I recently found out that the alignment of my neck is a major contributor to my painful migraines and other health issues. I’ve been seeing a chiropractor for about 1.5 years now, but my pain didn’t seem to go away as it did for shiranai. Since he works with computers, it made sense that sitting all day caused him to suffer, however it didn’t make sense for me to still be in similar (if not worse) pain as the year progressed with more appointments than he had. Over the weeks, he continued to get better, but I seemed to still be in the same amount of pain. When my migraines got worse, that is when my chiropractor decided to send me to get x-rays of my neck. My migraines used to dissipate after I took a nap or went to bed, but lately have become worse. They were incredibly nauseating as well as painful.
Here are a couple pics of my neck x-rays that shiranai took from our chiropractor’s computer using his phone cam (we don’t have access to the actual x-rays, sorry!):
Our chiropractor explained through visuals on his wall on how the neck functions and how important it is to be aligned properly in order for everything else below the neck to function properly. He then showed us this image (which he has as a larger version of hanging up on his wall):
He asked us which image on that scale did we think my neck resembled. Unfortunately, we responded correctly when we answered that it seemed to be closes to the very first one above “abnormal” (the far left). I mean I had a feeling deep down before my appointment that it wasn’t going to be good, but wow, it was quite devastating to hear that it was THAT bad. He said it’s actually rather rare, about 5% rare to have a neck this badly warped come into his office, let alone in chiropractors all around. He seemed to feel really bad for not catching it sooner. I’m not sure if it’s because I mask the pain real well and didn’t make it as noticeable that I was in a lot of pain, or that he didn’t think I was that bad from simply adjusting me each week for about a year. Either way, at least we finally found the cause and are now addressing to correct it, which will take about a year.
After paying a huge chunk of our savings, I’m on the way to correcting my neck without surgery, thank God. I mean surgery would probably cost more and would probably be covered by insurance after our deductible is met, but it has a lot of side effects that I really don’t wish to deal with.
On top of painful migraines, I was suffering from what I like to describe as “bobble-head.” You know, those silly things usually seen on the car dashboard that have heads on springs bouncing all over the place? My head felt like it was HUGE– too big for my body, perched on a tiny weak little spring (aka my neck). It was becoming to be a chore to simply hold my head up! If I couldn’t rest my head while working or anything, I couldn’t function. It’s just one of those things I took for granted but now realize how important our necks are. It never occurred to me how something so small and visually insignificant had such a huge role on our bodies.
Interestingly enough, my chiropractor asked if I’ve ever felt like I was “going crazy” and “losing my mind”… which yes, I have, but I attributed that to my bouts of depression, which I’ve been suffering from since childhood due to familial physical & emotional abuse. He just nodded and sighed, shaking his head in a sympathetic gesture. Apparently, the feeling that I was “going crazy” is one of the symptoms sufferers of this injury feel when their neck is bent the wrong way (which mine is). Other symptoms may include:
- dizziness/spaced-out feeling
- low energy
- memory trouble
- brain fog
- ear aches
- sinus problems
- sleep disorders
- chronic fatigue
- anxiety
There are more, but those are the specific symptoms that I’ve been dealing with for MANY years. Memory loss has been a big one recently. I’ve always had issues with memory, but lately I thought I was losing my mind because there would be the little things I’d forget that my husband would remind me of (and makes me feel bad for forgetting -_-). It is extremely frustrating.
I always wrote it off because it never occurred to me that my NECK (or specifically my spinal cord) would have anything to do with my mental well-being. Matter-of-fact, it does! The spinal cord is a series of nerves that control EVERYTHING in our body! It takes the messages sent from our brains to function the rest of our body, such as “hey stop eating, your tummy is full!” Think of our spinal cord akin to the internet: it takes information from one source and sends it all over! For some odd reason, it never dawned on me how important our necks are in that process.
Since then, they had me take some more x-rays of my lower spine to check and see if something is up in another part of my body. During the chiropractic seminar, the lady doctor mentioned her own past health issues resulting from an injury to her spine. She explained that due to her injury, her menstrual cycles were extremely painful and heavy. Come to find out, the nerve that helped those organs to properly function was severely pinched by part of her spine. After a year of correction, it healed up and now she’s much better. At the time, she didn’t realize that our spine… well, specifically the spinal cord, was so important to how our organs functioned. If the nerve feeding the organ is being blocked by a misaligned spine, then it will eventually fail. The way they made us picture it is if a hose with water flowing through it has been bent. What happens to the water inside? Instead of flowing out powerfully in a beneficial way, it becomes a trickle, which means that only a small part of the messages traveling from the brain to the organs are received. After being depleted for many years, the organ will not perform properly and is bound to fail. That’s the cause of many diseases today, such as the number 1 killer: heart disease.
My chiropractor told us during the seminar that information being sent back and forth from our brains to our spinal cords runs about 300 MPH! And the reason why chiropractic care is so important is because of something called “subluxations” … aka “speed bumps” in the spinal cord. If there is a subluxation blocking the nerve, it causes an interruption. Think of it like driving 300 MPH (lol) and suddenly hitting a boulder blocking the road (ouch!).
Did you know that in New Zealand, newborn babies receive prenatal chiropractic care! Think about it: when the baby is literally yanked out of their mother’s womb (either naturally or by c-section), their bodies are contorted and bent in unnatural ways to make the birthing process easier for the mother. There is proof that a colicky baby receiving chiropractic care will eventually stop being fussy (after the subluxation is corrected, that is)! Babies cry because they have no other means of communicating their feelings. If there is unrest and pain, of course they’ll cry to let their parents know! If a nerve is being pinched due to being contorted out of the womb, of course they’ll be irritable! And babies in New Zealand are known to be healthier. Gee, I wonder why? 😛
And on that subject, yes… a subluxation can exist in you since infancy. Many people who have health issues that seek chiropractic care have discovered that something they’ve been suffering from for MANY years resulted from a subluxation they may have received from childhood! The longer it has existed, the longer it’ll take to correct.
Please note that chiropractic care won’t instantly make you feel better. It took a long time festering to become what it is today (aka diseases of the organs), so of course it could take just as long to fix! My chiropractor gave me home-care exercises and tools to help me recover, so it’s not just a quick stop by their office for an adjustment and away I go onto being healthy. I’m not popping pills and pretending I’m well. I’m earnestly trying my best to undo what has been done to my body. Slowly, but surely.
I hope nothing is wrong down there, but since I get shooting pains in my lower back all the time, and my cycles are extremely debilitating and heavy, I doubt I’ll be completely fine. I’ll be finding that out tomorrow (1/23/15). UPDATE: My lower spine is not nearly as bad as my neck, but as expected, the nerve by my tailbone is pinched and they’re going to correct that as well. There is also a slight bend near the bottom of my spine which could explain all of the pain I have been experiencing in my lower back.
If you as the reader haven’t done so already, I highly recommend seeing a chiropractor, preferably one that does corrective care. There are a lot of chiropractors out there, but only a small percentage of them are actually trained to do corrective care. Many just handle adjustments, but if you have something wrong with your spinal cord, you’ll need to get it corrected, not just adjusted to begin the healing process. If you’re dependent on medications to relieve pain, I especially urge you to seek one out. Medicines only temporarily cover up the issue; they won’t fix it. Why not instead try to correct the source of the problem?