Creation Chiropractic Blog - Eden Prairie MN

People get overwhelmed with everything they are told they’ve “got”. Whether they actually have a condition or not, the one thing they’ve definitely got is fear.  What do I mean?  When you walk into a doctor’s office, you can get scared to death just from the diagnosis alone! They sound intimidating, awful and just plain foreign. Many diagnoses are not nearly as serious as they sound and do not represent the actual cause of the problem. Many other diagnoses are so general and non-specific that they seem like a desperate attempt to just put a label on anything they can find.

Take something like a nerve condition.  If a nerve is inflamed, they just add an “itis” on the end and voila!  You have neur-itis: nerve inflammation.  “Algia” means pain, so neuralgia means “nerve pain”.  Neuropathy?  Well, “pathy” means suffering or disease so that diagnosis just means “nerve disease”.  

What does it all mean?  Much of the time when you are diagnosed with something, it sounds like a death sentence when it is really just describing a certain thing they suspect is going on.  So, if you have nerve pain or inflammation and they don’t find anything else, you will be diagnosed with neuralgia or neuritis.  Neuropathy is such a general term that it could mean anything going on with the nerves, serious or subtle.

All these names are used to describe a kind of condition, but none of them actually says what is causing them.  And isn’t that the real issue at hand?  They can treat the effects of what they observe but none of it will get to the cause of why you have what you have.  In other words, a pain reliever or anti-inflammatory medication can effectively treat the effects of pain and inflammation and make your neuralgia and neuritis go away, but if the true cause of these conditions is not addressed, your health will go away too!

It’s time to spend more time looking at the “whys” in our body.  Why it is in pain, why it is inflamed or why it has any condition for that matter.  There are very good reasons why our body does any and all of the things it must do to survive.  If we just ignore this fact, we are treading on thin ice.  This is the main reason why people end up with more and more medications and treatments where the actual cause is not addressed.

As a Chiropractor, we are experts at working with your nervous system.  However, we don’t diagnosis or treat anything in your body.  We simply allow your body to function at a higher level when we remove interference to your nerves and the Innate Intelligence that controls your nerves. When this happens, many conditions go away just because your body does not need them anymore to survive at a lower level of function.

Chiropractic doesn’t treat neuralgia, neuritis or neuropathy because treatments cannot address the cause of why your nerves are not functioning properly in the first place.  Chiropractic is ultimately about the cause of your dysfunction.  Yet, these conditions and many more often go away by asking the simple question “Why”. And since Chiropractors are the only doctors trained to remove a specific interference to your nervous system called spinal subluxation, there are many people who suffer unnecessarily because they are only told what and where, but not how or why.

The questions you ask in your life are more important than the answers because you will never get the right answers with the wrong questions.  Start asking yourself, “Why do I even have this diagnosis they want to treat?” Only then can you begin to move forward towards a better, healthier version of yourself.  See a Chiropractor to make sure a major cause of all those scary sounding nerve conditions is not keeping you in fear.  Replace your fears with function and get checked today.

If you’ve ever swung a golf club and either hit the ball wrong or hit the ground, you know how it feels as the force travels up the shaft to your hands.  The concussion actually happens at the club head, but you feel it all the way up your arms.  A similar dynamic happens when we experience a concussion with the head on our shoulders.  As our head hits another object or the ground, we might have the illusion that only our head suffers the damage but as the force moves down our spine, our entire body suffers from a blow to our head.  

Your spine absorbs the shock of a head concussion like the golf club absorbs the shock of swing.  What’s worse, the shock to your spine often cause misalignments of your neck bones which in turn causes interference to the nerves feeding back to your head, worsening the head injury. As time goes by with the problem unresolved, the damage eventually shows up in the brain but the damage in the spine continues to go undetected. 

Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI machine, recently observed that spinal trauma occurs about 11 years prior to the diagnosis of common brain conditions.  This is how impactful the spine is to the brain and brain function!  Without treating anything, Chiropractors can assess your spine and nervous system to remove interference in the spine but even more importantly, remove interference to your brain when you are desperately trying to recover from an injury such as a concussion:  All without even touching your brain.

