Critical Shift

What do you think of when you hear the word "chiropractor?"

If you are like most people, you probably think of "throwing your back out" or "sleeping wrong on your neck." You may even have been referred to a chiropractor by your primary physician or someone else because your "hip is out of place." If only the chiropractor could put your back "in" and get your neck in the "right" position or put your hip "back in" then you will be good to go. Of course we see many people in our office for these conditions and we help many people without the use of drugs or surgery. However, if we stop there, is chiropractic anything more than a more expensive, natural aspirin?

Of course it is. That is why we are making a critical shift in the way we practice right here in Tiffin.

This shift is one away from emergency back and neck care, and towards family wellness.

Why are we doing this? We are doing this because there is a desperate need for it, and because we can better serve our patients and our community through this process. According to the Mayo Clinic, Nearly 70% of Americans are taking at least one prescription medication. The studies they did found that opioid painkillers were the 3rd most commonly used medication.* We find these numbers alarming and borderline insane, particularly when you consider that 128,000 people die every year from properly prescribed medication.** They are not dying from overdoses, not from being misdiagnosed, but from taking a medicine exactly as their doctor prescribed it. Don't read what I'm not writing. The field of medicine is absolutely necessary and has helped many people, but it is being VASTLY over-utilized. The primary role of a doctor should be to educate people how to NOT NEED medication. In other words, how to be healthy.

The human body operates with an innate wisdom that attempts to maintain a state of health. This wisdom is contained with the body's Central Nervous System - the brain and spine. Every day stresses affect the body's ability to regulate and heal itself. In chiropractic, we refer to this as nerve interference. If you're committed to being a healthy person, you must have a healthy nervous system; to have a healthy nervous system, you must have a healthy spine.

Let's now revisit the word "chiropractor." The stresses of the world affect everyone and everything that is alive, including your children. Our primary role as family wellness doctors is to keep your nervous system functioning optimally, allowing your body to better deal with the various stresses that lead to disease. Regular chiropractic care, regardless of what you are feeling, aids your body in expressing the true vibrant wellness that every person has within them. We do not cure anything, the body is the only thing that is capable of healing. We simply remove stress that prevents the body from regulating itself.

Please ask us about how we can help your family maintain a state of wellness.

In Health,
Dr. Joel Ardner

* https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/nearly-7-in-10-americans-take-prescription-drugs-mayo-clinic-olmsted-medical-center-find/
** https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages

The Law of Breakdown

When do you feel that your body is breaking down?

I ask this question to patients all the time. Typically, they say that their body is breaking down when they feel sick or have a specific injury. This is very typical of the way we view ourselves. The truth is that our bodies are breaking down constantly, whether we feel pain and sickness or not.

In physics and chemistry, this concept is known as entropy, and it applies to all things in the universe. Your desk, your phone, your car, everything will eventually break down into dust. The big difference between these inanimate objects and your living, breathing body is that you have the ability to REPAIR things that are broken and damaged. Your body creates new cells and tissues to meet the demands of this Law of Breakdown.

This principle is the very basis of chiropractic care. The brain and spine are your power source. They respond to all stimuli and control all functions of the body. The estimated 100 billion nerve cells that originate from your brain and spine are in constant communication with each other. Interference to these signals inhibits the ability of the body to repair itself. In chiropractic we term this interference subluxation and we use the adjustment to correct the issue.

If you read my blog on spinal hygiene, you will realize that billions of people already recognize this principle when it comes to their dental health. Your teeth are constantly building plaque and to battle this you brush twice a day, floss, and get regular dental check-ups regardless if you have dental pain or not! The same thing applies to every other tissue of your body and we can tap into this repair process with chiropractic. This is the reason that people need to get adjusted. Imagine if you only brushed your teeth or went to the dentist when you could literally FEEL the plaque on your teeth! Gross 😂

When people understand this, the chiropractic adjustment shifts from being a band-aid for your aches and pains to a strategy to promote wellness in your life. When this happens, you realize that chiropractic is not an expense that you must pay for, but rather an investment in your health and quality of life.

