What's in a Day...

I was asked by a old friend today if I remember where I was sixteen years ago today. Once I thought for a moment, I remembered that it was the day we walked across the stage to to receive our diplomas to become official Doctors of Chiropractic. We stand on strong shoulders that persevered through adversity and attack to bring the absolute best system of health care delivery to the masses. I know that I may not be anything special, but have hundreds of testimonials and people who's lives were dramatically altered for the better because we removed the stress from the nervous system to let their body work the way it was designed to do.

I was introduced by a patient who is a professor at CSU-P to a fellow professor who is a nurse and she asked what kind of doctor I was when I told her she quickly responded, " Oh, I don't believe in Chiropractic." I responded, "that's funny I don't believe in nursing or gravity either." It made her stop and realize what an absurd statement she just made. I let her down easy, and helped her see I was a doctor based on science just like a nurse, physicist, MD, DO or even rocket scientist. Just because we don't understand it doesn't mean we should reject it before we understand it. So I was prepared for a can of worms to be released and asked, what had happened in her life to have so strongly hold such an opinion. (I was clear to say opinion as if this statement were based on the essentials of life or even the traditions that were established it may be worth an argument, but opinions are nothing more than our perceptions and should be discussed over coffee, never to loose a friend over:-) She shared that one of the medical doctors she worked with at one point in her career had a negative opinion of a chiropractor he knew, so openly shared this with his staff. So I asked what was his opinion based on, was it something professional, personal, etc.? She had no idea. So I asked so have you ever had any personal experience with Chiropractic or a Doctor of Chiropractic. She said she had none. (So she had based her strong opinion based on someone else's opinion and based on no real facts. So I asked if she had any health concerns that her system of health care was struggling to resolve. Well I get headaches just like everyone else. (No assumptions in that statement:-) Well I have treated hundreds of patients that either never have or no longer get headaches at all, what are you doing for it. She shared with me some pretty strong prescription medications and said the best they can do is make them not as bad. So I asked, well how does this affect your life, do you loose work or time with family as a result of these headaches? She said she looses the ability to go to her kids games, and has lost some time from work over the past couple months. So what if these get worse I inquired. Well, I could loose my job, she replied, miss out with my kids she added. Well what would life be like if they got better or even better went away completely? She perked up and said, that would be awesome, but then as quickly as she perked up, she withdrew to say, but that's not going to happen as I am doing all that can be done. Really I asked? What if there was a way to see if the cause of your pain could be identified, would you be interested?

And from a almost hostile nurse to a new patient in our clinic, from giving people the freedom to have opinions not judging them, but making them have to defend them; and when it is based on no real facts, be willing to alter that opinion when the reality is not what you had been perceiving it as being. She came in for an evaluation, and has already seen a significant reduction in her headache frequency and severity.

Who does this story make you think of? Who has been holding on to inaccurate opinions of the world or whether there is hope for them and their health concerns? Send them to this blog, have them research our blog or website and who knows you may change a life forever because you cared enough to tell them the truth.

Until next time...

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...