’m amazed that they keep up with it.

I recently had a case though, that I thought was worth sharing because it’s a microcosm of how a lot of folks get initiated into the dark arts of upper cervical chiropractic. Plus, it’s also an interesting case from a practitioner’s standpoint.

Some patient interactions just stick with you for one reason or another, and a little over 2 years ago I had one of those. It was a guy, we’ll call him “A.B.”, and somehow he ended up in my office telling me about a life of neck problems, and how whenever it acted up he’d have a chiropractor work on his neck for awhile and it would be okay for another couple months.

The problem was that this time it wasn’t working, and now he had all kinds of pain and other stuff running down both of his arms and into his hands. This was a problem because he made his living working with his hands, and he wasn’t able to get any sleep lately either. A.B. was an older gentlemen with a pretty gruff, deadpan personality (you know, the type you get pretty used to when you grow up in the sticks in northern Wisconsin), and his solution to the problem was, and I quote, “I’m contemplating taking up drinking again in order to get some sleep.“

So we took a look, found Atlas Subluxation Complex, and made NUCCA X-rays.

Uhg. Basic Type I(c). Left laterality 1.25°, plane line +7/16″,  4° head tilt, 4.25° angular rotation, about a 0.75° lower angle, and 1.25° posterior rotation. I don’t know about you, but not my favorite animal.

Work proceeded, and upon completion I remember A.B. standing up and looking at me with his most practiced “I’m not amused” face. After a good long dose of that stare, he was kind enough to alert me to that fact that he had seen a lot of chiropractors, and “whatever that was, it was not chiropractic.“

I have no idea how I responded, but evidently it was enough to get the necessary NUCCA post films, which, thank the orthogonal gods, confirmed a really nice correction.

A week later I saw A.B. again to check back on that correction. He was just as deadpan as ever, so after finding that everything was holding, I’m thinking to myself, “after last visit’s less-than-positive reception to his NUCCA correction, what’s he going to say after I tell him I’m not doing anything at all this visit?“

Me: “Well A.B., everything looks great. Your correction is holding, so we’re not going to touch it today.“

A.B. <dramatic pause accompanied by prolonged expressionless stare> “Good. Because whatever you did, it worked.“

If I’m honest with you, I have to say that I was pretty relieved to hear that. Mainly because problems like that don’t always get solved with just one correction. Sometimes it takes a little time. And I had a feeling that the needle on A.B.’s belief-o-meter wasn’t tacking very high, so if he didn’t get quick results, he’d just be off to either “live with it” or find someone to yank on his neck until they got lucky.

And that was the last I saw of A.B.

Until just recently. I picked up the office phone a couple weeks ago and even though it had been over two years, I somehow instantly recognized the voice on the other end. It was A.B. He wanted to know if I’d see him, and we set up a time.

Was the arm pain back? Had it been gone for the last 2 years? I was looking forward to seeing what had transpired with this long-lost Type I(c) correction.

Same old A.B., different problem. As it turns out, the arm pain never came back, but a relatively innocuous misstep had recently resulted in terrible low back pain, and burning pain in both legs from the knees down.

My spidey-sense was telling me that an updated X-ray was in order. It would be interesting to see if this thing was still the same Type I(c) giving a completely different set of symptoms, or if something had changed.

(As an aside, I put a little adhesive BB at the intertragus notch of the ear to help with finding the contact point for the C1 transverse process. Normally, I’d just put one on the side of atlas laterality if it’s already pre-established from a prior film, the left in this case, but for some reason my spidey-sense tingled again, so I put one on the right ear too.)

I was completely surprised to find that A.B.’s misalignment appeared to have changed from a left side Type I(c) to a right side Basic Type II (and I patted myself on the back for putting that BB on the right side as well as the left). In fact, I really questioned whether or not I had analyzed the film correctly. It was a well-taken film. I re-analyzed and came up with the same thing. It still made me uncomfortable, but the facts are the facts.

Work proceeded, and it appeared that I had earned a modicum of trust from A.B. based on the absence of any questioning looks or disparaging remarks. It took a couple post-films, but we ended up with a good correction–laterality below 0.75°, with just 1° of the previously 3.75° of angular rotation left.

I expected that the current symptomatic picture would take some time to resolve, and attempted to relay that to A.B.–sometimes I worry that a patient who sees immediate resolution from a problem will expect all future problems to immediately resolve as well. Unfortunately that’s not how things work all the time.

