Chiropractic Care | Whole Body Affects

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. One of the most rewarding parts of my job is when a patient comes in with lower back pain or headaches or neck pain and they get rid of that symptom, but they also get huge improvement with other symptoms like digestive issues, reproductive issues, and things like that. And so they ask the question frequently, how can adjustment to my spine, make a difference in my acid reflux in my stomach or in my menstrual cycle or things like that. I want to show you here. We are wired in a really specific way, like a schematic for building or a house. When we look at the lower back for example, we rotate around, we can start to see these bones here are separated by disks at each level and we have these nerves that come out of holes right behind the disks at each level.

When things get out of place… Let’s say, the fifth lumbar, the last vertebra, in the spine gets out of place. It will put pressure on the nerves going down to the leg, to the muscles of the leg and sensation, and also reflexes in the legs. On the right side, we can also see that nerve flow is going down to the colon, bladder, and reproductive organs at that level. Those functions can be interrupted if there’s compression on the disk, which puts pressure on the nerve as well.

If we look a little more closely… So up in the neck, for example, if things get out of place say in the middle of the neck, we have nerve flow that goes down to the arms, the biceps and the wrist extensor muscles and… But we also have nerve flow that goes down to the heart and lungs at this level, which is something that you won’t feel, but I think we can agree its something very crucial. This is why restoring proper nerve flow in the spine is a big part of what we do and restoring… Taking pressure off of joints so that nerves have some relief, is not just for neck pain and back pain but its also for the function of your whole body.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this has been your Health Minute.

How Did I Get Out Of Alignment?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. How did I get out of alignment in the first place? It’s a good question. I’m going to give you a few examples, starting with birth and the birth process. Infants don’t have the musculature in their neck and body to really support themselves through that traumatic process, and it can even start earlier in utero. So body position in the womb actually can instigate spinal misalignments.

Fast forwarding a little bit, as children are learning to walk, as toddlers, they take falls constantly. It’s another big cause for spinal misalignments. They get into sports a little bit later, gymnastics, football, baseball, soccer, and the like, and there are injuries associated with all those things. Maybe jump off the high-dive and and do a belly-flop, mountain bike falls.

As adults, working at a desk job is another big cause for problems structurally in the spine. You wouldn’t think that it would be the same as like a martial arts injury, but working on a desk is tough on your body because you’re in the same static position that isn’t always the best position posturally and you hold that position for years sometimes. Sleeping on a poor mattress or the wrong pillow, having a flu virus or a viral or a bacterial infection would kind of make you feel real achy and put things in spasm and that takes you out of alignment.

Toxic biochemistry. Now, this can mean too much coffee, too much sugar, things like that. Not eating right. Poor diet, not enough nutrients, not enough water. That’s another big one. All these things have an acidic effect on our body which causes inflammation, and it causes things to get out of alignment and not work properly.

Emotional stress is another big one. Emotional stress puts us in a fight or flight scenario where we’re in a crisis scenario in our physiology, in our nervous system, that will pull things out of alignment. A qualified chiropractor can help sort out both the causes of misalignment and get you back on the right track to where everything is functioning properly and get you feeling your best.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this is your Health Minute.

Why Does Pregnancy Hurt?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. Why does pregnancy hurt so much? Pregnancy is commonly associated with lower back pain, mid-back pain. Part of it is due to the weight gain. As much as the weight gain plays a role, so does the shift in the weight. In other words, the center of gravity is shifting and that has a big impact on the spine and the structure of the body.

This is the back of the spine, this is the front, the tummy is here so the tummy grows as the child grows inside the womb, and it pulls the spine like this. What happens is that, the lower spine has a lot more stress on it. Also, the upper spine kind of stretches like this and has more stress on it, as well. So, that’s a big factor coupled with the weight gain. The third factor to consider is the effect of a hormone called relaxin. Relaxin relaxes ligaments, hence the name. What it’s designed to do is, relax the ligaments right here between the pubic bones to allow them to separate so that the child can pass through the birth canal.

