Present information on normal placement of the upright spine reveals the importance of head position in relationship to your body. It is of extreme importance that the position of the cervical spine allow for your head to sit back atop of your shoulders.Sadly, the effects of gravity, poor posture, the weight of the head, or past trauma will cause neck and skull misplacement leading to something called “Forward Head” syndrome, meaning the forward displacement of the head where your chin is out in front of your shoulders and chest that causes pathological tension on the spinal cord and brain stem.

Rene Cailliet, M.D., director of the department of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Southern California, wrote about the effects of forward head syndrome in his book “Rejuvenation Strategy.”

1. Incorrect head positioning leads to improper spinal function.
2. The head in forward posture can add up to 30 pounds of abnormal leverage on the cervical spine.
3. Forward head posture results in loss of vital lung capacity. In fact, lung capacity is depleted by as much as 30 percent. Loss of lung capacity leads to heart and blood vascular problems.
4. The entire gastrointestinal system is affected, particularly the large intestine. Loss of good bowel peristaltic function and evacuation is a common condition that comes with forward head posture and loss of spinal lordotic curves.
5. Forward head posture causes an increase in discomfort and pain. Freedom of motion in the first four cervical vertebrae is a major source of stimuli that causes production of endorphins in production many otherwise non-painful sensations are experienced as pain.
6. Forward head posture causes loss of healthy spine-body motion. The entire body becomes rigid as the range of motion lessens. Soon, one becomes hunched.

As the above comments by Dr. Cailliet show, it’s incredibly important to restore the skull and cervical spine back to their normal position, which can be done by focusing on four areas:

• Correcting the position of the skull
• Adjusting pertinent cervical vertebrae
• Rehabilitating the musculature in the back of the neck and upper shoulders
• Correcting any imbalances in posture i.e.: high shoulder, torso rotation, lateral head flexion or rotation

Such treatments can only be offered by highly trained chiropractors. Remember, standard manipulation and physical therapy will not resolve forward head posture, and neither will taking medications or having surgery for the resulting effects of this condition.
Seek out chiropractors who are able to measure the degree of forward head posture and provide a care plan designed to correct it. The problem and the correction of the problem can be measured through postural evaluation as well as a re-x-ray.

Dr. Jason Gerard is trained with a technique that aggressively and quickly removes forward head posture and thus plays a major role in restoring your health

By Dr. Ben Lerner

Recently United Healthcare began making a huge push to have all children vaccinated before the age of two by making the vaccinations free. They have even made it public by sending out letters to parents notifying them that their child or children are not up to date with their current vaccine schedule.  Included in this letter is the opportunity to receive a twenty dollar gift card to McDonald’s, Rite Aid, Target, or Meijer, once your child receives their missing shots. Yes, you read correctly: In exchange for poisoning your child or children you will receive a gift certificate so that you can get a Big Mac and a happy meal as a reward.

This is crazy! Not to mention that insurance companies are so desperate to inject your children with poison that free rides are also available to the hospital or “health care” facility of your choice.  Come get your poison and in the near future, your obesity. That’s ultimately what the advertisement should say. The kicker is they are not responsible for any reaction that your children could have from either.

“A U.S. Supreme Court decision has just given drug companies total liability protection for injuries and deaths caused by government mandated vaccines. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) called the decision a “betrayal” of the American consumer.  The court decision leaves parents with no way to hold vaccine makers accountable and no feasible way to get compensation for the injuries suffered by their children; furthermore, the decision removes all financial incentive for multi-national drug companies to make vaccines as safe as they can be.”¹ There would be no reason to give liability to the vaccine companies or provide exemption forms if these things were safe in the first place.  Now there is no need for these companies to try to keep the vaccines relatively safe at all so it’s open season to see how cheap and lucrative they can be at the same time.

The Supreme Court has now given the drug industry a green light to lobby legislators to require every American who lives to be 78 years old to get more than 130 doses of government recommended vaccines starting on the day of birth through the last year of life.²This is exactly why they got into that profession, knowing that people will continue to get sick and that they can require us to continue getting the shots because of the delusional sicknesses that they are suppose to protect against.  It’s a never ending deadly cycle.

