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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

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.