The problem with that is that, relaxin has an effect systemically, so it will loosen ligaments in the elbow, the neck, the low back, all over the place. So things are getting out of place more easily. That, coupled with the weight gain and weight shift, really leads to, a lot of times, an uncomfortable experience in pregnancy. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way though. With chiropractic, we can gently, specifically, safely realign structure of the mom-to-be. In doing so, we actually realign the structure of where the baby is living inside here. This is the pelvic bowl, this is where the child is gestating or growing before birth, and it’s right on the other side of what we call the sacrum. This is the foundation or base of the spine and the two pelvic bones.

When these get out of alignment, it changes and distorts the pelvic bowl inside. So what can happen is that if that shifts around, the child can kinda turn in the womb, and this is a big cause for children turning in utero. So, we have specialized tables that allow the mom-to-be to lay on her stomach with kind of open piece there for her tummy so there’s nothing pressing on it. We also have pillow systems like this that allow for the mom-to-be to lay on her stomach. So, it should be really comfortable and specific. It’s totally safe and should allow for a more comfortable experience of pregnancy, but also birth and postpartum.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic, and this has been your Health Minute.

Do I Have Scoliosis?

Hi. I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. Do I have scoliosis? That’s a question I hear quite a lot. If I do have it, what can I do about it?

Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine that develops where the spine is typically supposed to be nice and straight from front to back. Sometimes, for different reasons, we have these curvatures that develop and they can become quite pronounced. They form from different reasons. Sometimes it is a congenital deformity where there’s a malformation of one of the vertebra, meaning it’s typically supposed to look nice and cube-shaped. Sometimes it’ll be a wedge-shaped vertebra in there that doesn’t form quite properly and it predisposes the spine to curve. This is a type that is congenital and it is not really going to straighten out because the body needs that curvature to adapt to the defect. Sometimes it can be from in-utero positioning. The position that you’re in the womb before birth can have an effect on how your spine looks.

If the scoliosis is caused by a childhood trauma early on in life that doesn’t get fixed and causes a curvature there that gets progressively worse as they age, it can be fixed. It depends on degree and it depends on how early we catch it. Prior to puberty, say like 10 or 11 years old thereabouts, these do straighten out. I’ve seen them straighten out completely. So after puberty, they get progressively more and more solidified as a pattern in the spine, and it gets harder to correct and straighten out.

This is Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic encouraging you to get a scoliosis screening from a qualified chiropractor in your area.

What Is Causing My Pain?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. People ask me all the time “What’s causing my pain? Is it nerve pain? Is it some other kind of pain? Ultimately, all pain is nerve pain. All sensation is coming from nerves as well. In the spine, the nerves for our whole entire body, originate here in the spine. They come out on either side and each of these little nerves branches over 10,000 times and go to form a whole nerve network in our body.

If there’s compression on these nerves… Let me show you how that can happen. This is a model of the vertebrae, the bone, and there’s a disk in between. We can see this hole here where the nerves are coming out. If the disk… Let me back up a step, if the bone get’s out of place, it can put pressure on not only on the joints that move here, but on the disk. And the disk is a big factor in what puts pressure on these big nerves because it will bulge to one side or the other, and typically, towards the back.

If it does bulge or put pressure on these nerves, and it doesn’t take much, we used to talk about like pliers, pinching the nerve. In reality, they’re very, very delicate structures. And just inflammation around the joint or around that area in general can put pressure on these nerves, can cause not only pain but other problems, digestive problems and a host of other issues because they’re going to run our whole entire body. So, the cause of the pain is coming from some sort of compression or distortion on a nerve somewhere.

If we can remove that pressure, not only will your pain go away or other symptoms, but it will allow that nerve to do what it’s supposed to do which is feed some function in your body, ie, it’s going to be a pathway for your brain to communicate with some portion of the body and get that communication back. That back and forth communication is crucial for our body to run properly.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with your Health Minute.