When spinal interference is removed with a Chiropractic adjustment, your potential returns to normal and allows you to heal as well as possible. Dr. Damadian has also documented significant recovery from what were otherwise considered difficult medical cases when someone received Chiropractic care for the first time. In his words, he was “astonished” to see the affect that Chiropractic had on chronic, concussion related injuries that were not improving with medical care.

It is essential to realize that a head concussion is also a spinal concussion.  When someone gets treated for a concussion, it is very important to have his or her spine checked as well because if your spine isn’t working properly, your brain can’t possibly heal properly.  And since you can’t feel this interference until it gets worse, the only way to know for sure is to have a Chiropractic evaluation.  

Another concern with concussions is preventing them. Although there are more advancements being made, such as sports equipment and rules to try and decrease the blows outside your body, Chiropractic can improve your chances of withstanding concussion blows from within your body.

Because your nervous system controls everything in your body, Chiropractic adjustments remove interference to this system, allowing your body to function optimally in any environment like a field, a car or a sidewalk.  Chiropractic improves strength, flexibility and balance, which are all important in a situation that can produce a concussion and improve the ability to receive a concussive force.  The stronger and less compromised your body is before and during a blow, the better you are able to withstand an injury that could produce a concussion. If you can get checked by a Chiropractor before an injury even occurs, your body will be at its best to withstand any kind of blow, concussion or not. 

Medical experts are just now realizing the vital connection between the spine and the brain related to concussions, but they are not trained to check your spine for the specific interference as only a Chiropractor can.  There are 3.8 million concussions reported each year and in a day and age where concussion injuries are being recognized as happening more often than anyone ever knew, it is essential to understand what exactly a concussion really is and what it takes to get better again.  See a Chiropractor to make sure concussions don’t deal you a lower blow than they already are.

A slip on the snowy sidewalk, in winter, is a SMALL thing. It happens to millions. A fall from a ladder, in the summer, is a SMALL thing. That also happens to millions. The slip or fall produces a subluxation. The subluxation is a SMALL thing. The subluxation produces pressure on a nerve. That pressure is a SMALL thing. The pressure cuts off the flow of mental impulses. That decreased flowing is a SMALL thing. That decreased flowing produces a dis-eased body and brain. That is a BIG thing to that man. Multiply that sick man by a thousand, and you control the physical and mental welfare of a city. Multiply that man by a million and you shape the physical and mental destiny of a State. Multiply that man by one hundred thirty million, and you forecast and can prophesy the physical and mental status of a nation.

Now comes a man. Any one man is a SMALL thing. This man gives an adjustment. The adjustment is a SMALL thing. The adjustment replaces the subluxation. That is a SMALL thing. The adjusted subluxation releases pressure upon nerves. That is a SMALL thing. The released pressure restores health to a man. That is a BIG thing to that man. Multiply that well man by a thousand, and you step up physical and mental welfare of a city. Multiply that well man by a million, and you increase the efficiency of a State. Multiply that well man by one hundred thirty million, and you have produced a healthy, wealthy, and better race for posterity. So adjustment of the subluxation, to release pressure upon nerves, to restore mental impulse flow, to restore health, is BIG enough to rebuild thoughts and actions of the world.

The idea that knows cause, that can correct cause of dis-ease, is one of the biggest ideas known. Without it, nations fall; with it, nations rise.

The idea is the BIGGEST I know of.

~Dr. B.J. Palmer, 1944

Your head weighs about the same as a bowling ball, or about 10-15 pounds. Imagine holding a bowling ball in your hands during an accident. That’s a lot to get thrown around in an automobile that is suddenly stopping or moving. Research shows that a car accident can cause a whiplash-type injury to your head and spine with speeds as little as 5 MPH. Wow. And the effects in your body don’t stop there. Because your spine is involved with all the functions of your body, a car accident can result in spinal subluxations, which interfere with your brains ability to communicate with the rest of your body, including your organs!