Thank God for the chiropractic principle and the 5 Essentials of Maximized Living.  I want all of you to know that the greatest doctor lives within each one of you and if you follow the principle that healing comes from within and do the things necessary to facilitate that healing there is no reason you or your children need to rely on anything from the outside to get you well.  If health comes from within, how do we get healthy and stay healthy?  Provide a stress free environment, 100% nerve flow from above-down, eat God foods, flood your body with oxygen by burst training, and get rid of the toxins. That’s the only way to get healthy!

Source: MaximizedLiving.Com

Millions suffer with disc problems every day. Many just suffer with the problem or take a medication to cover up the pain and agony that associates the problem – low back pain, sciatic pain, and numbness and tingling. A herniated disc is a disc in the spine that pushes out and puts pressure on the nerves coming out of the spine.  The question almost never solved nor uncovered is what caused the disc herniation in the first place!  The accident or fall or injury forces the disc to herniate, but what physically happens to cause this?

If you were to look at your spine from the side it should have three 45 degree curves in it: one in the neck, one in the mid-back, and one in the low back. The three perfectly symmetrical curves help to support and hold up your body and to absorb the impact of everyday life. Without these curves, your spine becomes unstable. The most common area of disc herniations, the low back, should have a 45 degree curve.  If that curve starts to straighten out it is like straightening out a banana with it’s peel on. What happens to the banana? It smashes. That is exactly what happens to the discs, which are in between every vertebrae in your spine.  A slip or fall, or constant bad posture, or too much improper lifting, etc. cause that curve in the low back to decrease and straighten out.  As the curve straightens, more and more pressure is put on the discs. Eventually the discs cannot take it anymore and finally one will give. The discs bulges out like a squeezed balloon. This bulging presses into the near by nerve and makes it extremely irritated, hence all the pain.

So, most of the time the problem isn’t the herniated disc, it’s the loss of the structure in the spine.  A surgeon will go in, scrape off the bulging disc so it stops irritating the nerve.  But, does that fix the problem? No, the banana is still mashed, you just cleaned up the banana mush that was spilling out of the peel.  This quick fix type of patchwork is why up to 50-90% of back surgeries fail within 5 years, and then new patchwork needs to be done!¹ If you constantly patch the holes in your car’s tires and never realign them, what happens?  A blow out!  Now that’s a dangerous way to live.

Too many people in agony from herniated disc pain learn about this condition the hard way: after the suffering has already began.  The pain is so debilitating at times that many feel the only pathway to relief is to cut. But surgery is not the answer. The majority of back surgeries fail.² The return of the pain after back surgery is so common it has a special name: Failed Back Surgery Syndrome (FBSS). FBSS often entails chronic pain, sleeplessness, anxiety, depression, and de-conditioning.³ In addition it also increases one’s risk of developing peripheral artery disease, diabetes, and autoimmune disorders. These people are left with a further damaged spine, additional pain, less money, and the original unresolved problem. Most devastating of all, if not properly addressed, disc herniations keep people from doing the things they love to do with the people they love to do them with.

Maximized Living doctors have an excellent track record with herniated disc sufferers. Why? Because rather that masking the signs and symptoms of the problem, we address the root cause, by using the latest techniques available to correct spinal curves, straighten the spine from front to back, and strengthen postural muscles.

From Maximized Living Blog.

• One-half of all working Americans admit to having back pain symptoms each year. (2)
• Back pain is one of the most common reasons for missed work. In fact, back pain is the second most common reason for visits to the doctor’s office, outnumbered only by upper-respiratory infections.
• Most cases of back pain are mechanical or non-organic-meaning they are not caused by serious conditions, such as inflammatory arthritis, infection, fracture or cancer.
• Americans spend at least $50 Billion each year on back pain-and that’s just for the more easily identified costs. (3)
• Experts estimate that as many as 80% of the population will experience a back problem at some time in our lives. (4)

Unfortunately, the average person or medical physician treats back pain with over the counter or prescription medications.  While these drugs may or may not help with pain short term, in the long term there are many, many common and serious risks.