A week later I see A.B. to check on his correction: “Well A.B., everything looks great. Your correction is holding, so we’re not going to touch it today.“

A.B.: <dramatic pause accompanied by prolonged expressionless stare> “Good. I’d say it’s about 95% better. Just a little sore in the low back.”

If I said I enjoyed all my patients, I’d be lying–but I do enjoy almost all of my patients. That being said, there’s nothing more fun than the ones like A.B. who snap back into shape like one of those wristbands kids used to get from the dentist back in the ’90s.

From a technical standpoint, it’s an interesting case, given that you’ve got two completely different symptomatic pictures, both responding very favorably and separated by a significant period of time, with not only different misalignment types, but different sides of atlas laterality. Personally, I almost never see the side of laterality change, so that was particularly interesting.

More significant though is the transmogrification of A.B.’s perception of upper cervical chiropractic. After I announced that he was holding his correction this last visit, he relayed to me his attempt at explaining what we were doing to a few of the guys at work, suggesting that they should come in and get checked. “But they just looked at me like I was crazy“, he said.

And that’s how it generally works. It sounds crazy when you explain the NUCCA procedure to someone whose concept of healthcare is pretty much limited to hospitals and television ads, but when things get bad enough, and no one else seems to have any solutions, sometimes you end up in a NUCCA practitioner’s office.

And when you get a good NUCCA correction and have the normal biomechanics restored to this region whose integrity determines whether or not your brain, brainstem, and all the surrounding nerves, fluids and vessels are able to operate properly, then you start to get the Big Idea.

And then you might just try to explain it to someone else. And they may very well look at you like you’re a little nutso.

It will be interesting to see if A.B. shows up again in a couple years.

At one point in the trailer for the soon-to-be released movie, Concussion, forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (played by Will Smith) is warned that he is “going to war with with a corporation that owns a day of the week.”

On December 25 you’ll have a chance to see Hollywood’s portrayal of that “war” between the NFL and the man who began to call attention to the connection between the repetitive head trauma experienced by professional football players and the physical, mental and emotional diseases suffered by many of them later in life.

The subject of concussion and repetitive head trauma as it relates to the National Football League has been part of a very public and national discussion for some time now.

Even if you don’t follow NFL football, chances are that you’re at least aware of the fact that it’s been a topic of some celebrity.

And if we’re being honest, most of us can probably say that at some point we’ve had a thought somewhere along the lines of, “Well, duh…I could have told you that if you get hit in the head over and over again, there are going to be some consequences…”

In fact, we’ve known for a long time that this phenomenon, now called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is something that affects athletes who sustain serious or continuous head trauma.

The brutal sport of boxing has long made that clear for anyone who has cared to pay attention.

The difference is that now we don’t have a choice. We’re forced to pay attention to it because, as the movie trailer pointed out, it’s affecting “a corporation that owns a day of the week.”

And as far as I can tell, that’s a good thing.

But what you might also find is that the increased emphasis on the subject forces you to consider some things that you might otherwise take for granted.

Like whether or not it’s a wise decision to allow your kids to play high-impact sports. And if the benefits of these sports for kids outweigh the potential long-term health consequences of concussions.

And that can be a tough decision to make.

For me, I played football. And I loved it. I can look back now and see the role that sport played in developing characteristics that will benefit me for the rest of my life. Few things teach a young person the importance of discipline, teamwork, camaraderie, and selflessness like competitive team sports such as football. Basically it’s the closest thing that a lot of us get to being in the military.

It’s something that I look back on and, at first glance, couldn’t imagine depriving my child of.

But if I’m honest with myself, and I eliminate the nostalgic factor that plays so heavily into the subject, then I also have to account for the fact that on at least 2 occasions I suffered concussions that led me off the field with some permanently blank spots (along with who knows how many minor concussions).

(You don’t realize how accurate the term “punch-drunk” is until you find yourself stumbling into a huddle on the football field, completely unaware that the huddle you’ve joined is that of the opposing team.)

On top of that, as an upper cervical chiropractor I’ve seen plenty of young men and ladies whose mental, emotional and physical health have been devastated by what’s commonly called “post-concussion syndrome”.

These are kids (and adults) with problems that are chronic, poorly understood, and often ruin what should be a normal, productive quality of life. Things like chronic migraines, serious sleep disorders, chronic pain, and emotional highs and lows that range from severe depression to violent outbursts.