While many people can see how 5 MPH can cause an expensive fender bender, they don’t realize how much their body takes a toll during that process. In fact, the less damage to the car, the more energy your body has to absorb during impact. That energy has to go somewhere, so if the car doesn’t get it, you do. People will make sure to get their car into the shop, yet they don’t get to a chiropractor to get checked for damage to their spine and nervous system. And while you can always get a new car, (the average person has 15-18 new cars during their lifetime), you can never get a new body. You have to take care of the body you were given for the rest of your life.

Going to a chiropractor regularly will even help you deal with accidents better before they ever happen. Your reaction time is better. Plus your more flexible, stronger body is more able to withstand forces that a compromised, weaker version could.  Chiropractic doesn’t prevent injuries and it doesn’t make you Superman or Wonder Woman, but it sure does help you deal with the many stresses in your life better.  

Spinal adjustments don’t put an “S” on your chest; they just take the straight jacket off your cape, because you were born super! You are in there, just waiting to be released again to live your life to the fullest. Without interference, and without misconception of whom you think you should be after a car accident. Too many people have a history of surviving accidents, only to suffer with the idea that they should just deal with the lesser version of themselves to come out of the wreckage. 

Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t assume that is the way life is supposed to be, regardless of what limitations were placed on you because you reach “Maximum Medical Improvement.”  

Chiropractic is so different that you may have had all the coverage in the world on an accident claim, seen all the specialists and therapists, and still not be your best. If you had a light go out in a lamp in your house, all the plumbers and roofers in the world won’t be able to turn your lights on again.  

Get your spine checked today by a chiropractor, and find out what your true potential really is.

Sciatica is a name given to a condition when the sciatic nerve is irritated. This nerve begins in your hips and supplies information to and from the brain, all the way down both legs to your toes. Pain from this condition can cause any number of symptoms anywhere along this pathway such as pain, tingling, numbness and weakness. But if we really want to get to the cause of sciatica, the most important question to ask is, “why”?

In chiropractic, we specifically ask if there are spinal subluxations, which are interfering with your body’s ability to communicate with itself. The resulting dysfunction can cause irritation of the sciatic nerve directly in the hip area where it’s located, but often times this irritation is just compensation to a problem higher up in the spine. So the cause of your low back and leg condition could really be starting as a problem somewhere else, even as high as your upper neck! And to boot, the truly problematic area somewhere else may actually feel just fine.

Treating the effects of sciatic symptoms will never deal with the cause of this interference. The traditional ways to treat this issue usually involves medications such as muscle relaxers, anti-inflammatories and pain relievers. Physical therapies include stretching, strengthening or massage. But why are the muscles tight, or weak, or spasming? Your body needs to make exact compensations for the dysfunction by changing the muscle tone. Manipulating muscle disregards this state. Why would your intelligent body spend all that energy with inflaming and swelling? Inflammation is the main way your body protects you and heals you. Swelling just creates a natural river for all the healing components to get to the area better, while allowing the dead tissues to be washed away so they can be replaced. Anti-inflammatories stop this vital process. And why would your brilliant body give you pain? To slow you down so your body can heal. Pain relievers slow healing and let you push your body harder than it would normally allow. That is like having the oil light come on in your car right before you leave for a road trip but you decide to disconnect the light instead of changing the oil. The dashboard looks great, but the car is being pushed harder than it should be.

All the structures of your body, from your muscles controlling movement, to your organs making healing chemicals and running the entire healing process, to your nerves themselves, which transmit all your experiences, painful or not: They are all controlled and coordinated by your nervous system. This system must be able to communicate intelligent orders from your brain to all these other structures without interference, otherwise it cannot adapt appropriately to all the demands on your body, including something that might even produce symptoms such as sciatica. Regardless of what you decide to do about your sciatica, let your body make good decisions by allowing it to adapt as it is supposed to, through clear nerve channels, through a clear spine. Get checked for subluxations and give your spine a leg up with sciatica.

