Who Can Benefit From Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care?

If you have a condition or injury that causes spinal pain, you understand how severely the discomfort can impact your quality of life. Fortunately, you may not have to live with chronic pain. With upper cervical chiropractic care, many people experience pain relief without medical interventions, shots or surgery. This gentle approach helps restore spinal alignment to get you back to a state of health, wellness and better function.

Read on to learn more about the upper cervical chiropractic conditions that can benefit from this special technique.

What Is Upper Cervical Chiropractic?

Upper cervical chiropractic care is the practice of correcting spinal misalignments or subluxations through he cervical spine or upper neck. Although the correction is employed at the level of the neck, the effects of the adjustment impacts the entire spine. This is because the neurological postural control center for the entire body is located in the cervical spine or neck.

5 Conditions That Benefit From Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care

If you live with any of the following conditions, upper cervical chiropractic care may ease your symptoms and help you return to a fulfilling lifestyle.

1. Back Pain

Back pain can make many of life’s daily activities challenging, from exercising and sleeping to chores and errands. Upper cervical chiropractic care may help you find relief.

Back pain often occurs when the tissues that support the spine become damaged. When these tissues are compromised, the spine doesn’t have adequate support. It can fall out of alignment and cause improper movement patterns, compensations and pressure, leading to painful muscle spasms and inflammation.

Conditions that impact the nerves, muscles and tissues close to the spine can cause chronic back pain, including:

  • Pinched nerve
  • Herniated disc
  • Sciatica
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Spinal stenosis

Whereas traditional medical care employs drugs, injections and therapy to help mask your back pain, upper cervical chiropractors use alternative methods to address the cause of your back pain and help you find lasting relief.

Upper cervical care consists of gentle methods designed to realign your spine, postural changes and relieve pressure on the discs and nerves, which could effectively reduce your back pain long-term.

2. Meniere’s Disease and Vertigo

Meniere’s disease is a disorder of the inner ear that can cause hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo and pressure. Meniere’s disease usually affects people between the ages of 40 and 60, but it can occur at any age.

Symptoms of Meniere’s disease include:

  • Vertigo: Vertigo is a dizzying sensation that starts and stops at random. It can occur suddenly and last from several minutes to several hours.
  • Trouble hearing: Hearing loss is typically transient in the early stages of Meniere’s disease, but it often becomes permanent as time wears on.
  • Ringing in the ear: Tinnitus is a buzzing, whistling or hissing sound in the ear.
  • A feeling of congestion in the ear: You may experience pressure in the affected ear, a sensation called aural fullness.

The cause of Meniere’s disease is unknown, but symptoms of the disorder seem to stem from an atypical amount of fluid within the ear, known as endolymph. The following factors can impact the amount of endolymph in the ear:

  • Viral infections
  • Genetic predisposition
  • Inadequate fluid drainage
  • Irregular immune response

Meniere’s disease is a chronic condition, but upper cervical care can bring relief by addressing excess fluid in the ear and vestibulocochlear nerve. Realigning the cervical spine relaxes the muscles and tissues in the face and Eustachian tube, often improving fluid drainage in the inner ear. Correcting the upper cervical mechanics has been show to have a positive effect on the balance centers of the brain, eyes and inner ear (vestibular system).

3. Trigeminal Neuralgia

Trigeminal neuralgia is a chronic condition that causes quick, painful sensations on one side of your face. This disorder affects the trigeminal nerve, which connects facial sensations to the brain. Even slight contact with your face, such as eating, applying makeup, shaving or talking, can cause an electric shock of pain. Atypical neuralgia can affect both sides of the face.

Trigeminal neuralgia progresses over time to cause more frequent, extended episodes of jolting pain. It affects mostly women older than 50.

Undue pressure on the trigeminal nerve, which leads to disrupted nerve function, can cause trigeminal neuralgia.

Upper cervical chiropractic care helps manage symptoms of trigeminal neuralgia by relieving pressure on the brainstem and upper cervical spinal cord. The trigeminal nerve originates in the brain stem and upper cervical spinal cord extending as far down as the C4 spinal level.

Old accidents and injuries may have impacted cervical spine health and alignment that may be causing disruption to the trigeminal nerve causing to be overexcited.

4. Neck Pain

Your neck plays an important role in your body, supporting your head and facilitating movement. When you have chronic neck pain from an injury or traumatic event, you may experience achiness or sharp, shooting pain that makes performing daily activities difficult.

The following conditions can cause neck pain:

  • Subluxation: A condition in which a misaligned vertebra or vertebrae are directly impacting the nerve impulses in the spine. This can result in altered muscle function (spasm, fatigue and weakness) or altered sensory (pain, burning, numbness or tingling).
  • Fibromyalgia: This chronic pain condition can cause discomfort throughout the body.
  • Muscle strains: Strains can occur when the neck muscles get stretched or torn from undue stress such as poor ergonomic posture or continually looking “down” while using devices such as phones and tablets.
  • Compressed nerves: Herniated discs or bone spurs in the cervical spine can put pressure on the nearby nerves, causing pain. This can emanate from old accidents and injuries or from chronic postural stress.
  • Rheumatoid arthritis: This chronic inflammatory condition causes painful swelling in joints.

Upper cervical chiropractic care delivers precise, gentle adjustments to the structures in your neck to relieve chronic neck pain.

5. Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia is a condition that produces broad musculoskeletal pain. Fibromyalgia is thought to be caused by repeated nerve stimulation that causes an increase in the brain chemicals that signal pain. Pain receptors also become overly sensitive to pain signals, causing you to feel lasting, dramatic pain at even the slightest bodily contact.

Symptoms of fibromyalgia include:

  • Widespread pain: Pain often feels like a persistent ache that occurs all over your body.
  • Fatigue: You may feel tired no matter how much sleep you get.
  • Cognitive impairment: You may have difficulty focusing and concentrating on tasks.

Many factors can cause changes in the brain’s pain receptors, such as:

  • Stressful physical or emotional events
  • Genetics
  • Infections
  • Untreated psychological stress

Women are more likely to develop fibromyalgia than men. While there is no cure, wellness measures like reducing stress and exercising can help you manage symptoms.

Cervical misalignment can cause nearby nerves to become overly sensitive to pain, resulting in fibromyalgia symptoms. Upper cervical chiropractic treatment aims to realign the cervical spine and balance the central nervous system, relieving uncomfortable fibromyalgia symptoms.

Contact Us to Learn More About Upper Cervical Chiropractic Care

Upper cervical care is a specialized form of chiropractic treatment that gently corrects misalignments in the upper cervical spine to relieve uncomfortable symptoms caused by the conditions listed here and many more. When the experienced practitioners at Upper Cervical Chiropractic of Monmouth, LLC, care for you, you can expect gentle, effective methods that focus on correcting the problem rather than just managing the pain that comes from it.

If you’re searching for relief from headaches, vertigo, Meniere’s disease, fibromyalgia, post-concussion syndrome, back pain, sciatica, trigeminal neuralgia, failed surgery or other musculoskeletal or neurological conditions, we may be able to help. Call 732-617-9355 for more information, or schedule a complimentary consultation today. We look forward to assisting you!

 

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