Category Archives: General Chiropractic

Chiropractic Care Beyond Pain

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Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractor. Everybody knows that chiropractor is great for getting rid of pain. back pain, neck pain, headaches, things like that.

But, what chiropractors constantly try to educate your patients about is the benefit of chiropractic care beyond just pain and other symptoms like that.

So, it all boils down to the nervous system. We have different types of nerves in our nervous system. Some that our sensory nerves down here. These are the nerves that communicate pain, temperature, vibration, things like that sensation. These are really only a small part of the nerves and our nerve bundles that exit the spine. And keep in mind where nerves are coming out of the spine is where they can get compressed if alignment of the spine is incorrect. Disks and other structures can push on these nerves where they’re coming out of the spine. So that can cause pain but it’s really only one part of the puzzle.

We also have what are called motor nerves that run on our muscles in our body. We typically have pain nerves inside motor nerves inside of muscles rather. So that, you know pain, muscles get injured we can feel them. But, the motor nerves are totally separate from the sensory nerves. In other words, the nerves that run the muscles in your legs say, they don’t have any nerve supply that can give you the sensation of pain.

Likewise, for the autonomic nervous. These are nerves that go and run all of your internal organs, your systems like your digestive system and cardiovascular system. These are nerves that go all throughout your entire body. And again, they don’t deliver that sensation of pain.

So, if we have compression of nerves here in the spine we need to get that pressure off not just so that you can get out of pain which is important, obviously. But we also want to take pressure off that nerve so that it can function at its optimum for all the functions that it’s doing. Not just the sensation of pain. So, we want to boost up the nerves going to all three of these areas. The motor nerves go into the muscles. Autonomic nerves going to all the internal organs and systems. Also knowing where your body is in space. All those nerves are really important.

Chiropractic is not just about getting you out of pain, although it’s excellent at doing that. But, the way that we have success in chiropractic is all based on the same principles. So, it all comes back to taking pressure off of these nerves by restoring proper alignment.

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

How Do Chiropractors Know Where To Adjust?

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Hi. I want to talk about diagnostic thermography. Kind of a fancy word, but essentially, it talks about instrumentation that the chiropractor uses to help do a better job in locating where the spine needs to be adjusted. We’ve talked in the past about x-ray, the importance of x-ray, and I’ve done previous videos on that. So if you’re curious about that, check them out. The importance of x-ray or the value of x-ray is that we can really see a roadmap of what the spine is doing. When we talk about thermography, there’s another element of information that the chiropractor uses to get information about where to adjust. When there’s pressure on nerves, when there’s pressure, especially on one of these big nerves that comes out of the spine, there’s going to be a heat signature on the skin directly above it. There are accessory nerve fibers, basically means like little branch, like a little twig that comes off of these big nerves and goes up to this skin right above it. So when we’re talking about thermography, let me show you what’s up.

This unit right here is an instrument for thermography. And basically, what it does, it kinda looks like a stud finder. So when you’re checking the skin, it’s real sensitive and the needle should be pretty much in the middle. If it goes like this really quickly, that indicates that there’s pressure on a nerve right below that area. This helps along with exam information and information from the x-rays helps the chiropractor determine where to adjust on that day. This is especially valuable information because as the spine heals and rehabs… So let’s say, you have a curvature in the spine and there are one, or two, or three disks there that are kinda sprained and need to be rehabbed and need to heal. As one of them begins to heal, we’ll probably start getting a reading at a different level, maybe one above there, or one below, or two up, something like that. It is because these bones are on… It’s a curve, it forms a curve, and so in that curve, all these bones and disks are sort of points along that curve. So if you start moving one, you’re going to move the whole rest of the curve too. As you rehab one area, it’ll become… The priority will shift to start rehabbing another one on either above or below that. So this instrument really helps a lot with that to tell where the nerve pressure is that day and where it needs to be adjusted.

So I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic (in Petaluma, CA). We do a technique of chiropractic called Gonstead chiropractic. Gonstead utilizes information from x-ray, from exam, from an instrument like this to do real specific adjusting to help patients get better quicker.

Why Chiropractic Maintenance Care?

Hi. Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. I want to talk a little about maintenance care today.

A patient will come into our office and have some sort of problem. Usually, pain but it can be other things like dizziness, heart palpitations, numbness, tingling, headaches, all kinds things like that.

Once they go through what’s called an Initial Corrective Care Plan designed to address those acute symptoms, and get the body starting to heal from the injuries that are causing those symptoms, we then phase into maintenance care. Maintenance is a way to, like you maintain your car, you maintain your nails or your teeth. You don’t just go to the dentist when your teeth hurt, right? Maintenance is a way to keep things functioning and working properly, and to avoid bigger problems like root canals or things like that. Well, it’s the same thing with your spine. When the spine is out of place for long enough, you start to develop wear and tear in the joints and disks of the spine.