The nerves in your body are designed to communicate information from your brain to your body, and then back again without interference. In chiropractic, this circuitry loop connected by your nerves through your spine is called the safety pin cycle. This cycle works optimally when the nerve channels are clear to express the messages they carry. Spinal bones often misalign and put pressure on nerves, which irritates or pinches them. These are called spinal subluxations. They distort the signals transmitted through the entire body, causing the body to lose its ability to adapt well. A pinch isn’t just a pinch.

By the time we think we have a pinched nerve, we have probably been in a pinch for much longer than we thought. This is because it takes very little pressure to affect a nerve, and usually starts before we might feel anything abnormal as a result of it. Studies show that just the weight of a dime can decrease nerve function from 40-60%! That’s pretty amazing, considering the kinds of forces the body must deal with on a regular basis. The spinal bones, called vertebrae, normally protect the delicate spinal cord, which is made up of about a half billion nerve fibers and has the consistency of soft cheese. When these same bones malign, they can cause interference to the very structures they usually protect. This quickly makes a hard bone on a soft nerve, truly a rock in a hard place.

Since less than 10% of all our nerves are designed to transmit any pain at all, discomfort and pain are not good indicators of when a true problem has started anyway. When we do feel a pinch somewhere, we don’t even know if the problem is where the pinch is actually felt. Many times the problem causing the pinch is in a completely different place than where we feel it. That’s a heck of a pinch to be in!

There is only one way to know for sure whether your pinch is coming from a spinal subluxation. Get checked by a chiropractor who is uniquely trained at analyzing your nervous system to specifically find and adjust your nerve interference, pinch or not, so your body can get back to doing what it needs to do.

TMJ Syndrome:  “Temporal Mandibular Joint Syndrome.” Quite a mouthful for a jaw condition, isn’t it? Everyone has a TMJ on either side of their jaw, because it is a normal joint in all of us. The syndrome part comes in when the TMJ is not functioning properly. This can produce things such as jaw pain, headaches, abnormal wear of your teeth and even less obvious conditions like sleeping problems. Therapies may or may not be needed to treat this condition, but what people don’t know, including dentists and even TMJ specialists, is how important your neck function is to your jaw function.

So many functions of the body can be better understood by learning how these structures develop in the first place. After two cells come together at conception and the nervous system becomes the very first tissue to form in your body, your jaw descended from your head and neck. And since the nervous system is involved from the very beginning, your jaw depends on proper nerve supply for proper function. 

Your jaw works like a drawbridge, opening and closing on hinges with the coordination of muscles surrounding your entire face and neck.  These muscles are controlled by nerves coming from your head and spine, as well as the alignment of all the attached bones.  Your jaw itself can misalign, but what many don’t realize is that your neck alignment plays a huge role in jaw alignment and function. Often times, your jaw could have all the symptoms but your misaligned neck may good enough that you would never think to go to a chiropractor to have spine checked as well as your jaw.

When the bones of your neck misalign and interfere with nerve function, which they often do, it causes the muscles of your jaw to work abnormally. This can cause your jaw to open and close abnormally, changing the feeling of your jaw directly. These neck misalignments are called spinal subluxations and can only be checked by a chiropractor. Even if you are seeing a TMJ specialist, they are not trained to analyze the spine for this connection to your jaw problem. Many people are getting treated for what seems like a difficult jaw problem with ongoing jaw therapies, sometimes over years, and yet the very thing that could be complicating or even causing the problem isn’t even in the jaw. And because the neck often feels fine, no one knows to check the spine.

Jaw problems can begin any number of ways. Sometimes with a direct blow to the jaw, sometimes with a general injury to the upper body and sometimes jaw symptoms come on with no history of injury at all! Regardless of how your jaw problem started, it is very important to get your spine checked by a chiropractor to make sure your condition is not complicated, or caused altogether, by this vital connection. Otherwise, you could end up on an endless road of therapies that may lead to nowhere because they are only treating the effects of your jaw problem. Many people with a jaw condition will get unnecessary dental work and surgery in a desperate attempt to feel better. Many therapies are based on the changes seen as just effects of the real problem, effects from somewhere else, often the neck and spine. Don’t take the chance of having spinal subluxations run off at the mouth! See a chiropractor today.

