Dr. Busch

Dr. Busch

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Pain and Purpose...

This has been an emotionally challenging week. I have had some amazing successes in improving lives and giving people back their hope. Have seen a 2 yr old kid with painful bowel movements and urination and ongoing digestive problems, almost with 1-2 treatments give a exacerbated mother back some peace when 2 yrs of repeated drugs, antibiotics, and surgeries and been more frustrating than successful. I've seen a man in his retirement, disillusioned by being in his 'golden' years and his body didn't work enough to hardly get out of a chair and revealed the pain of working so hard for so long and when I have the time and money to enjoy life, he didn't have the health to do anything. Well he showed up today on his new 900 Kawasaki motorcycle with a sparkle in his eye and a spring in his step, thanking us all for giving him back his dream. These are some of the joys that get me out of bed in the morning, then there are the things that make me want to indefinitely hit the snooze bar...

I had the displeasure of seeing my best staff member walk into my consultation room in tears as she had just gotten a call about two of our patients that had terrible chronic pain issues and had been making remarkable strides through good chiropractic care and our brain-based therapy. In this progress, the younger of these two boys who hadn't even turned a legal drinking age yet, had went back to his medical doctor to alter his pain medication as he had been feeling so much better, and so made the change with both to a less powerful drug. This appointment was on a Saturday, Sunday night these two went to bed and one never woke up and the other was in a coma for three days. It angers me and breaks my heart at the same time, to have to hug on a mom at her child's funeral (an event I think no parent should have to experience) and knowing her other child was in a hospital bed. Drugs are not safe, they kill thousands of people when taken for the right dose for the right problem EVERY SINGLE DAY! We have been brain-washed to believe that they are safe and they are the only route to health. If this were true, why would America, which uses more drugs than any other industrialized nation is ranked dead last among 37 industrialized nations?

I would think to apologize and give some disclaimer, but then I get a report from a patient who was told by a Neurologist to not go to a Chiropractor as it causes arthritis. I have to wonder when the last time this doctor actually read a research article or truly helped a patient. The level of ignorance is amazing, even among our most educated. There is no way restoring function can do anything but good for the joint and the nerves around them. Covering up the pain with drugs and so keep stressing the restricted joint, then have to deal with the side effects including death because my mind was so brain-washed or locked up to realize there are more effective and safer treatments than drugs or knifes. The way to health, true health is not through the current medical system as they are looking for symptoms and how to cover-up or reverse them not how to prevent or eliminate them. We must adopt the viewpoint that our health should be using Chiropractic first, Medicine second and surgery as a last resort. We have so many patients that are well into their Medicare years that take no medications and live life to the fullest every single day. It also breaks my heart when I as a new patient what medications they take and they hand me a two page list. In 1990 the average senior citizen took 9 prescription medications over the course of a year and as of a couple of years ago the average has skyrocketed to 38.5 prescription drugs per year. Thank God, most don't take all of these at once, but you'd be shocked to how many they do take at a time. This is not health care it is disease care and if our health care system is broken it is not because of the bureaucrats in Washington, DC, but the lack of people taking responsibility for their own health and well-being and getting healthy from the inside out like the body was designed, not forced alterations from the outside in like done by medications.

I know this is hard to hear, but even harder to see the grim effects of western medicine running havoc on my community, please take responsibility for your own health and use Chiropractic first, Medication second, and Surgery only as a last resort, your legacy will thank you.

Until next time...

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

What's the jabber with the jaw?

There are thousands of people in our area that suffer from TMJ or Templar Mandibular Joint problems or for the rest of us, Jaw Pain. This is a condition that we see quite frequently in our clinic and it is a condition that if you take the time to find and treat the cause instead of the effects, you can lick this fairly easily.

Taking the medical or dental route is not a cheap way of treating this condition as it either taking endless prescriptions of medication for inflammation, muscle relaxers, then lead to braces on the jaw or the teeth to the point of having teeth shaved or capped to accommodate the dysfunction in the jaw joint. I even had the experience a few years ago, where a person dear to my family had had jaw problems for years and not before I graduated from chiropractic college, had gone and had paid close to four thousand dollars to have the teeth on one side shaved lower. We began to work on correcting the cause of the problem and ran into the obstacle of having one side of the teeth not being at a proper height and it wasn't until after we corrected the TMJ problems that relief was achieved. Of course they went back and paid the same orthodontist a couple thousands to now put caps on the side he had previously shaved and at least the problem was behind us. Thousands of dollars on attempting to treat the effects and the proper care was minimal in comparison to the wasted work done in the dental chair.

There is a meniscus or like a fluid filled sac the jaw joint connects to the skull through and when one side of these attachments starts to act incorrectly the other side is negatively affected as well. Then there are two muscles called the 'Pteragoid muscles' that assist in the opening of the jaw and attach back to the spine. These are all affected by other subluxation complexes including that coming from the upper cervical spine.

Now why is this important? Well situated just under the TMJoint is the trigeminal nerve, which is really a nerve grouping, which supplies sensation and motor function to each side of the face. It is from this wonderful nerve that we get conditions like Bells Palsy (which is half of the face muscle loose strength) and Tic Del la Rue (which is like a stabbing hot poker into the face). So it is crucial that we work to improve the function of the TMJ instead of treating the effects, as we all want to live life to the fullest. Chiropractic treatment is by far the best approach to treating this type of condition. If you have any questions or comments, as always you can post them on this blog or e-mail at drjdbusch@cmclinic.net

Until next time...