And more often than not these individuals with post-concussion syndrome thought they were just fine after their accidents and injuries. But just like the CTE identified by Dr. Omalu in ex-NFL players, the head trauma they sustained didn’t result in immediate problems.

Instead, we now know that these types of injuries are progressive. They slowly worsen over time until conditions in the brain get so bad that permanent damage occurs and the minds and bodies of those injured can no longer sustain normal function.

We also know that these injuries are accumulative. Each trauma adds to those previously sustained. And the traumatized brain appears to be less and less able to withstand additional impacts.

How to identify individuals who are most at risk, and how to stop the progression of this type of disease once it’s sustained–these are the questions that this whole NFL-concussion discussion will hopefully find answers for in the research that’s been spawned as a result.

Those who have already been impacted by traumatic head injuries should know that research has already uncovered a great deal regarding the pathology and progression of these types of injuries.

The problem is that much of what is discovered by researchers can take years to make its way from the scientific literature to the clinical setting where those who have sustained concussions can benefit from the treatments that will help them recover.

In the second part of this article we’ll look at what current research is saying about how head trauma affects your brain, your health, and what you need to do as soon as possible if you’ve sustained traumatic head injury or concussion.

If you have forward head posture, you’re likely well acquainted with it’s most common cohorts: neck pain & shoulder tension. But forward head posture is also associated with some less obvious health problems. Below you’ll find out what those are and why their association with forward head posture is often ignored.

Forward head posture (also called anterior head carriage) is pretty self-explanatory, and it’s not difficult to detect because it’s so visibly obvious.

Basically, if you view yourself from the side, there is an ideal position for your head above your shoulders. In fact, you can go from head to toe, connecting several body landmarks to get a pretty good idea of whether or not the postural arrangement of your body is going to lend itself toward health or dysfunction. For example, a line dropped vertically through the side of your body would ideally pass through:

• your ear

  

• just forward of the center of your shoulder
• through the head of your femur (hip joint)
• just forward of the center of your knee
• and just in front of your lateral malleolus (that bump on the outside of your ankle)

The arrangement of the head and neck are particularly important because they tend to be more prone to postural dysfunction.

The reason for this is probably due to the fact that the neck lacks the structural support of the ribs and other larger muscles that the rest of the spine has supporting it. Also, the weight of the head over the neck and the significant range of motion we have in moving the head and neck, lends to the propensity for abnormal stress and acquired accidents and injuries to impact the structural alignment in this area. Not to mention the fact that modern lifestyles tend to force us into positions that encourage this abnormal posture (extended time sitting at computers, staring down at books & cell phones, etc.).

Most of us can appreciate the obvious effect forward head posture can have on the muscles and joints of the neck and upper back.

But what you might not realize is that forward head posture can have an even darker side when it comes to its impact on both your day to day quality of life and your long term health and vitality.

Instead of delving into a lengthy list of conditions that can result from long-term forward head posture, I’ll mention three of the most common conditions I see clinically that often result from this postural distortion of the head and neck.

And if you’ve watched the video posted at the beginning of this article, you can understand how just a few inches of forward head posture can double, triple or even quadruple the amount of force absorbed by your joints and effort required by your neck and back muscles.

Clicking, locking, and other forms of TMJ disorders are notoriously difficult to overcome. One of the reasons for this difficulty lies in the intimate, but often overlooked relationship between the mechanics of jaw movement and the alignment of the head and neck.

Too often jaw problems are addressed by looking only at the alignment and status of the tempero-mandibular joint (TMJ), when, in fact, the source of the jaw problems encompasses a much more complex mechanical dysfunction that includes the entire head and neck alignment.

If you could look through the tissue covering the muscles, tendons, joints and ligaments that are involved in normal movement of the jaw, you would see a complicated system of attachments between the jaw, head, neck and hyoid bone (the “floating” bone that produces the “Adam’s apple” seen in some people).

When the position of the head and neck becomes abnormal, this change in alignment places stress upon the connective tissues that attach to the jaw. Many of the muscles making these connections serve to not only provide movement, but also act as sensors sending information about the position of the head, neck and jaw, so that other muscles can respond appropriately to provide normal movement.

This is why patients who have dealt with long-term TMJ problems routinely find that their jaw no longer troubles them once the alignment of their head and neck has been corrected.

One of the most frequent scenarios I encounter is the individual who has never had a headache or migraine in their life until they became involved in a car accident. Sometime after they find themselves popping pain-killers on a daily basis just so they can get through their workday.