Did you know that you are sitting on jelly sandwiches?  We all have them. They are stacked up in our spine, so the lower down the spine the bigger the sandwich.  Our jelly sandwiches are made up of bone bread and disc jelly and are perfectly normal and needed for us to function properly.

The jelly between our backbones allows us to absorb shock and move in many directions.  They are designed to take a lot of stress, but when the pressure is too great for too long, the jelly starts to come out of your sandwich and can ooze all over your nerves!  They call this oozing jelly a disc herniation and although it can result in pain over time, most people have the oozing long before they ever know there is something wrong with the sandwich.

That’s why when people do an activity that shouldn’t normally cause enough stress to force the jelly out of the sandwich, they might think that the oozing started with the pain.  But in order to understand better what exactly is going on, we have to take a look at the conditions that set us up for a messy spine.

So what makes the jelly leave the bread in the first place? The jelly inside your sandwiches works perfectly as long as the pressure from gravity and activity is spread out evenly along the bread.  Most oozing doesn’t happen from a single stressful event, it happens gradually over time and you have no idea it is going on until it is too late.

When the spine twists for long periods of time, it puts more pressure on one side of the sandwich and the jelly is forced to leave the bread.  It doesn’t have a choice.  The same forces that hold the jelly in place will force the jelly to move out of sandwich if the spine twists out of shape because the jelly can’t move itself.  It has to go wherever the forces in the spine go.

When there is nerve interference (subluxation) in one place in your spine, usually in your upper neck, it forces the rest of the spine to compensate by twisting around the subluxation.  Imagine grabbing a snake by the neck; what happens to the rest of the snake?  You’re right; it coils around your arm!  Your spine does the same thing.  So what do you think happens with all those jelly sandwiches in a twisted spine?  Right again! You end up with a messy spine, sometimes with many places where jelly has oozed out of place.

The most common places for oozing jelly are in the lower neck and the lower back.  When they see this on an MRI, they might want to blame the jelly and try to treat it with drugs or surgery to numb it up, or cut it out, but this does nothing to fix the sandwich itself or prevent the jelly from coming out of the sandwiches around it.

The good news is that most jelly problems don’t require any of these extreme treatments.  If we look at the real cause of the problem, we can take the pressure off the sandwiches and allow the jelly to ooze back into place again.  Your Chiropractor is specifically trained to find the interference in your spine, remove it, and allow your spine to untwist again, letting the jelly move back between the bread again and off your nerves.

Even better news, is that the interference is usually not where the oozing is so the spinal adjustments usually don’t have to be done where the pain is. Many people are surprised where their interference actually is because they became convinced that their problem must be where their pain is, when in fact the pain is usually just where the effects are, not the true cause of their problem.   With time and repetition, not only does the pain usually go away, the underlying disc issue resolves as well.

The best news of all is that none of us has to wait until we feel pain related to oozing jelly or the illusions that come over the years of thinking we don’t have a problem until we have pain.  We can all get checked for nerve interference today to reverse the effects of a twisted spine and the oozing jelly that leads to worse problems tomorrow.

Some myths are almost as timeless as the truth.  A truth that is often misunderstood is the chiropractic principle that all processes require time.  This isn’t a new concept to any health care profession, but it is a reminder that time is involved with everything we do. There are several popular but timeless myths that are wrong no matter how appealing they are.  Many people watch late night infomercials and intuitively know the claims can’t be true but order the questionable products anyway.  In order to truly understand our health, we need to understanding of how time relates to it so we are not misled.

The first myth is that time is instantaneous.  There is no such thing as instantaneous healing because it takes time to get sick and it takes time to get well.  However, when interference is removed with a spinal adjustment, your body is just waiting for the opportunity to function better.  Healing can feel instantaneous because the intelligence within you is perfect but the matter it moves through in your body is not. For example, your body can send a nerve signal from your toes to your nose in about 1/50 of a second.  To put that in perspective, this is faster than movie images shown in 1/24 of a second to give the illusion of motion.  When we no longer have illusions about time, we can have a better idea and therefore make better decisions about our health.  Even with modern day technology moving at the speed of light, healing your body takes time.