In health,

Dr. Joel Ardner

Spinal Hygiene

You are certainly familiar with the field of dentistry and the concept of dental hygiene. From a very young age, we learn that dental hygiene is critical to our oral health, and even our overall health. Studies show correlation between dental health problems and serious issues like heart disease. We know the procedure very well. Regular dental cleanings (at least twice per year) combined with home maintenance (brushing, flossing, and not eating sugar) prevents early tooth decay.

I am going to introduce a new concept for you and it is going to follow the exact same model that dentistry follows. This concept is even more important to your overall health and your quality of life than dental hygiene.

The concept is spinal hygiene.

The spine is the intricate structure of bones, joints, muscles, and most importantly nerves that comprise your backbone. The spine serves several functions. First, the spinal bones protect the delicate nervous system from physical damage. The spine also is designed to MOVE. Yes that is correct, the spinal joints are precisely structured so that you can move through all ranges of motion (bending, twisting, turning, etc). The spine is a dynamic structure. Bone remodels itself in response to stresses and muscles get stronger or weaker the same way. Joints deteriorate with excessive wear and systemic inflammation.

As the spine decays, function is lost. The most basic loss of function is decreased motion. We know one thing for sure, joints that do not move decay faster than ones that move well. When joints and discs decay, they can compress nervous system structures like nerve roots or the spinal cord itself. When this happens, function begins to decrease on a larger scale. Remember that the nervous system regulates the function of all other body systems, thus interference at this level can result in more serious problems.

You may remember that one of the big things that the chiropractic adjustment does is restore normal motion to the spinal joints. As you can see from this article, this can have a huge impact on how you function. Keeping spinal joints moving well helps to prevent spinal decay, which in the long run further protects the delicate nervous system. Compare the chiropractic adjustment to a dental cleaning. You brush and floss daily, but there is still buildup around the teeth that needs to be addressed. Similarly, you exercise and eat fairly well, but there is still subluxation (nerve interference) and restricted movement in your spine.

Let's revisit this scientific research chart which we have used in other posts.

As you can see even people in their 20s show signs of spinal decay. All of these individuals in this study did not report any pain! You can see how functional losses start to occur long before pain shows up, just like a cavity develops silently until it starts to irritate the surrounding nerves.

Let's also remember from previous blogs that back pain is the number 1 cause of disability and missed work in the United States. Clearly we need a shift in our approach.

Enter the Spinal Hygiene model.

Spinal hygiene is very similar to the dental hygiene model. Regular chiropractic adjustments "clean" the spine, keeping joints moving and decreasing overall nervous system tone. At home, mobility and stability exercises are individually designed to address your spinal needs. Combine this with a diet low in sugar and processed foods and your risk of spinal decay decreases greatly. With better spinal hygiene, you avoid the need to see our physical therapy department, or worse yet an orthopedic surgeon for serious and dangerous procedures. You also help to avoid pain and function better. The spine is much more dynamic and is the victim of a lot more stress than our teeth, so naturally regular adjustments are needed more often than regular dental cleanings. I get adjusted once per week regardless of whether I have spinal pain or not. I encourage patients to get on similar programs and most end up coming in about once per month at a minimum.

There is a common saying in chiropractic, "If your spine was on your face, you would take much better care of it." Due to the near-epidemic proportions of spinal problems, a new model of spinal care is needed, and it is here and waiting for you.

In health,

Dr. Joel Ardner

Dry Needling

Have you heard about one of the services that we are offering at Fabrizio's? It is called dry needling and it has changed the way that we treat patients. 

Dry needling was developed from the ancient Chinese healing art of acupuncture. While acupuncture is based on the ideas of body energy and meridians, dry needling has a modern philosophy rooted in our understanding of the nervous and muscular system. There are similarities between the two ideas and in fact, the needles that are used are identical.

