If you’re a patient of mine you’ve heard me throw around terms like “cervical syndrome”, “short leg”, “dropped sacrum”, or “twisted pelvis”. Basically, these terms refer to the mechanical dysfunctions our spine and pelvis fall into on a daily basis. Every person is unique, yet many of these ‘positions’ are common. Let me explain: Our neck and pelvis are typical sources of mechanical dysfunction. These dysfunctions can, but don’t always, lead to local pain. For instance, poor sitting posture at work leads to a rounded thoracic spine (mid-back) and a forward head carriage. This posture leads to stressed cervical spine (neck) joints and thoracic spine joints. At a routine chiropractic visit, I will often detect joint dysfunction in these areas. However, the patient may not yet be feeling pain in the neck or mid-back. Rather, they may mention pain in the low back. Here’s how that works (in a nut-shell): Joint dysfunction in the neck tells your brain that something is amiss. The brain, in turn, tries to fix the problem. “Thank you for trying brain, but you don’t have the ability to move bones back to their ideal position”. The net result is increased muscle tension that manifests itself throughout the body. A very typical result will be a “twisted pelvis”. Tightness in leg muscles pull the pelvis out of alignment leading to various unwanted results: back pain, poor athletic performance to name a couple. This is a “cervical syndrome”. To some extent this can be alleviated with massage of the musculature. But, ultimately, it is the joint dysfunction – wherever it is (in this case – the neck) that is causing the tension that leads to the misalignment. Fix the source, says this chiropractor.
Today, I had my weekly chiropractic adjustment. This week I was dealing with some low back pain – nothing terrible, but definitely noticeable. Pain comes and goes. Dysfunction is forever. For this reason, I go to the chiropractor routinely. This week, however, I was most interested in what ‘terms’ my chiropractor says I have. I was not surprised to learn that I was ‘all over the place today’. First my neck needed an adjustment. Then it was my sacrum on one side, and then the other. All in all, it was still an easy treatment, but to get me balanced this week required several adjustments. I knew it had been a stressful week!
In future blogs, I’ll explain the mechanics of other common findings: “dropped sacrum”, “Derefield negative”, and “Derefield positive”. Till then, stay mobile and stay balanced. They do a body good now and into the future.