Whether it’s a car accident or some other type of trauma, whiplash injuries commonly damage the connective tissues that normally maintain the proper alignment of the head and neck.

When the muscles, tendons and ligaments suffer this type of trauma, abnormal stresses are transferred to the joints between the head and the individual vertebrae of the neck. As a result, pain receptors in these joints are activated and begin to send signals to the central nervous system alerting you that there is a problem.

If the alignment of these joints isn’t corrected, these signals can continue to barrage the central nervous system even in the absence of perceived pain.

Headaches are often the result of these signals inappropriately “spilling over” into nearby nerve channels and causing pain in areas other than the neck. Sometimes the situation can even result in sharp, searing pain in the face and jaw.

Correcting the alignment of the joints in the neck that are producing this barrage of sensory information being sent to the brain is necessary in order to stop the flood of inappropriate pain signals that result in headaches and other types of facial pain.

One of the more devastating effects of forward head posture and other forms of head/neck misalignment is the change that can occur in circulation of two critically important fluids your brain relies on for normal function:

• blood
• cerebrospinal fluid

Studies using an imaging technique that is able to measure the volume of blood exiting the skull have shown us that when the head and neck are misaligned, blood flow is slowed down. What this means is that if the alignment of your head and neck is abnormal, you’re brain may not be getting the amount of oxygen and energy that it requires.

Similarly, the same imaging technique has shown that following a specific correction to the top-most bone in the neck, the circulation is able to normalize, thus restoring the flow of blood through the skull and to the brain.

This discovery explains why upper cervical chiropractic patients complaining of difficult to describe symptoms like “brain fog”, often report feeling “lighter” and clear-headed following a correction.

It also explains why many difficult to treat migraine patients experience exceptional results following upper cervical care.

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is the fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord, providing nourishment, protection, and immunological defenses. This fluid is produced by specialized cells located in small pockets in the brain. Like blood-flow, CSF circulation is impaired when head/neck misalignment occurs.

The serious nature of this abnormal circulation is just beginning to be understood in light of current research. Many studies point to the connection between neurodegenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis and this abnormal CSF circulation.

It appears that inadequate circulation of CSF results in an increase of pressure building up inside the skull. This can result in the collapse of blood vessels, further interfering with circulation of blood to the brain.

It can also be implicated in the production of migraine headaches and a number of other disorders. For example, Meniere’s disease is a condition in which individuals experience dizziness, ringing in the ears, fullness in the ears and often permanent hearing loss. It’s long been thought that a buildup of fluid in the inner ear is responsible for this condition, but no treatment has been able to effectively address this problem

What’s been overlooked however, is that there exists a small opening between the space in the head that contains CSF and the space in the inner ear that is thought to have too much fluid inside. When CSF pressure increases in the skull, this pressure gradient can be transferred to the inner ear, producing the symptoms found in Meniere’s disease.

Many individuals suffering from Meniere’s disease have found long-term relief through upper cervical care because it addresses the critical alignment of the head and neck.

Medical science is just beginning to understand the complex interactions between the alignment of the joints between the head and neck and our overall neurological and circulatory health. The little that we do understand seems to clearly indicate that this alignment is critical for the long term cognitive and physical health of individuals, particularly as it pertains to maintaining your health and mental acuity into old age.

So why, in light of all we know about the importance of the postural alignment of the head & neck, do many health care practitioners ignore this critical component to your health?

Much of the problem lies in the fact that modern health care has come to rely almost exclusively on the use of pharmaceuticals for the treatment of pain and disease.

Medicine didn’t always operate this way, and there are many medical textbooks from past decades that outline the importance of postural alignment as it relates to overall physical and mental health and well-being. But as it currently stands, medical practitioners simply aren’t trained to look at the relationship between body structure as it relates to normal function. So many simply don’t realize the importance postural dysfunction.

Secondly, many health care practitioners don’t have the training or tools to correct complex postural dysfunction, and so they tend to disregard it in favor of the other interventions that they are more familiar with.

The good news is that postural dysfunction is relatively easy to recognize on your own. And if it seems likely that postural alignment may be connected to your health problems, an upper cervical practitioner will be able to determine whether postural dysfunction is the result of neurological abnormality in the area surrounding the brain stem where the head and neck come together. The National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association (NUCCA) maintains an active list of upper cervical practitioners specially trained to correct the type of alignment problems that lead to the type of problems discussed above. You can find a practitioner in your area by clicking here to access that list of practitioners.