Dry needling works at three levels. The first level is the symptomatic level. This is the level where you are experiencing pain or discomfort. This is where you will notice the effect of the treatment immediately. Tight bands in muscles, called trigger points, often cause pain by restricting blood flow and irritating nerves. Inserting a needle into these tight bands creates a small lesion which will stimulate blood flow and allow the muscle to relax. The second level is the segmental level. This is the body segment or the nerve pattern where you are having the pain. Sometimes needling will be done away from the area that you have pain because that area is related to other sites by nerve connections. For example, you may have lower back pain but also notice a pain in your thigh or calf. That is because the nerves from your back travel down your legs to those areas. Thus needling the thigh and calf can help to ease lower back pain. The third level is systemic. Early studies have shown decreases in systemic inflammatory markers which could mean that inserting needles can tone down the inflammation of your whole body. Studies with functional (real time) MRI of the brain show that needling alters the way the brain perceives pain. 

Dry needling carries some risk. It is an invasive technique so any blood diseases or previous surgeries should be discussed with your provider. The most common side effect is soreness in the areas that were needled. This typically subsides in a matter of hours or a couple days. The most dangerous side effect would be puncturing the lungs with a needle which could lead to a collapsed lung. Your provider should be very well versed in anatomy and take caution while needling in the chest area. If you have any concerns, make sure to mention them to your provider. 

Overall dry needling has had an amazing impact on our patient's success. People that have come to us with conditions like plantar fasciitis, lower back pain, disc herniations, nerve pain, arthritis, hip pain, jaw pain, and others and dry needling has helped greatly to get them back to pain-free functioning. Our athletes have also taken a liking to the treatment to improve their recovery and performance.

I have been trained through Dr. Yun-Tao Ma's Integrative Dry Needling system. If you think dry needling could benefit you, give our office a call and set up an appointment. 

Yours in Health,

Dr. Joel Ardner

Scarred for Life

I have not done a written blog for quite some time. I hope that some of you have been able to catch my live Facebook segments, The Doctor's Corner. I look forward to continuing this series as a weekly house call, so keep watching for that.

I am not overly upset by much, but one thing that really makes me grit my teeth is when a patient tells me that they have been diagnosed with "degenerative disc disease." This diagnosis is virtually meaningless and I will explain why. Not only is it a useless diagnosis, but it gives patients a very gloomy outlook on their condition. If a person is told their pain is due to "degenerative disc disease" then it should follow the progression of this, getting worse and worse as they age, ultimately leading to disability, agonizing pain, and surgery. The only problem with this is that there is NO EVIDENCE that "degeneration" or "arthritis" or "decay" causes pain! 

Look at this picture, from a study that examined individuals of varying age that had ZERO spinal complaints. No pain, no tingling, nothing. They were examined with MRI and these are the results:

As you can see, 37% of people in their 20s and 52% of people in their 30s (fairly young) had visible evidence of "disc degeneration." Yet none of these people have pain. How then can a person with pain be shown the same exact findings and be told that is the cause of all their problems? Not only that, but why isn't EVERYONE in their 70s and 80s paralyzed and wheelchair bound because of their degeneration? This is just bad doctoring. Of course these findings are not ideal, but they do not cause pain and they are not cause for concern. I see it time and time again and it is SO DIFFICULT to go back and teach a patient that this is wrong when they have held onto this concept for years. Once they do realize that they are not destined to live a life of pain and disability, healing occurs in the majority. Will they have back pain? Of course, everyone does from time to time but they have strategies to deal with it and prevent it.

You have pain in your spine. Do you have degeneration, and disc bulging, and protrusions, and herniation, and everything else? Probably, because chances are that all the people around you have the same findings in their spine. See your chiropractor, get stronger, and have some faith in the power of your own body.

In Health,

Dr. Joel Ardner

Sleep, Melatonin, and Circadian Rhythm

Circadian rhythm, we have all heard of this term, but what does it mean and how does it correlate to your health? Great question from a great friend of mine. Throughout this post there will be information that you may not find engraved into the "scientific literature." Much of the information will be based on generally accepted human body functions and conclusions that can be made regarding how these affect our health. Despite a large amount of research, there is a lot we still do not know regarding the phenomenon of sleep.

