How The Spine Controls Our Health | Chiropractor in Mount Pleasant, TX
So today I’m gonna walk you through and talk to you about some of the technology that we use here in the clinic for both detecting subluxation, finding out where your problems are, as well as monitoring your progress over time. So today I’m demonstrating the MALA vision software. And what we do with the scans, we do like thermography scan, and then a surface EMG scan, the thermography scan is actually measuring its high tech very sensitive thermometers that are measuring the temperature alongside the spinal cord.
Using Technology to Help Diagnose the Cause of Your Pain
Here on the left, you see at thermography scan results right here. This is in a bar graph format, which is important because it shows us where this patient’s highest readings are, which are up here in the neck at this C-1 area. She also has high readings in the C-5, C-6, we can also demonstrate this in a line format, which is important to us because we’re not just interested in what the readings themselves are. But we’re also interested in the pattern, we know that a healthy body is continuously changing this continuously and continuously working to maintain homeostasis, adapting to stress and all of the input that we’re constantly bombarded with. So a healthy nerve systems constantly changing, we don’t want to see somebody locked in the same pattern, visit after visit. All right, so the next side of this scan, the next scan that we do is called a surface EMG very similar to probably what you’re familiar with an EKG, which measures the contractions of the heart and the heart muscles.
Here what we’re measuring is the muscle tenicity and the muscle activity right alongside that spinal cord. This is important because muscles don’t fire on their own. They only fire if, if a nerve tells them to. And we want those muscles to be firing symmetrically and balanced from left to right in order to keep your spine and nervous system balance. That’s going to demonstrate a healthy spine and nervous system. We want this scan to look like this, we want all of these readings to be green and even on both even on both sides that’s representative of a healthy nervous system. What we’re looking at here is a nervous system that’s under a lot of stress right now, we can look at it on the balance graph right here and you’re gonna see that this patient’s muscles are pulling predominantly to the left, so everybody’s going to be continuously listen to that left side.
How Different Parts of Your Spine Control Your Health
I’m going to take you through this scan and show you just in a little bit more detail how this can tie in to the different organs and systems in the body. So if you have a subluxation up here in this top level of the neck, the cervical region, especially the C-1. These nerves impact your pituitary gland, your brain also your ears, the inner ear, outer ear so both hear hearing, balance and equilibrium. This can show up and patients with symptoms such as headaches, nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, chronic recurring head colds, allergies, sinuses, on even in some cases with social wellness, high blood pressure, heart palpitations, symptoms of anxiety and depression. Dizziness and chronic fatigue can definitely impact our sleep patterns. As we work our way down the cervical spine here at C-2 to these nerves go to the eyes, sinuses, tongue so I can impact your vision sinuses again, we’re talking allergies, sinuses with East Texans. We know that’s a big issue around here. All right. In the children, earaches, or even adults excess wax production, and fainting spells that’s certainly not something to take lightly right there. We’ve seen that in a few different patients over the years. At the C-4, C-5 region these nerves go to the the glands of the neck head face can impact things such as the tonsils, adenoids, cause laryngitis, hoarseness, C-6 again the nerves right there to the to the tonsils are but you may feel this you may experience tightness, stiffness soreness in the next in the neck. In some cases, you may feel that radiate radiate out into the shoulders, even eventually showing up as numbness and tingling in the hands and fingers. Oftentimes carpal tunnel folks think that that’s a wrist problem, but the reality is most often that can be linked back to a neck problem.
How Your Cervical Spine Influences Your Health
Problems in this neck especially in the lower cervical neck, that’s part of the group of nerves called the brachial plexus, the nerves here at C-7 and that goes to your thyroid. As girls, we really understand the importance of thyroid. And if you’ve ever struggled with thyroid issues, you too can definitely appreciate that the thyroid is important for many things. It is one of the master hormone regulators in the body. So anytime we have hormonal issues, always need to consider thyroid via that thyroid testing. However we get blood work done, we can test the thyroid, but yet still most folks don’t realize it’s also tied back to the spine and the nerve system. Many times someone with a thyroid issue has had years of chronic cervical pain, stiffness, tightness, and many of the other symptoms we already talked about, and they just never related that to the thyroid. Again thyroid issues that can impact your sleep patterns, body temperature, maybe you’re too cold, maybe you’re too high. Those are those are duties of your thyroid gland. Weight loss also, when we get into the upper thoracic region, right here at the upper thoracic at T-2, guys, these nerves go to your heart. And again, you would feel this as tightness in the upper back, maybe even the neck possibly radiating out to the shoulders.