That’s something that can be nipped in the bud and corrected much more easily earlier on, when you have some sort of injury. Now injuries might be a car accident or some fall that’s a really obvious injury. But it might not be so obvious, and it might be something, and frequently is something, that happens when you’re much younger, in your early years between zero and five years old. That’s when most of these injuries happen, between zero and five years old. And they’re not corrected and over time you develop degenerative changes or wear and tear in the joints and disks.

Maintenance care is a way to offer insurance for the time and money investment that you made. You want to make sure that you’re continuing to heal and continuing to feel your best. Maintenance is a way to do that. And it’s also a proactive approach, so you’re not waiting until things get really sore and hurt before you take any action to help it out and help it heal.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino and this has been your Health Minute.

Got A Rib Out?

Hi. I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Chiropractic, and I want to talk about ribs for a minute. A lot of people complain that they have a rib out. It’s kind of a new term that more and more people are aware of and probably because they’re kind of painful when they go out of place. I’ll explain why they go out of place and what to do about it.

You can see this spine. This is a scoliosis patient, so this is not the average spine. Normally we would want to see the spine more straight up and down. But scoliosis is a good visual aid to kind of show what ribs do, because when the spine is out of place, whether it’s one or two areas that are out of place or more of a global curve, it takes the ribs along with it because the ribs are connected at the vertebrae in between. So, when they’re out of place, it kind of pushes the rib out of place as well. The ribs go right underneath your shoulder blades in the back. They’re supposed to go right underneath like that. When one or two of them are kind of popped up, it puts pressure on the shoulder blade, or it can be on the rib itself or on tissue in between the ribs. But ribs have a lot of nerves going to them. They actually have a dual layer of innervation or nerves because it’s such an important part of your body. If you think about it, it’s kind of like your armor. All your vital organs other than your brain are kind of protected in there, inside your rib cage. So if there’s an injury there, your body needs to know about it right away. And so there’s a lot of nerves going there. The bottom line is, there’s going to be a lot of pain though, even if they get out of place a little bit.

They key is checking out the source. They very, very rarely go out of place on their own. They sort of get taken for a ride because the spine is out of place. So we need to figure out why it’s doing what it’s doing. So in this scenario, let’s say this rib right here is bothersome. We need to fix it, but in order to do so, we really need to see what’s going on and why it’s doing what it’s doing. So by addressing and correcting the spine structurally at this level, we’ll be able to have an effect on that rib out here.

This is Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic, urging you to come and get your spine and your overall body structure checked out by a qualified chiropractor that can take care of your ribs, too.

Importance of X-Rays in Chiropractic Care

Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino, and this is your Health Minute. A lot of people ask about x-ray, and why x-ray is important. Is it safe, and there’s a variety of questions that involve x-rays. So, I wanted to talk about it a little bit. X-ray is incredibly safe, especially now that we have digital x-ray systems and high frequency systems that keep the dosage low, so they equate it to the effects on the body, much like a sunburn. In other words, it does have a damaging effect, but it’s slight, and it’s usually dissipated within two or three weeks.

I wanted to show you a little bit about the x-ray. This is a digital x-ray system. It’s state of the art, so there’s no film involved. Also, no processing with chemicals in a dark room, like you would see with traditional x-ray. So, you have a digital x-ray emitter, and then just a digital panel, then it comes to this console here where we capture the images and start to enhance them and crop them. And then we have another station over here, where we continue enhancing the images, we can get a lot of information that we wouldn’t normally have by getting these x-rays.

For example, we can see alignments, we can also see angles and so forth and get an idea of degenerative changes, like arthritic changes. Also, curvatures that aren’t supposed to be there. We can see deformities that exist in the spine. We can do before and after series, which is kind of cool, ’cause we can see actual changes, not only in the way the patient’s feeling, but we can actually mark them side by side and see those changes.

This is a scoliosis patient here, probably tough to see on this view, before and after. You can see the patient’s totally straight. There’s a reversed curvature in the neck, that curve is actually supposed to go this way. So, this is real important to see. There’s another one here where this is getting to be really arthritic and almost fused here, so important to see that. And scoliosis and so forth.

X-ray is a safe way to get really important information that we can’t otherwise glean. It helps us do a better job, and the care becomes much more affordable and much more timely, meaning we can get better results in a quicker amount of time by having this information. So, it’s definitely worth it, and having this state of the art equipment really helps make the exposure time lower, and it helps with a lot of the processing, because a lot of it, we just don’t have to do. So, there’s no chemicals in the office and things like that.