If you have heart disease, it has always been considered incredibly risky to take pain relieving drugs.  Now, however, the July, 2010 issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes showed that healthy people without heart concerns have a radically greater chance of all cardiovascular disease, fatal or non-fatal stroke than

those not taking these drugs.

Most importantly, no drug gets to the cause of back or any pain.  Back pain is nearly always biomechanical in nature.  If these biomechanics aren’t corrected, covering symptoms with drugs only allows the problem to go on unnoticed and get worse.  Like leaving or ignoring breaks squealing or red lights shining in your car, you’re allowing dysfunction to continue and escalate to a full blow out.

There are doctors that not only treat symptoms, but correct biomechanical disorders actually correcting the problem. You not only feel better, you function right.  Since the spine controls all function in the body, not only are you out of pain – you’re far healthier.

Maximized Living doctors are trained in spinal correction.  Follow their in-office and home recommendations and become the small % of the population without pain and on no pain-relievers.

Source

Strains

Back pain most often occurs:

• From strained muscles and ligaments
• From improper or heavy lifting
• After a sudden awkward movement
• Sometimes a muscle spasm can cause or be associated with back pain.

Structural problems

In some cases, back pain may be caused by structural problems, such as:

• Bulging or ruptured disks. Disks act as cushions between the vertebrae in your spine. Sometimes, the soft material inside a disk may bulge out of place or rupture and press on a nerve. But even so, many people who have bulging or herniated disks experience no pain from the condition.
• Sciatica. If a bulging or herniated disk presses on the main nerve that travels down your leg, it can cause sciatica — sharp, shooting pain through the buttock and back of the leg.
• Arthritis. The joints most commonly affected by osteoarthritis are the hips, hands, knees and lower back. In some cases arthritis in the spine can lead to a narrowing of the space around the spinal cord, a condition called spinal stenosis.
• Skeletal irregularities. Back pain can occur if your spine curves in an abnormal way. If the natural curves in your spine become exaggerated, your upper back may look abnormally rounded or your lower back may arch excessively. Scoliosis, a condition in which your spine curves to the side, also may lead to back pain.
• Osteoporosis. Compression fractures of your spine’s vertebrae can occur if your bones become porous and brittle.

Rare but serious conditions

In rare cases, back pain may be related to:

• Cauda equina syndrome. This is a serious neurological problem affecting a bundle of nerve roots that serve your lower back and legs. It can cause weakness in the legs, numbness in the “saddle” or groin area, and loss of bowel or bladder control.
• Cancer in the spine. A tumor on the spine can press on a nerve, causing back pain.
• Infection of the spine. If a fever and a tender, warm area accompany back pain, the cause could be an infection.

Source: Mayo Clinic

That being said, there are times in life when things don’t go as expected.  I know a lot of people who are under a tremendous amount of stress right now.  So I thought it might be helpful to talk about ways to handle the stress.  Here are a few tips you can use to improve how you feel when you’re under stress. 

1. Calm Yourself Down 

Before you do anything else, try to calm yourself down.  Don’t panic.  Take deep breaths and try to relax.  The rest of the tips below won’t help you if you aren’t calm.

2. Feed Your Mind With Positive Thoughts

When you’re under stress, it’s easy to fall into the vicious cycle of negative thoughts.  The problem with this is the negative thought cycle will actually make things seem worse than they already are.  It’s important that you break this cycle so you don’t become a victim of your own thoughts.

3. Think About The Good

When under stress, our minds tend to focus on the negative and not the positive.  So direct your mind to the positive.  Even when things are going bad, or things are stressful, there are good things happening in your life.  Think about the good people around you.  Try to balance out your perspective so that you don’t dwell on only the negative.

4. Look At The Big Picture

Something you’re stressed about might not seem as bad if you step back and look at the big picture.  Try to get another perspective on what’s going on.