Let's start with circadian rhythm and what it means. Circadian rhythm refers to the idea that your body runs on an internal "clock" system. This means that your body is somewhat programmed by the habits that make up your daily life. Each person's clock is somewhat different and may be influenced by many different factors. How does this clock operate, you might ask. Your rhythm is highly influenced by light that enters your eye. When light strikes your eye, nerve cells communicate with your hypothalamus (brain center that controls rhythmic functions). From here some more communication goes on in your brain and melatonin is released, which many people know as the hormone that makes you feel sleepy. It is best to look at wild animals in this case because humans have created artificial light that alters this function. Most mammals wake up when the sun comes up, and go to sleep when the sun goes down. This happens because of the amount of light that hits their eye. You may have seen the recent commercials for Circadian Rhythm disorders that occur in people who are blind. This is directly due to the fact that their eye does not react to light stimuli.

Now that we have established how your body knows when it should be tired, let's talk about what it all means. Your body loves to operate in rhythm. Most people would agree that they feel better when they are on a consistent sleep schedule, and some people have experienced the negative effects of changing their work shift (and sleep schedule). One thing we know happens during sleep is the regulation of body hormones. Our hormones run throughout our bloodstream and have an effect on most of our body systems, from digestion to muscle and nerve function. Proper sleep is also essential for physical and psychological stress management. Growth hormones that are released during sleep help to promote repair and restoration of body tissues.

Melatonin has become a popular supplement to take to induce sleep. This is typically touted as a more natural method than drugs used to aide with sleep. This is certainly a better alternative than drugs like diphenylhydramine (Benadryl) or alcohol. These chemicals interrupt our normal sleeping rhythm by preventing the brain from reaching deeper sleep levels. Melatonin can be used in times of crisis but it should be used sparingly. Think of it this way, if your body becomes used to receiving that melatonin signal from the supplement, it does not produce as much normal melatonin.

The best thing to do to help with your normal rhythm is to sleep like the animals! When you go to sleep, there should be very little (or no) light in your room. Do not take your cell phone into bed with you (I'm guilty of this from time to time) and avoid having light from digital clocks. Some people enjoy wearing sleep masks to cover their eyes and this will certainly work. If you need to use the bathroom at night, do not turn on the lights! Stumble around if you must but it is better to stay in the dark. Avoid alcohol and other drugs that prevent proper sleep. Do these things and you will experience more restorative sleep and set your biological clock on a good rhythm!

Yours in Health,

Dr. Joel Ardner

Reversing Your Diagnosis

Chances are, you have been diagnosed with something at some point in your life. Perhaps a fancy imaging technique like MRI or CT was utilized to reach your diagnosis. While these life-saving tools are essential parts of the health care system, they are vastly over-utilized in both chronic and acute conditions and can lead to feelings of fear. There are a couple problems with this way of examining a patient. The first is that expensive tests are utilized to identify a problem that is easily found with a physical examination, which hurts the system from an economic viewpoint. In our office, disc problems are by far the most common way this happens, but it happens across the board in healthcare. As I've stated in previous posts, a thorough history and examination is enough to make a proper diagnosis and rule out any red flags that may warrant other procedures. Many times, patients with routine neck or back problems/injuries are examined with MRI which reveals a disc bulge or herniation. This is a powerful moment in their pain experience where the patient can see a picture of why they are having their problem. This is a critical time when many doctors fail to explain a condition. Many times people come to my office and tell me that they have "disc bulges" and "arthritis" and they just know that "their back is a mess." They may be right about their back being a mess and need treatment, but they also cling to that diagnosis that they received so many years ago. The fact is, the body HEALS over time and you can take steps towards REVERSING your diagnosis 99% of the time. Reassurance and monitoring by your doctor in the initial stages of an episode of pain is essential. The diagnosis is really NOT important. The more important questions are how and why did this condition develop, and what can be done to reverse this and get back to a state of health and wellness? Always ask your doctor about the hows and the whys of your condition.

Yours in Health,

Dr. Joel Ardner