How Long Should I See A Chiropractor?

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic. A real frequently asked question is, “How long do I need to continue seeing the chiropractor?”

It’s a great question. The answer is it depends. It depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re trying to get relieved from an acute injury, for example, from a car accident or from a fall. It’s typically gonna take less time for you to get that relief from the pain or other symptoms than it will to actually fix that problem. So it’ll take a little bit longer to fix the problem, but the added benefit there is that you’ll have less recurrences and flare-ups in the future if we actually fix the problem.

How long will it take? Again, it depends on the severity of the problem, how long it’s been there, how active you are and your lifestyle. And also if there’s any degeneration there, bumps, burning, arthritis and those types of things. A qualified chiropractor can help sort all this out and come up with a game plan for your health goals by completing a neurological and orthopedic exam to get some information about that and also to take some x-rays. The x-rays show us a picture literally of what the spine looks like, and we can get an idea of how long the problem has been there, how severe it is, and so forth. I encourage you to consult with a qualified chiropractor to come up with a game plan that meets your health goals.

I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic.

Chiropractic Care for Newborns and Children

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Hi. I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic [now in Petaluma, California]. I want to encourage you to have your children checked by a qualified chiropractor. This includes infants and newborns as well. The reason is that infants and newborns often have birth trauma that distorts their spine, either their neck or lower down in the spine, and causes problems. Problems that can become more severe later on. In the case of “easy births”, easy for the mom, it’s not easy for the child, it’s always a difficult traumatic event for an infant because they’re just relaxed for so long inside the womb. They come out, they don’t have the musculature to be able to support and stabilize themselves during that process. On top of that, they’re getting pulled out literally by, oftentimes, the head or sometimes the arm and shoulder combined with the head. In the case of forced delivery, suction delivery, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a C-section or normal birth, it is traumatic for the child.

Now, adjustments for children and infants is like this to the neck. It’s very light and gentle. So children should not cry during an adjustment, they should stop crying. That’s often what they do. Especially if children come in with colic or with some problems developmentally, why they’re not breastfeeding, they’re not sleeping, they’re not thriving. Now, colic is just basically a collection of different symptoms that gets labeled colic because children can’t speak to tell us what’s wrong with them and what their experiencing. But if you think about it, the nerve system is the first thing to form in an embryo. We start to see a nerve, like a spinal cord or a precursor to the spinal cord forming at about three weeks in the embryo stage, and it’s called the neural streak. That’s the first thing that forms because it’s the most important system because it runs everything and it kind of regulates development and differentiation of all the tissues.

It’s really important, it’s crucial, in fact, to have proper nerve flow coming through that nervous system, especially in the case of a child or a newborn. Having nerve flow working properly in an adult is crucial, but if you look at a child, they’re kind of like a rocket that’s in that initial primary stage where it’s leaving the platform, and it is going to the rim of space and it accelerates from zero to 20,000 miles an hour. That initial stage burns the brightest and the hottest because it’s the most important. It’s the same with children. They are differentiating and developing on a huge scale from zero… Well from birth to about four months, the brain’s size actually doubles. So we want to support this growth and this development by removing any interference to the spine with general adjustments to allow the child to grow and thrive the way they can… They’re supposed to, and to be their best. I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic encouraging you to have your children checked by a qualified chiropractor.

Chiropractic Care | Pain Free vs. Healthy

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I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic, and I want to talk about pain. A lot of people come into my office, as you can imagine, in some sort of pain, and they want chiropractic to get them out of pain. Chiropractic is fantastic at getting rid of pain, but essentially, chiropractic has a different aim, and I want to share that with you. The power that made the body, heals the body. This is a main chiropractic precept. Now whether you believe that it’s God or in the East they call it the ‘Pranas‘, the life force, or Nature or the Universe or whatever you think it is, there is something that is animating us. This runs through the nervous system to empower our body and to run everything.