If you’ve been diagnosed with “idiopathic” scoliosis, you’ll read below the two most important facts you need to know to avoid the progression of scoliosis, and how to actually improve your current degree of spinal curvature without the pain and toil of bracing or surgery.

The first thing to understand is that there are 3 main types of scoliosis:

1. Idiopathic scoliosis
2. Congenital scoliosis
3. Neuromuscular scoliosis

By far, the most common type of scoliosis is idiopathic scoliosis, and this is the type of scoliosis we’re talking about here.

The term “idiopathic” is used to describe a condition that doesn’t have any known cause. Which means that in over 80% of scoliosis cases the doctor tells the patient that nobody knows what is causing the spine to curve abnormally.

This is point where most people dealing with a scoliosis diagnosis are faced with making an assumption that can soetimes lead to a lifetime of spinal and neurological problems.

Fact #1: “Idiopathic” scoliosis often isn’t idiopathic at all.

When the doctor announces that there is no known cause of your scoliosis, it’s easy to assume that’s just how it is. After all, they’re trained in the field of medicine and should know.

But that assumption isn’t always correct.

The field of medicine encompasses a certain body of knowledge regarding the treatment of symptoms and diseases – and while large, that body of knowledge is finite. Likewise, the field of chiropractic encompasses a different body of knowledge. Specifically, chiropractic deals with the cause and effect relationship between your spinal column, the nervous system, and your health.

What this means is that a case of scoliosis that is labeled idiopathic, or “cause unknown” within the medical field, may be found to have a thoroughly explainable (and correctable) cause when examined within the chiropractic scope of practice.

This is why the worst assumption you can make when you or your child has been diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis is that nothing can be done.

You might be told that the scoliosis isn’t “bad enough” for bracing yet, so “we’re going to wait & see if it continues to progress.” All too often the scoliosis does progress, leading to more aggressive medical interventions like bracing or surgery.

The tragedy is that instead of just waiting to see if your scoliosis gets “bad enough” for bracing, there’s a good chance you could actually be doing something to correct the cause of your spinal curvature.

Early distinction between scoliosis that is truly idiopathic versus those that are mislabeled as idiopathic is even more crucial when you take into account the fact that a correctable scoliosis becomes less and less correctable the older a child gets.

In adults who have completed their bone growth, the progressive worsening of scoliosis curves can often be arrested, but often the curves that have developed will correct only minimally due to their advanced stage of skeletal development.

The bottom line is that the earlier a correctable cause is the identified, the better the chance for complete resolution.

Fact #2: Mislabeled “idiopathic” scoliosis can be identified without invasive or costly testing.

The hallmark of correctable scoliosis is an underlying dysfunction known as “spastic contracture.” It affects the anti-gravity, or postural muscles that normally keep your axial skeleton (head, spine & pelvis) straight and level.

Because most medical doctors fail to check scoliosis patients for the presence of spastic contracture, many are mislabeled as “idiopathic.”

Spastic contracture occurs when the muscle tone of the anti-gravity muscles on one side of the body is slightly tighter than the opposite side. As a result, the pelvis, and spinal vertebrae lose the balance necessary to maintain their normal positions.

If you’re an adult this can cause a number of issues, including pain and nerve problems–but in a child the result can be permanently debilitating because their bones are still growing.

A good analogy would be a tree growing on a mountainside that is constantly being buffeted by the wind on one side. When young, the supple trunk and branches bend to one side with the force of the wind while still attempting to grow upward toward the light. Eventually the tree matures and the trunk thickens to the point where it no longer bends–but the influence of the wind has created a mature tree that will forever be bent and twisted.

Similarly, a child with spastic contracture grows under the constant influence of postural muscles that pull one side of the spine and pelvis more than the opposite side. Curves develop as the natural tendency to grow upward battles with the muscular imbalance.

If the spastic contracture of postural muscles is corrected before the child reaches skeletal maturity, the curvature is better able to correct itself and a permanent curvature can often be avoided. But the longer a child’s growing spine is under the influence of imbalance musculature, the more permanent scoliotic curvatures become.

So when faced with a diagnosis of “idiopathic” scoliosis, remember that you may have better options than just waiting to see if it continues to worsen. Upper cervical chiropractors trained and certified by the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association (NUCCA) are specially equipped to identify spastic contracture in children and adults. When present, NUCCA practitioners are able to analyze and correct the source of spastic contracture quickly and painlessly.