How well your body is able to resist the force of gravity dictates how much energy you exert in your day to day activities. The more efficient your ability to counter the force of gravity, the less energy your body needs to expend in order to keep you upright and the more energy it has to take care of every other metabolic process such as, digestion, hormone production, and respiration. It will also have more energy available for brain function. The better you are able to resist gravity, the less easily fatigued you will be.

Your central nervous system, made up of the brain and spinal cord, has one primary function…to adapt you in space, time, and need to your internal and external environment. It is the Intranet of your body. The brain acts as the main server and all the organs, cells and tissues of your body are like individual computer work stations. There is constant communication transmitting between your brain and your body. If the communication channels are clear, so is the communication. If, however, the communication pathways become cluttered with static, communication in the body breaks down. This is expressed as symptoms or disease in the human body.

Your brain and spinal cord are very delicate tissues. They are protected by your skull and the 24 bones of your spinal column. If these bones move slightly out of place, they will increase the tension on the spinal cord and the spinal nerves that feed to all the other nerves in your body. The result is a decrease in the clarity of communication between the brain and the body. As the communication starts to break down, less accurate data goes to the brain. This produces less accurate output to the body and the entire process begins to snowball out of control. The body will do its best to keep these communication pathways clear so it will find ways to compensate. (Remember, it wants to be efficient with its energy usage…everything wants to go to its lowest energy stare.)

These compensations will take place throughout the entire body. They will especially affect the 24 vertebra of the spine. Bones will move out of place and irritate the delicate tissues of the nervous system. This causes further “static on the phone lines” until finally the body is no longer able to compensate. Now, you have symptoms. These symptoms can range from pain in your back, neck, knees, shoulders, and elbows to digestive disorders, allergies, asthma, headaches and fatigue. Typically, where your pain is, is not where your problem is, it’s where your body has lost the ability to compensate. (The only real exceptions to this rule are direct trauma, fracture, infection, or tumors.)

Let me explain how this works…

Your brain and spinal cord are covered by a three layered membrane called the Meninges. (You’ve heard of meningitis…it’s an infection of the meninges.) The meningeal sleeve is the toughest tissue in the body. It is non-elastic but made of a fibrous, interwoven mesh, (much like the Chinese finger hand cuffs many of us played with as kids.) The way the tissue is woven allows for flexibility so you can bend and move, yet still protects the sensitive tissue of the brain and spinal cord. The meninges attach very thickly behind your face, throughout your skull, then they exit the skull through the Foramen Magnum (which means ‘big hole’ in Latin.) and attach to the upper two vertebra. From there the tissue “free falls” until it attaches at the base of the sacrum and into the coccyx. Along the way through the spinal canal, there are small ligaments, called Dentate ligaments, that attach from the meninges to the inside wall of each vertebra, through which the spinal cord passes. The mechanics of this system are important because any deviation of this tissue from a neutral position will lead to a condition of spinal cord tension. This increases the tension of all the nerve tissues in the body and begins the process of faulty communication between the brain and the rest of the body.

Now that we have discussed the anatomy of the spinal cord itself, it is important to understand how this system interfaces with the bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and discs of the spine, as well as all the other joints of the body.

Because the bones of the spinal column surround and protect the spinal cord, it is important to understand the mechanics of the spine. The vertebra of the spine not only protect the nerve tissues, they also act as attachment points for muscles and as fulcrums upon which those muscles can act in order to move you around in life. Knowing this, we know that if a spinal bone moves to the right, there are muscles that can pull from the left, if the brain sends a signal to those muscles, to bring that bone back into position. Also, if a bone moves backward, there are muscles attached to the pelvis and rib cage in front that can pull the bone back forward. If, however, a bone moves from back to front, what muscle is there to pull it straight back? None! There are no muscles to pull a spinal bone straight back. The muscles that are at the very back of the spinal canal, (Interspinus muscles) will tilt the vertebra up or down, but will never have the leverage to pull it back. Therefore, the only direction that a bone in the spine can move, that the body can not correct, is straight forward. If a bone moves forward, the only way the body can correct itself to relate better with gravity and be in a lower energy output state, is to compensate. The compensations occur throughout the body and only by counter torquing the body back into a better position.