The nervous system runs every cell, organ and system of your body, and the nervous system has its headquarters in the spine. Structurally, we want the spine to run, to be aligned properly, so that there is no pressure on discs and nerves and there’s no pain and no arthritis down the road. But the real aim of chiropractic is to remove stress and interference from the nervous system so that that life force can come down and run everything in the body, and the body can have its optimal health that it’s designed for.

That is really the way that we can make our immune system stronger and to help relieve stress from our body. We can’t remove our outward environmental stress ’cause it’s everywhere and there’s just no way to do it. What we can do is make the body and the immune system, the nervous system, more resilient and more resistant to stress, and that will make us healthier.

You might see five people at your office, maybe three of them are walking around with some sort of flu symptoms and two are not. Well, they are all having access to this flu that’s going around. Why are two people sick, and three are not? The answer is because their immune system is stronger. It’s more equipped and more able to fight that stress and fight off those foreign invaders. Chiropractic is excellent at powering up the immune system and the life force. I’m Dr. Steve encouraging you to come and get your spine checked and boost that life force.

Chiropractic Care for Whiplash

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Hi. Dr. Steve Battaglino here with Battaglino Chiropractic. Today, I want to talk a little bit about whiplash injuries. Whiplash usually occurs as a result of a motor vehicle accident, like a car accident.  If we analyze that, when you’re sitting in a car driving or as a passenger, you’re usually wearing a seat belt. Hopefully, you are. The seat belt is what makes you, what connects you essentially to the car. So, from the seat belt level down, your trunk and so forth, becomes part of the seat and part of the vehicle that you are in.

Let’s say, you’re driving. Let’s say, actually, you are stopped at a stop light.  A car approaches you from behind, and they’re not paying attention. Maybe they are text messaging. I know you don’t. But let’s say they are. They rear-end you, and what happens is the seat of the car, the trunk of your body moves forward, but the head and neck stay stationary in the first phase.   It looks kind of like this. They move forward, your head stays in the same place, and then it stretches forward violently and kind of whips forward and then whips back like this.

There are three different phases to get injured in. It’s kind of a drag, but what happens is it doesn’t really take a lot of velocity change for these injuries to occur. The injuries are to the muscles, the ligaments of the neck, also the joints, and the discs and nerves in the neck.  Studies show that a change in velocity of as little as five miles an hour… So, let’s say, you are in a parking lot, you are going five miles an hour and you accidentally read-end somebody. Just that change right there can be enough to cause these types of injuries. It doesn’t have to be rear-end or front impact. It can be side impact as well. It kind of stretches the neck like so.

These types of injuries do excellent with chiropractic care. The reason is you might have some damaged muscles or ligaments in there in addition to the discs, the bones, and the nerves. What happens is that they get stretched. They might get a little bit torn. And because the areas of the spine are misaligned due to the injury, or even maybe they existed there prior to the injury, it pulls on those tissues that are already torn and injured. It doesn’t feel so good. Plus, it hinders the body’s ability to heal. By restoring proper alignment gently to these areas, it allows the muscles and joints to heal up more quickly, but also more permanently so that you are not dealing with the same injury down the road.

Lower Back Pain

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I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic. Today, I want to talk with you about lower back pain in chiropractic. Specifically, how is chiropractic so effective at getting rid of low back pain?

Well let’s talk about the lower back for a second. This is the left hip here and the right hip. You can see bones in the low back called vertebrae. And there’s a disk separating each one. They act like shock absorbers and then we can see nerves coming out of the spine on either side at each level. So, when the spine gets crooked, it puts pressure on the nerves and the muscles will react by going into spasm to splint the area. So it creates a lot of pain in the low back.

A qualified chiropractor can relieve that pain by relieving stress on these nerves. So, with a gentle specific correction called an adjustment, we realign the spine, take pressure off the nerves, the muscles start to relax, and the low back pain goes away. So my advice to you is if you have any low back pain, see a qualified chiropractor today to get your spine checked.