Spinal Alignment (Neurological Upregulation)

Your nervous system controls the function of every cell, tissue and organ in your body and maintains proper communication between the brain and the body. In addition to controlling and coordinating appropriate responses necessary for adaptation, it also monitors your ever-changing needs.

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By using either hands or instruments, our treatments are gentle enough for newborns to grandparents.  We offer specific treatments to make corrections to the nervous system using a protocol which helps us determine the right treatment at the right time in the right place.  When you take the time to determine what’s primary, the resulting care is that much more powerful to bring about change.

Nervous System Influence on your Emotional Health

The brain and spinal cord are part of the mind-body system governing all aspects of your life. There is a highly specialized system of communication from the brain to the body and from the body to the brain.  We now know that the mind and body can be seen and treated as a whole, and that emotions can be accessed through the body as well as the mind. Just as anxiety created in the brain can cause true gastric distress, “butterflies in the stomach”, tension on nervous tissue passing through a misaligned joint can cause emotional tension in the brain as well.

Nervous System Influence on the Digestive System

Although all body function is controlled by the nervous system (the brain), there is a particularly intimate relationship with the digestive tract.  The digestive tract is deeply embedded with a very specialized nerve system. It is, in some respects, an independent “second brain” in direct communication and influence of the brain via the vagus nerve. This shows the importance of a properly functioning spine and nerve flow when the body is battling digestive disorders and attempting gut re-balancing. This is also why what you eat is critically important because it affects how your brain functions. Nutritional consulting is an essential component to Chiropractic care.

Nervous System Influence on the Immune & Endocrine Systems

The nervous and immune systems are clearly in communication with each other. It has been shown that the immune system does not work autonomously and can be conditioned; it is under direct influence of the brain and receives instruction via the nerve network. Furthermore, the nerve, immune and endocrine (hormone) systems are functionally integrated into what looks like a psychoimmunoendocrine network.

Applied Kinesiology

Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a system that evaluates structural, chemical and mental aspects of health using manual muscle testing.

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AK has provided practitioners (DC’s, DM’s, DO’s, MD’s, DDS’s,PScD’s, acupuncturists) with a useful tool in understanding the holistic connections within the mind-body, and has provided insight into the subtle interconnections between organ/gland function to muscles.  In short, the body organizes itself in circuits (acupuncture meridians), and when an organ (which is a master switch on the circuit) is impaired in function, there will be a manifestation in muscle imbalance (weakness) within the body.

For example, say the kidneys are being stressed due to toxic accumulation of a heavy metal that will manifest as a weakness within a kidney related muscle (psoas).  (This may occur well before conventional lab tests may indicate this problem.) What may be felt symptomatically is back pain, due to the relationship between the kidney’s and the lumbar spine supporting psoas muscles.

It’s this organ muscle testing relationship that is at the root of many apparently structural complaints that respond poorly to straight physical therapy approaches.  Have you ever heard of someone seeing a chiropractor or PT once or twice a week for over a year, or longer, and not seem to resolve their low back pain problem? There’s a good chance the problem didn’t have a structural origin in such cases.

The Triad of Health

A model for ideal health is seen by viewing a perfectly balanced triangle.   When someone is healthy, they have a perfect balance between mental/emotional, biochemical/nutritional, and structural aspects of their mind-body.  If one side of a triangle becomes out of balance, so do the other sides.   Likewise, a structural imbalance in the neck can alter neurological communication to an organ, like the stomach, which may lead to improper acid production in the organ, and a resulting overgrowth of harmful microorganisms within the small and large intestines.   A more common reaction of mental affecting chemical and structural, would be receiving news of an unexpected death. The shock of such news can make one sick to their stomach (mental affecting chemical), and such mental tension can translate into tight muscles around the neck, causing a “stiff neck”.  The reality is that these interconnections between the mental, structural, chemical aspects of the mind-body occur well before they become obviously symptomatic.

Disease Progression

Medical doctors are trained at treating disease, but there is much dysfunction that occurs before the body has reached a diseased state.  This explains why someone can feel poorly and have a thorough examination by a medical doctor, only to be told nothing is wrong. In reality, something is clearly wrong with the patient, but the diagnostic tools used by the medical doctor may not be sensitive enough to pick up dysfunction before it reaches a disease state.  Ideally, treatment begins to prevent dysfunction degrading to a disease state. If the problem is heavy metals affecting the kidneys (example above), which in turn weakens the psoas, which in turn causes instability in the spine, which in turn causes pinching of a nerve in the lumbar spine, then a proper approach would be to identify the source of the metal poisoning, and secondly to realign the structure to eliminate the pain.  Combining both in this scenario will provide the best path towards wellness for the patient. A good AK assessment can help properly identify this causal chain of events, and also specifically identify remedies most appropriate for that individual to help eliminate the toxin and repair the tissue.

Nutritional Muscle Testing

Nutritional Muscle Testing is an advanced system of analyzing the body to determine an underlying cause of poor health, poor nutrition and toxins built up in the body.  We use a system of muscle testing that can reveal an amazing amount of information about your body, painlessly and easily. This system of healing can let the practitioner determine the cause of underlying imbalances that cause many of our symptoms.  Then we can isolate and verify the precise whole food supplements and quantities your body needs to help bring the body back into balance. The body has the full potential to fully repair itself when given the right nutrients.


What is Muscle Testing?

Muscle testing can be defined as a neurological test for evaluating the body’s electromagnetic potentials. We are working with the nervous system which is an electrical system. It has positive and negative current flows. The flow of current creates a measurable electromagnetic field around the body and can be short circuited just like an electrical system in our homes.

We first test your muscles for basic functional strength. If that muscle is “strong” when tested “in the clear” (while not being compared to another factor) that muscle can be used as an indicator for optimal or sub-optimal balance of other areas of your body. For example, your knee, elbow, liver, stomach, etc. can be checked with a related muscle test. If the indicator muscle and the area in question are tested simultaneously, the indicator muscle answers the question: Is this area balanced?  Each time a muscle is being tested, it equates to asking the body a question. Each muscle response (strong or weak) reveals the answer to that question.  Muscle testing may be used to evaluate energetic imbalances or dysfunctions before a serious problem evolves. Muscle testing may be used to learn the body’s compatibility with specific foods, cosmetics, nutrients, fabrics, etc.