Studies have shown reductions in colic from conservative chiropractic treatment.  While no one would suggest “cracking” an infant’s back, pediatric chiropractors have shown that gentle pressure on spine by a skill practitioner can actually reduce the hours parents spend comforting their crying child.

An October 1999 report in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics on research done at the University of Southern Demark showed that colicky babies that had spinal adjustments cried much less than children who received the standard treatment of dimethicone drops.  The study group that received the drops saw a reduction in average daily time crying of 1 hour while the group that received spinal manipulation saw a reduction of 2.4 hour (2 ½ times better results.)  For a family suffering through the agony of a colicky baby an extra hour and a half a day of piece can seem like a miracle.

An earlier study published in the same journal in 1989 found similar results however this earlier study did not include a control group.

Another study published in Clinical Chiropractic September 2008 followed a group of forty three infants receiving either spinal manipulative therapy or occipito-sacral decompression.  Both groups reported more than a 2 hour per day reduction in time spend crying, and increase of more an 1 hour per day in time spend sleeping and after four weeks more than 65% of the babies where no long colicky.

For more information of treatment of colic in babies or general chiropractic care contact your chiropractor in Alexandria.

Colic has been tied to everything form an upset stomach to headaches.  Many chiropractors believe that some colicky infants may actually be experiencing back pain.  After all a trip through the birth canal is bound to be tough on even an infant’s back.

There is of course controversy regarding the use of chiropractic care in the treatment of infants.  Much of the criticism is based on a fear that chiropractors will aggressively manipulate the fragile spines.

Anyone who has experienced that pain of watching your new child cry for hours on end can appreciate the desperation a parent feels when they are looking for resolution to their child’s colic.  Many parents are considering chiropractic care as another avenue to explore.

In the dorsal region the transverses are larger and 

stronger and more constant in size, shape, and direction, 

serving to support rib articulations. They extend in a 

curved direction outward, backward, and slightly upward 

from the union of laminae and pedicles and terminate in a 

large subcutaneous club-shaped extremity which may be 

readily palpated. The eleventh and twelfth dorsal trans- 

verses do not articulate with the ribs and must therefore 

be used with caution or not at all as levers for adjustment. 

The dorsal transverses are located on a higher level than 

the spinous processes. In the case of the upper three dor- 

sals the transverse lies in a plane which would cross the 

mid-spinal line between its own and the next superior spin- 

ous. Presented by Atlanta Chiropractic In the mid-dorsal region the transverse is even with 

the spinous of the vertebra above, though the relation may 

vary slightly. The lower dorsals return to the same relation 

as the upper. 

Weston Fl Chiropractic presents: 

Every palpater unconsciously forms habits of thought 

and action. These habits may be good or bad We delib- 

erately form a habit of holding the first three fingers closely 

together or the habit of using a downward glide, but we 

should avoid the habit of finding certain subluxations be- 

cause they are usual and expected rather than because they 

are actually there. For instance, one may easily form a 

habit of listing every other vertebra in the spine, his whole 

record thus depending upon his first choice. 

Because of this perfectly natural tendency to establish 

a routine of thought and action and to follow it precisely, 

it is best not to attempt palpation without the aid of an ex- 

perienced teacher until after correct habits have been 

formed. Once formed, a palpation habit, right or wrong, 

is very hard to break. Many a teacher has expended him- 

self uselessly in the effort to undo some technical fault ac- 

quired by the student in a blundering undirected trial. 

Facts Concerning the Spine 

The spinal column is composed of twenty-six segments 

called vertebrae, twenty-four movable and two fixed. The 

movable vertebrae are divided for convenience in study into 

three sections. There are seven Cervical vertebrae, twelve 

Dorsal, and five Lumbar in the normal individual. The 

number of Dorsals or Lumbars may vary by one in a rare 

case. These variations occur in about one spinal column in 

each five hundred and are usually in the Lumbar region, 

which may contain four or six vertebrae. A prominent first 

sacral spinous process may be mistaken for an extra Lumbar. 

He will take the tile to review all aspects of your medical history to help  uncover the source of your pain and the perform medical tests to make a diagnosis and prescribe a treatement routine.

Pembroke Pines Chiropractic presents this excerpt from a 1930’s text on Chiropractic technique.

Vertebral Palpation consists in the use of the tactile 

sense to detennine the position, relation, size, shape, and as 

far as possible the condition, of the segments of the spinal 

column, in order thus to discover the primary causes indica- 

tive of disease. 

Or, Vertebral Palpation is the name given the manual 

examination of spinal vertebrae. 

General Propositions 

Every palpation should be made with the adjustment of 

the vertebrae in mind. The record of palpation should be 

a correct guide as to direction of adjustment. No subluxa- 

tion impossible of adjustment should be recorded. 

The two essentials of correct palpation are accurate per- 

ception and correct reasoning. To secure the first, a certain 

approved manner of using the hands is herein laid down 

and a considerable amount of tactile sense development by 

practice is required. Correct reasoning depends upon 

knowledge of all the important facts concerning the spine 

and of the rules governing palpation. 