The second myth is that time can be speeded up.  While we may not buy this fallacy in other aspects of our lives, many tend to believe it when it comes to our health.  We see lots of things suggesting that the problem is “slow healing” and that treatments could speed that up somehow.  The truth is, there is only healing or not and it can’t be hurried.  This means you are either healing without interference to the intelligence that does all your healing or you aren’t healing as you should be.  You can look at spinal interference affecting your healing like having your foot on the gas and the brake of your car at the same time.  Adjusting your spine takes your foot off the brake and when your car takes off again, it can look like we sped your car up, but only the innate intelligence that runs your body is in charge of your gas pedal. Healing happens at the right speed.

The third myth is that time can be reversed or stopped.  The anti-aging ads are everywhere, but we all know this just isn’t possible.  All the treatments in the world will not make your body go backwards in time or stop it somehow from moving forward.  The truth is, we need to learn how our body really works so we can move forward the way we are designed to be.  When we go from interference to realizing the full expression of our true potential, it can seem like we are younger because we are just working that much better.  It is said that history repeats lessons that are not learned, so take this opportunity to stop living a lesser version of your self.  Get your spine checked today so you can move forward the right way tomorrow and make your health issues history.

Sleep counts.  Studies show even those who say they don’t need it…still need it. And it’s not just about the amount of sleep; it’s the quality of recuperative rest we get that really counts.  It’s more than feeling refreshed; it’s about healing up from all the demands when we are awake. And although many are aware of various factors that affect sleep in one way or another, did you know that your spine affects your sleep too?

Whether you have back pain or not, most of the feedback to your brain is coming from spinal nerves.  It’s just how we are all made.  These connections affect the entire brain but it specifically affects your awake and rest cycles, determining how good you actually sleep.  The spine is so important, that you can’t get a good night sleep without it.

Interference to spinal pathways to the brain can cause interruption of normal processing that is a prerequisite for normal sleep patterns, no matter how long you lay in bed.  Subluxations, spinal bones that misalign and interfere with nerve function, are a common cause of abnormal brain function that is critical to sleeping.

There are basic levels of sleep that everyone visits no matter how well they are able to sleep.  We slip in and out of them at different times during the night, but a key difference is the amount of time we spend at each level.  Children, for example, sleep deeper than adults in general but a good night sleep requires uninterrupted time in the deeper levels.

In the beginning of the night, it is easy to wake up during this lighter level.  While we may be technically asleep, if we don’t progress to the next deeper levels we won’t have the restful sleep required for the day ahead.  There is normally increased involuntary muscle contraction during this time and is an essential way for the body to make any muscle tone corrections it couldn’t do when you were awake.  However, interference to this first phase of sleep can cause muscle symptoms, such as charlie horses and growing pains.

The deeper phases are associated with a more restful sleep, including deep muscle relaxation.  If there is interference to this crucial part of sleep, there can be a loss of normal muscle control, resulting in conditions such as bedwetting.  This is a coveted level of sleep that is easily lost if the body is prevented from going there.  It is a main reason why we can be asleep for 8-10 hours but still be exhausted in the morning.

REM is another important deep level associated with active mind processing and dreaming.  This is a time when the brain works out much of the mental stress from the day.  If there is interference here, issues like night terrors and sleepwalking can result. Spinal interference will affect your state of mind, even when you are unconscious.

No matter how our brains need to prepare for sleep, there is no aspect that isn’t negatively affected by spinal interference. When any of the bones of the spine misalign they can interfere with how the brain works and sleep.  Many times the problem can look like the bladder or a scary movie or exercise, when actually it is the body’s ability to communicate with itself through the spine and nervous system.

Stop counting sheep and start counting on a good night sleep.  Get your spine checked today to make your night right.