This process of compensation is initiated by the brain, itself. There is a process in the brain that I call the “Efficiency Equation” of the brain…
The brain wants to keep the eyes level to the horizon, the body underneath it for maximum resistance to gravity, and thereby maintain the lowest energy output state.

So this is how the process works…

Let’s say you step off a curb at night and misjudge the step. You feel a sudden jolt and a sharp pain in your right lower back. We know that the only way you can be feeling pain is that a bone (or bones) moved into a position that the body can’t correct. Now you find yourself limping around bent over for a few days. Without realizing it, your brain is sending signals to all the muscles of the body to reconfigure in order to compensate and bring you into a more energy efficient state. After a few days you see a friend who asks, “Hey how’s your back?” To which you reply, “Oh, it hurt for a few days…but it got better on its own.”

Really? Did it get better, or did you compensate? You compensated! During this process of compensation, your meninges are stretched. Remember, the meninges are attached to each spinal bone. As each bone has to shift a little in order to get the body into a better position to resist gravity, the dentate ligaments are stretched. This further increases the tension on the meninges. This increased tension causes injury to the tissue and leads to scar tissue build up. Scar tissue does two things…it gets thicker and it contracts. What this means is that a minor injury and increase in tension becomes a much bigger problem later on.

As this process of injury/compensation continues you begin to lose the ability to compensate. It’s like winding up a rubber band airplane. The more you wind it up, the more tension you get, and the more bound up it becomes. In the body, the more you compensate, the less adaptable you become, the more you have to compensate. The more you compensate, the more scar tissue you develop, the thicker the tissue becomes and the more problems you end up with down the road. In our culture we call this process the normal aging cycle!

This does not have to be your reality any more.

With Advanced Biostructural Correction™ we now have the technology to correct the underlying cause of how your body broke down. Rather than simply treat the symptom and pain, we can correct the cause.

This approach is unique and unlike any other chiropractic method. It is based upon the research of Dr. Alf Breig, a Swedish neurosurgeon and the work of an American chiropractor, Dr. Jesse Jutkowitz. Because the only direction a bone can move that the body can’t fix is from back to front, you will not be adjusted lying face down. In fact, most of the adjustments are done while standing with your back against a wall. This ensures that you are being assisted in relating more optimally to the force of gravity. Before any adjustment is performed, however, the tension on the spinal cord is analyzed and a Meningeal Release is performed. This addresses the core issue of your problem and allows for an accurate analysis of exactly which bones of the body need to be corrected on that particular day. Once the corrections have been made, the brain gets completely new input from the body. Over the next 72 to 96 hours after an adjustment, the brain will take your body through a process of “unwinding”. Over time, you will experience, “migrating symptoms” as your body changes it’s relative position to gravity, based upon new input. Many patients say it’s like doing an archeological dig back through time as they revisit old injuries and compensations.

The end result is that your posture will improve with out you having to think about it, your skeletal structure will remodel to the new position and in line with gravitational forces, you will be able to breath more freely, move without hesitation or fear of injury and, in most cases, you will resume activities you thought you had to give up a long time ago.

Be advised, however, that this method of treatment is a process over time. It took time and a series of traumas and compensations to get you to where you care enough to read this. (i.e., in pain) It will take a process of treatments over a period of months to years in order to achieve proper correction. This is a process of re-building the body so bodybuilding is a good analogy. It takes time, frequency, dedication, determination and an expectation that life should be about being able to do the things you want to do, not giving those things up as the aging process beats you down. It’s the difference between demanding excellence in your life, or accepting mediocrity.

Our Goal is to Teach, Lead, and Empower our patients to achieve their Peak Potential for Health and Happiness. It’s all about excellence! But excellence takes energy, and focus.