5.  Believe That Everything Will Be All Right

What you believe has an effect on you, whether you like it or not.  That’s just the way it is.  So if you believe that things will go wrong, then that would usually be the case.  On the other hand, if you believe that everything will be all right, you have a much better chance of that actually happening.

6. Exercise

When you’re under stress, make sure you take the time to exercise.  Exercise is related to positive mental health and helps with depression and anxiety.

7. Forgive

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The weak can never forgive.  Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”  Sometimes in life, you need to forgive others.  Sometimes you need to forgive yourself.  Work on forgiveness.

8. Take Action

Things in your life aren’t going to get any better if you just sit around and do nothing.  Focus on solutions to improving your stress and any problems you have in life and then set up the action steps you need to take to make it happen.

9. Gratitude

Practice gratitude.  What are you grateful for?  Who are you grateful for?  Focus on what’s right in your life instead of what’s wrong.  Every day answer this question…”What am I grateful for?”  Focusing on gratitude regularly is very powerful.

10. Get Adjusted

Chiropractic care has a tremendous stress reducing effect on your body.  Make sure you take care of your body regularly when you are under stress.  Make sure you are eating healthy foods, getting plenty of rest, and keep your muscles and joints healthy with chiropractic care and massage therapy.

I hope these help you out.  If you know anyone who’s under a lot of stress, email them these tips to help them out.

Have a great day and I’ll talk to you soon,

Dr. Jason Gerard

Lakewoods Chiropractic

Resource: www.lifeoptimizer.org

Why is this? 

I think it’s because we were never taught to take care of our back on regular basis…like how we take care of our teeth.  The simple fact is most people neglect their spinal health.  They take a “reactive approach” which means they do nothing until a problem is already there.

The better approach would be to take care of not only your spine but your health on a regular and consistent basis.  Aging and stress break down our bodies and unless we are doing something positive to keep our bodies healthy, then we are on a crash course with back and body problems.

If you’ve had really bad back pain, you know what a life changer it can be.  It’s miserable.  It negatively affects everything.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Here are some simple things you can take to reduce or eliminate your back pain:

* First, it starts with “how you think.”  The bottom line is you can’t ignore your spinal health.  There is a price to pay for neglect.  The best approach to health is “attention” instead of neglect.  You will want to take care of not only your spine but the rest of your body on a regular basis…even when you are feeling good.  After all, you brush your teeth everyday and your teeth don’t have pain.  After all, who says you need to be in pain to take care of yourself?

* Next, use services that work great for back pain.  Chiropractic care has been PROVEN countless times to be the BEST choice for back pain.  So when you have back pain, make sure you get adjusted.  And when you are feeling good, get an adjustment once a month to MAINTAIN your good health.  A monthly adjustment will not only prevent major back “flair ups” but will also keep your spine healthy.  Massage therapy and acupuncture can also help with back pain and stiffness.

* Exercise regularly.  Your body was meant to “move.”  Your joints like motion, so if you aren’t moving and exercising regularly, your joints will stiffen up.  This includes your back.  So make sure you are active and exercising.  Even something simple like taking a walk every day is better than doing nothing.

* Stretch regularly.  It’s important that you keep the muscles in your back and legs limber and flexible.  The tighter these muscles get, the bigger chance you have of developing back pain.  Make sure you stretch after you exercise.

* Pay attention to how you lift things.  Make sure you bend with your legs and not at the waist.   Keep the object you are lifting as close to you as possible.  And try not to bend and twist.  Instead, turn your entire body.

* Check your mattress.  It’s important that you have a quality mattress that gives you BOTH comfort and support.  A bad mattress can be a cause of developing back pain.

* Watch your posture.  A bad posture doesn’t just look bad; it’s bad for your back too.  Pay attention to how you stand and sit.  If you work at a desk all day, or on a computer, make sure you maintain good posture.

I promise that if you incorporate these strategies into your daily routine, your back will feel great!

If you have any questions or comments, just email me.  I’d love to hear from you!

Sincerely,

Dr. Jason Gerard, DC