Upper cervical care is an approach that looks at the top of the spine and the way the head is balanced on top of the body. When the upper cervical spine misaligns, it has a global effect that impacts the entire body. A misalignment causes the spine, body, and the posture below that to compensate as spinal misalignment.
So not only is the upper cervical spine affected, but your mid-back, low back, hips, knees, or ankles, or anywhere below that, can be compensatory.
Is Your Wheel Off Track?
Consider a sliding door in your house such as your laundry room door that has a wheel on the track. If you accidentally slammed your shoulder or bumped your laundry basket against the door, you might knock it off the track. So while the door usually will still close, it might be jerky, or it may not go all the way to one end.
It’s similar to your neck in that your neck is two convergent tracks where the atlas meets the skull. If you have an accident or injury or experience repetitive stress, it will often “knock it off the tracks.” Your neck will still move and you can still usually move your head, but it may go farther to one side or it may be tight.
When it comes to that laundry room door, you can jerk or yank it, but brute force isn’t what’s required to fix it. You usually have to depress the spring and pop it back on. So it’s much more of a finesse type of correction, similar to how we address the upper cervical spine.
We use our X-rays to find the exact vectors and then will develop a finesse type of adjustment to realign it back on the “tracks of the neck.”
Dr. Berner will ask patients, “What do you do to keep that wheel on the track?” They don’t know what to say. “I tell them that it will stay on the track as long as you don’t ram your shoulder into it or damage it or injure it.”