Absolute concentration is required and to this end many 

of the following rules are directed. 

An abstract from a respected Chiropractic Text: Atlanta Chiropractor

Law Governing Location

So definite is the law governing the effect of force applied
to a given portion of the body upon an associated vertebral
segment that the skilled Chiropractor who has studied ver-
tebrate segmentation thoroughly may determine, from the
history of a fall or injury, the vertebra which would tend to
be subluxated by that injury and the tissues controlled from
that part. The rule is this :

Force applied to any body segment tends to snhluxate
the segmentally associated vertebra. This subluxation tends
to produce disease throughout the area of distribution of the
subjacent pair of spinal nerves.

The task of explaining this law seems hopeless unless
the student is familiar with human embryology and the life
history of the vertebrata, as well all the details of human

The transverse processes of the Lumbars are rela-

tively light compared with the general structure of the ver-

tebrae and are found just even with the interspace between

their own and the adjacent superior spinous process. They

vary greatly in size, length and strength and may be used

as levers for adjustment only when they are large enough

to be clearly palpable through the muscle mass which sepa-

rates them from the body surface. Presented By: Buckhead Chiropractor

Preparation of Patient

In all cases where a complete spinal examination is in-

tended the preparation is essentially the same. Have patient

arrange clothing so that the spine is exposed to the touch

throughout. Avoid bands of cloth across the spine, as these

interfere with the necessary continuous gliding movement

of the fingers. Advise the patient, if a female, to wear

waist or dressing sack, reversed, and have skirts loosened

at the waist. If a man, he should strip to the waist and

wear coat or coat shirt reversed.

Position of Patient

This varies widely according to circumstances but for

general purposes use position:

 (A) Place patient on stool, feet even on floor and body

in an easy, relaxed position. This may be modified by ask-

ing him to lean forward and rest elbows on knees, evenly,

to facilitate Lumbar palpation. Patient’s head may be erect

or flexed forward or backward but should never be rotated

or laterally flexed during Cervical palpation except for the

purpose of locating some particular transverse process.

A Chinese man had held up city traffic for hours while threatening to jump from a bridge.  An elderly gentleman in the crowd pushed through police lines, approached the man and reached out his hand in friendship.  When he got close enough, instead of shaking the suicidal man’s hand, the elderly Chinese man pushed the jumper who fell 20′ into a police catch net.
Lai Jiansheng, 66, said he was fed up with the desperate man’s “selfish activity” which caused huge traffic jams in Guangzhou, southern China…

…”I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish,” the newspaper quoted Mr Lai as saying.

“Their action violates a lot of public interests. They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Presented by: Wendell Chiropractor

Photo: Mammy’s Cupboard (Natchez, MS, United States)

What famous buildings are the dumbest?
Source

Photo: Erwin Wurm: House Attack (Viena, Austria)

Brought to you by Cebu Property & Manila Property.

Photo: The Basket Building (Ohio, United States)

Presented by: Chamblee Chiropractor

(d. 330, feast day August 18)

By Mary Lois, OSH

Helena was at one time the most important woman in the world, yet we know next to nothing about her. She was born about the middle of the third century, possibly in Drepanum on the Nicomedian Gulf, a seaside resort now quite vanished, in Turkey. She was of humble parentage. St. Ambrose referred to her as a stabularia, or inn-keeper. Nevertheless, she became the lawful wife of Constantius I Chlorus. Her first and only son, Constantine the Great, was born in Naissus in Upper Moesia, Serbia, in the year 274.

In 292 Constantius, being co-Regent of the West, gave himself up to considerations of a political nature and forsook Helena in order to marry Theodora, the step-daughter of Emperor Maximianus Herculius. In a court full of intrigue and murder, Helena formed no party, took no steps against her rival, but quietly accepted her disgrace. After her divorce, she settled at Trier (Trèves) where the Cathedral probably stands on the foundations of her palace. Almost certainly it was there that she became Christian.

Everyone knows the story of Constantine’s dramatic conversion. The Church historian Eusebius, whose Life of Constantine is a chief source of information for the period, relates that on the eve of a great battle in the year 312, Constantine had a dream (by some accounts the dream was preceded by a day-time vision) of a flaming cross in the sky, and beneath it were the words, in Greek, “In this sign conquer.” He proceeded south to the Tiber, where his victory over the Emperor Maxentius gave him control of the Western Empire.

Constantine remained faithful and loyal to his mother and probably effected her conversion. Lactantius, who was tutor to her grandson Crispus, may have helped instruct her. Her conversion is directly attested by this statement: “She [his mother] became under his [Constantine's] influence such a devout servant of God, that one might believe her to have been from her very childhood a disciple of the Redeemer of mankind.” On the death of Constantius Chlorus in 308, Constantine, who succeeded him, summoned his mother to the imperial court, conferred on Helena the title of Augusta, ordered that all honor should be paid her as the mother of the sovereign, and had coins struck bearing her effigy.

