Neurologcally Based Care By Dr. William Bauer

Within chiropractic care it has long been communicated by chiropractors to their patients that the misalignments in their spine were the cause of pain and other conditions affecting the body. In the case of an injury that makes sense, but how does this make sense if there was nothing like an injury or a fall to put the spine out of place? We might say that repetitive activity over time may have caused this; but what about children? In my experience some children have greater problems with their spines than their parents even in the absence of any significant physical trauma. The answer lies in the brain and its regulatory systems.

Anything that causes an interruption in the constant and precise communication between the brain and its target tissues creates dis-ease and disharmony. These interruptions can be structural, nutritional, or even emotional patterns. Science is finding that these interruptionshave literally caused people’s brains to adopt new abnormal patterns resulting in the need for chiropractors to findnew and better ways of treatment to help our patients return to a normal, active lifestyle.

What is fast being made aware to all within the scientific community is that although pain is what usually brings people in to see their doctor, it is often a very poor measurement of whether they are actuallygetting better or worse.  Pain is now understood to be a result of disorganized messages being sent to and from the brain. With the way the nervous system and all other body parts are interconnected, the resulting cascade of disorganized information can result in more than just pain. We can see examples of such things when we look at an ulcer in the digestive system, the effects of fibromyalgia in the musculoskeletal system, and imbalances in the hormonal system. In fact, anything the nervous system controls and regulates can and will be affected by an imbalance in brain function.

Many people (and doctors) have wondered for years why it can be so difficult to hold on to a chiropractic adjustment. Why do patients feel so good after an adjustment only to find a couple days later that the same nagging symptoms begin to rear their ugly heads again?

The real question is how do we adequately measure the extent and severity of your problem? This is where NBC (Neurologically Based Chiropractic) enters into the picture. NBC is a different approach to the evaluation and treatment of patients. Those who practice this style focus not only on the patient’s symptoms and spine, but alsoon neurological tests to tell them about how the brain is functioning. Common things checked during an NB- based examination include eye movement, pupil responses to light, deep tendon reflexes, sensitivity to vibration, balance/coordination, and sensitivity to smell and sound. All of these factors tell your doctor a great deal of information about your brain’s ability to send, receive, and sustain information as well as control and coordinate function.

More importantly, this gives your doctor the ability to diagnose the type of problem you have, determine if they can help, formulate an accurate treatment plan, and measure your progress.  

In early September Dr. Bircher and Dr. Bauer completed training in a new technology called Neuroinfiniti. This device performs a test called a Stress Response Evaluation or an SRE. The Neuroinfiniti test measures the brain’s activity and several key factors that the brain controls like brain wave patterns, temperature, heart rate, breathing rate and muscle tension. This information is collected while the patient listens to some mild stressing sounds to see how their brain and body react to the stress. The addition of this test has given us new information to help better understand our patients’ problems and has allowed us to put some very powerful tools into our patients’ hands. This is helping our patients to be more involved in their own healing process, and the results we are seeing are amazing. The understanding of how Chiropractic works and how it should be applied is shifting, and so are we.  We are integrating this shift into the focus of our practice, along with the traditional chiropractic adjustment that we also offer.  We are extremely excited to be able to offer this new practice style to our patients and we sincerely hope you will join us in this journey.

For more information on the Neuroinfiniti and the SRE testing, please join us for a Tuesday evening class, either in person at our office, online through a live webinar or by calling in and listening by phone.  Classes begin October 11thand will be offered every Tuesday evening, beginning at 6:30pm.