This is Dr. Steve Battaglino, and this has been your Health Minute.

Save Money Using a FSA or HSA Account For Chiropractic Care

Hi, I’m Dr. Steven Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. You may have heard of FSAs or HSAs, they stand for Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Account. These are tax-deferred accounts that are designed specifically for healthcare costs. They work really well, and they are accepted for chiropractic benefits, which is something that a lot of people don’t realize.

Benefits to this is that, in the case of a Health Savings Account, for example, your employer will make a contribution to it. As I said, it’s tax-deferred, or actually, it’s pre-tax dollars that go into these accounts, so you get a little more value with that as well. They often roll over from year to year, so depending on the account, you might not have to use everything up that year, but it is a great way, and an additional option to receiving care in our office and a host of other benefits.

I encourage you, if you are interested in opening an account, you can either speak with your employer, or with a bank about opening up a Flexible Spending Account, or Health Savings Account, and I would really look at your benefits if you already have them, to see what’s covered, ’cause you might be surprised by what types of coverages you can get with that. So, as I said, we do accept that in our office for chiropractic benefits, and… This is Dr. Steve Battaglino, and this has been your Health Minute.

The Importance of X-Rays

Hi, Dr. Steve Battaglino. Today I want to show you some X-rays, to show you the importance of x-ray. What kind of information we get from them that we can’t otherwise just glean from our hands.

This first x-ray series, this is “before and after,” so this is the side view of the neck like this and this is where the jaw is, the base of the skull. On the before x-ray, you can see its very straight, and then on the after x-ray, you can actually see a real nice gradual curvature. What it does is that curvature opens up these vertebrae and disks in the back where we can see they’re just about touching here on the before. A big change for the disks and nerve flow come in through there, but also in terms of arthritis as we age its crucial to get a proper curvature in there as much as possible. This is a “before and after” series of scoliosis patient, young man, 11 years old. You see curvature like this, real pronounced scoliosis. In fact, this patient was just waiting for surgery to have metal rods inserted up and down the spine on either side.

We were able to have him avoid that surgery, thank God. And we can see after four months of care, a very straight spine, much taller and much healthier in terms of energy level, digestion, and things like that. This is a neck curve, it’s actually a reversed neck curve. The neck curve… This is the jaw and base of the skull once again. The neck curve is supposed to go like this and this way. This neck curve is reversed and it causes a lot of stress and strain on the bones and the disks and joints and nerves of the neck. You can see actually some bone spurring forming here as the body tries to cope with that stress. This is a similar patient just fast forward probably 20 years where we can see the strain over time has caused this bird beak formation, this bone spurring. The body is trying to fuse these bones together to help with that strain of the neck being forward like that. We can see the disk, which is supposed to be nice and dark like this, is getting to be sort of obliterated there as well.

It’s important to catch these kind of problems in the alignment of the spine early on. This is another scoliosis patient where we can see real pronounced curvatures. It’s real important to catch this early on as well. You would think that this patient for example would be real distorted walking around, but they are not. Its amazing, but the body finds a way to compensate that makes them look almost straight. X-ray is crucial to be able to see really what’s was going on in the main points. This is the lower back from the side view. So this is the buttock here, this is the tummy here, the patient is looking this way. The main thing on this is a feature called spondylolisthesis. This your twenty dollar word of the day. It basically means this slippage here, these bones are supposed to pretty much line up with this. This is the sacrum or the base of the spine. This slippage here has a huge effect on low back, stability of the low back, its really important and know that its there to best treat it. Again, this is an x-ray diagnosis. We don’t really know about this by just feeling it.

We have curvatures in the neck, this is the left shoulder and the right. We see curvatures there that really can be best treated if we can figure out specifically where it’s locked up and why its doing what its doing. This is a type of scoliosis that we can’t really fix per se. It’s more of a support to kind of patch it and keep it functioning the best that I can, but basically this vertebrae is wedge-shaped instead of nice and cube-shaped like it’s normally its supposed to be. So it predisposes the spine to have that curvature to it. The body needs that curvature to compensate. We can see if things like this side slippage here, its kind of slipped this way. This is due to an injury probably before the age of 10. This man is probably in his late sixties now. To be able to see what’s causing a problem and to fix it and the best way and the most affordable way, the quickest way, x-ray is the way to go. That’s your little x-ray lesson your window in to the world of a chiropractic geek who marks x-rays until nine or 10 at night, till my wife calls me tells me to come home.

This is Dr. Steve and and this is been your x-ray minute.

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.

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.