St. Helena Builder of Churches

Tradition links her name with the building of Christian churches in the cities of the West where the imperial court resided, notably at Rome and Trier. There is no reason to reject this tradition, for we know positively through Eusebius that Helena erected churches on the hallowed spots of Palestine. Despite her advanced age, she undertook a journey to Palestine when Constantine, through his victory over Licinius, had become sole master of the Roman. Then, when she “had shown due veneration to the footsteps of the Savior,” she had two churches erected. One was raised in Bethlehem near the Grotto of the Nativity, the other on the Mount of the Ascension, near Jerusalem. She also embellished the sacred grotto with rich ornaments.

This sojourn in Jerusalem proved to be the starting point of the legend, first recorded by Rufinus, as to the discovery of the Cross of Christ. The Empress Helena visited the Holy Places such as Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Sinai, determined where their churches would be built, and she and her son officially established for Christendom the cult of the Cross. However it is likely that the present Mount Sinai is not the true Sinai of Exodus but a mountain Helena decreed by fiat as Mount Sinai. That declaration is taken on faith by pilgrims to this day.

Eusebius tells of Constantine undertaking the excavations on Golgotha and building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 335. Later legend will have this archeology and architecture be Helena’s. Eusebius affirms Helena’s actions in this area in connection with the Bethlehem cave and basilica and with that on the Mount of Olives. He touchingly describes how she wished, quoting Psalm 132.7, to “worship at the place whereon his feet have stood.” He also describes how generous her gifts were to the naked and unprotected poor. To some she gave money, to others an ample supply of clothing. She liberated some from imprisonment or from the bitter servitude of the mines, still others she restored from exile.

But for this final, triumphant journey, she would have had no fame. We might think of her as someone who made the best of both worlds. The strong purpose of her pilgrimage shed a new light on the long years of uneventful retirement, showing us that it was by an act of will that she accepted her position. There is little of heroism or genius in any of this. We can assume that she was a thoroughly good woman in an age when palaces were mostly occupied by the wicked; but she lived grandly and comfortably, whereas most of the saints in every age have accepted poverty as the condition of their calling. We know of no suffering of hers, physical, spiritual, or mental, beyond the normal bereavements, disappointments, and infirmities which we all expect to bear. Yet she lived in an age when Christians had often to choose between flight, apostasy, or brutal punishment. Where, one may ask, lies her sanctity? Where the particular lesson for us who live in such very different circumstances?

The world of Constantine, as we catch glimpses of it, is utterly remote from ours. There are certain superficial similarities. Poetry was dead and prose dying. Architecture had lapsed into the horny hands of engineers. Sculpture had fallen so low that in all his empire Constantine could not find a mason capable of decorating his triumphal arch and preferred instead to rob the two-hundred-year-old arch of Trajan. An enormous bureaucracy was virtually sovereign, controlling taxation on the sources of wealth, for the pleasure of city mobs and for the defense of frontiers more and more dangerously pressed by barbarians from the East. The civilized world was obliged to find a new capital. All this seems familiar, but for the event of supreme importance the rise of Christianity. Helena, more than anyone, stands in the heart of that event.

She visited the churches everywhere and made rich donations to them. Her stay in Rome is chiefly identified with the church of St. Croce in Gerusalemme. The Palatium Sessorianum formerly stood on the present location of this church and nearby were the Thermae Helenianae, baths which derived their name from the Empress. Here two inscriptions were composed in honor of Helena. The Sessorium, which was near the site of the Lateran, probably served as Helena’s residence when she stayed in Rome, so that it is quite possible for a Christian basilica to have been erected on this spot by Constantine, at her suggestion and in honor of the true Cross.

Helena was still living in the year 326 when Constantine ordered the execution of his son Crispus. According to Socrates’s account, the emperor in 327 improved Drepanum, his mother’s native town, and decreed that it should be called Helenopolis. And she accepted that too.

Only in her religious practices did she maintain her private station, slipping into Mass at Rome among the crowd, helping with the housework at the convent on Mount Sion. She accepted the fact that God had a unique use for her. Others faced the lions in the circus; others lived in caves in the desert. She was to be St. Helena Empress, not St. Helena Martyr or St. Helena Anchorite. She accepted a state of life full of dangers to the soul in which many foundered, and she remained fixed in her purpose until at last it seemed God had no other need of her except to continue to the end, a kind old lady.

Legends of St. Helena

The story is often told how Saint Helena had arrived in Jerusalem on her pilgrimage in search of The True Cross. She believed that God had told her that she would eventually find this most holy of relics and restore it as a symbol of Christian worship. Helena had been searching for many days before she noticed a sweet-smelling plant growing on a barren hill outside Jerusalem. Immediately, she gave instructions to dig under the plant, where she discovered the cross on which Jesus had been crucified.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, England, started the legend that Helena was the daughter of the king of Colchester, but there is no historical foundation for this. In Celtic Britain, the legend persists that she was a Christian British slave from York, that she became Constantius’ concubine, and that he died A.D. 274 in York. It is true that Constantius spent some time in Britain putting down a rebellion among the Picts and Scots and died at York, but it is thought that he had cast off Helena and taken a new wife long before this time.

In liturgical art Helena is depicted as an empress, holding a cross.

Sponsered by: Spectacular Winery in Saint Helena