The Spine and Our Heart Health
We all know one of the cardinal signs of a heart attack is pain coming down this arm and numbness and tingling in the hands and the fingers. All right, but it’s not an arm problem. It’s a spine problem. And this spine problem can definitely create heart problems. So with the heart, you’re looking at things like high blood pressure, low blood pressure, heart palpitations, and many times these things aren’t detected, they aren’t found until it’s too late. We know that 50% of the time. Most folks don’t realize they have heart disease or a problem with the heart until they experience the very first heart attack. And for 50% of those people they died with a first heart attack. Guess that’s more than 300,000 Americans per year, dying of heart disease that could have been detected and corrected. And the T-3 they serve scoped to the lungs can cause issues such as bronchitis, congestion, frequent infection, like the bronchitis, influenza, asthma, those those type of issues.
How the Thoracic Portion of Our Spine Controls Our Health
Working our way down your T-4 is the gallbladder I would say that’s probably that and tonsils two most common organs that I see removed from the human body. I like to think God knew what He was doing when he put these organs in there and that gallbladder definitely serves a purpose. This T-4 upper thoracic region, definitely a frequent area where we experience tightness, stiffness, pain soreness through there. All right, T-5 the nerves to your liver. The liver is super important when it comes to detoxification of your body. If your body is not properly detoxing and cleansing, this could definitely be a liver issue. link back to this mid thoracic spine. T-6 these nerves go to your stomach, acid reflux, indigestion probably one of the most common ailments that I see patients come in with that I’m glad to say we also see clear up rapidly in our patients. All right. The pancreas, spleen, you can see as we work our way down that spine. going to pause here at T-9. These nerves are super important so they go to your adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands are your stress glands, and they pump out things like adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, the stress hormones. If we have chronic stress in this area, it can actually cause and lead to exhaustion of these adrenal glands.
So then when we are actually under stress, and we need that burst of adrenaline, the adrenal glands are tanked, they have nothing left to give. This is what leads into Adrenal Exhaustion which can also cause problems with high blood pressure, exhaustion, sleep problems, things of that nature. T-10 here are the nerves to the kidneys, chronic fatigue again, nephritis, T-10 the ureters. T-12 are the nerves to the small intestine large intestine right there at T-12, L-1. This can show up in our patients come in experiencing a low back pain, sometimes even pain radiating down the legs or across to the front side of that leg with a femoral nerve that it can show up in the body with problems such as constipation or diarrhea. Guys, ideally, every time you eat a meal, you should have a bowel movement. The body has detoxification cleansing processes to clean that waste product out of this out of our bodies. If we’re not dumping and cleaning that consistently enough, then we’re going to be storing it up and that can definitely lead to long term problems. We should be having three to four bowel movements daily. All right, not two to three a week, three to four daily, right there.
How the Lumbar Portion of Our Spine Controls Our Health
The nerves had L-2 go to the appendix. L-3, these are the nerves to the bladder, also to the ovaries uterus and the prostate. We see problems such as urinary weakness incontinence, when as that gets severe in the ladies, this could show up as menstrual issues, be it an irregular cycle, endometriosis, Polycystic Ovarian disease, things of that nature. On L-3 are the nerves that also radiate down the legs, and they go to the knees, they go to your knees, ankles and feet. So somebody with chronic weakness or recurring the injuries of the knees, ankles and feet, that can very well be linked back to a problem in this elderly region. L-4, L-5 these are that sciatic nerve, most of you I’ve heard of that sciatic nerve, it is indeed the largest nerve in the body. And it travels from this lower lumbar spine all the way down the legs through here. Okay, can even cause problems with circulation in the legs, it travels with the largest artery in the body, which is that femoral arteries when we have an inflamed sciatic nerve that can definitely impact that femoral artery, which through a cascade of events can even contribute back to conditions such as high blood pressure.
So that’s your body, it’s highly complicated. It’s definitely far more complicated and detailed than this program is demonstrating here. But I wanted you to see some of the software that we use here in our clinic, like I said, to both help us and identify identifying where the primary problems with the nervous system are, but also in tracking your progress over time. So we’re going to come back and we’re going to rescan this patient, and we should be able to see a significant change in these scans over time. So Thanks and we’ll see you next time!
