The most frequently asked questions about NUCCA Care are:

 The most frequently asked questions about health are:

The most frequently asked Chiropractic questions ask are:

                                                                                                                                  

01. What is NUCCA?

At Keystone Spinal Care, we use a system of spinal correction that was developed through the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association (NUCCA, found at www.nucca.com). The NUCCA Spinal Correction is unique in the field of chiropractic, designed to restore body balance and normalize the flow of healing messages from the brain to all parts of the body so it can reactivate its natural self-healing process. The NUCCA spinal correction requires NO CRACKING, TWISTING OR POPPING OF THE NECK OR BACK. This is possible because of the precise X-ray analysis using physics and mechanics to calculate the exact formula used for each spinal correction. No two formulas are the same; each one is developed for the individual person with over 10,000 combinations possible.

A NUCCA doctor is unique within chiropractic health care. After extensive additional training, a doctor of chiropractic may become a NUCCA doctor just as a medical doctor may choose to become a cardiologist. As with other specialties, care with NUCCA is more complex and quite unique.

NUCCA is specifically concerned with the relationship of the entire nervous system and how it is affected by spinal misalignments. NUCCA doctors work in a specific location just below the skull where the brain connects to the body. Damage or irritation to the central nervous system at this critical junction can interfere with communication between the brain and the body, resulting in numerous health problems. Re-aligning the spine and removing abnormal pressure from the nervous system will restore proper communication and allow healing to take place.

02.  How did I lose my Body Balance?

Accidents or injuries tear loose connective tissues that hold the structures of the spine together causing a loss of body balance. A weakness is created that allows the spine to break down and lock in a stressed position. This is known as the Subluxated (or out of place) Spine.

03.  Can Body Imbalance be corrected without Upper Cervical Chiropractic?

Rarely, it would be like finding a needle in a hay stack. Today’s hectic lifestyles are a constant source of body imbalance leading to organ and tissue malfunctions. Fortunately, our bodies have the ability to self-correct many of these problems for a short period of time even when there is slight amount of nerve interference leading to a false perception of health. But many times it doesn’t, and that’s when it is critical to see a NUCCA doctor and have our body balance restored. Once body balance is restored, the body has a much greater ability to maintain this balance and clear problems up on its own.

04.  What are Adjustments?

An adjustment is what a chiropractor uses to deliver a gentle, controlled force to the body to correct a Subluxated Spine and bring back your natural Body Balance.

05.  Are adjustments safe?

Yes. A New Zealand government study found that adjustments are "remarkably safe." By avoiding drugs and risky surgery, chiropractic care enjoys an excellent track record. A thorough exam can identify the rare person for whom chiropractic care might be unsuited. The precise and gentle nature of the NUCCA spinal correction requires NO SNAPPING, POPPING OR TWISTING OF THE NECK OR BACK. The adjustment is safe and effective. The adjustment is extremely safe, gentle and effective.

06.  Are all patients adjusted the same way?

It has been estimated that over 10,000 combinations exist of vertebral displacements. Each combination requires a different, precision adjustment, which is determined from the analysis of the patient’s x-rays.

07.  How many adjustments will I need?

08.  Are X-rays really necessary?

Absolutely! Precise spinal x-rays are imperative to the NUCCA procedure. We are often dealing with mis-alignments as small as ¾ of a degree. With such small mis-alignments the precision x-rays that we take, allow us to calculate the correct method to restore the mis-alignment to normal, thus allowing your body to begin the healing process.

The radiation exposure is extremely low with the NUCCA x-ray series, due to special lead filters that block out a majority of the radiation. The NAS (National Academy of Sciences) considers a single exposure of the whole body of 50,000 mrems (50 rems) to be a high level dose.

 

 

   09. Does it hurt?

No. The NUCCA method is extremely gentle. Many patients do not even know the doctor is adjusting them. Often you will only feel the touch of his or her hands on your skin. Occasionally, you may feel a slight muscular or gentle warming sensation.

  10. How long will it take?

The appointment is broken up into two parts: The first part consists of the history, spinal exam, and pre X-ray exam that takes approximately 75 minutes; the second part consists of the spinal correction, post-spinal exam, and post X-rays that will take approximately 45 minutes. Subsequent appointments take much less time. At Keystone Spinal Care, we allow approximately fifteen minutes, but usually the checking for alignment and any adjustment, if necessary, takes less than ten minutes.

Every member is different and so the time it takes to feel better varies. However, most practice members report some improvement in the first week. As time passes and you hold your adjustments better and for longer periods of time, you should continue to notice increasing improvements in the quality of your life.

  11. How can adjusting my neck help my low back and sciatic pain?

Moving the Atlas (1^st bone in neck) back to proper alignment untwists your entire spine. To better understand this concept place your one arm straight out in front of you with your palm down toward the floor. Now try moving your palm toward the ceiling without moving your forearm, upper arm, or shoulder. Impossible, isn’t it? It is just as impossible as moving the Atlas without the low back and hips moving. The atlas is connected to the rest of your spinal bones, as the hand is connected to the forearm, upper arm, and shoulder.

  12. Why do I need maintenance care?

Maintenance care is a good idea because it keeps your brain and body communicating freely and clearly. As the body is stressed through trauma, environmental toxins in food, water, and air, and negative emotions the body has an increased chance of losing its alignment. More often than not a person loses their alignment weeks or months before their body recognizes symptoms of the spinal misalignment. Maintenance care will detect the misalignment before symptoms appear so you can live pain free and have optimal health.   

  13. If I have no symptoms, why should I be concerned?

You do not have pain receptors in your spinal cord, and so by the time you feel symptoms, you have already been out of alignment for months, possibly years. Remember, regardless of how you feel, when you are out of alignment, your body cannot function at its natural peak performance. Just remember that a person can have cancer, dental cavity, high blood pressure, and heart anomalies without any symptoms, yet let go long enough symptoms will surely occur, just like a spine that is out of alignment. Many people call the misaligned spine “The Silent Epidemic” because most people have one, yet they don’t know it yet. But they will!!!

  14. Should Babies and children be checked for Spinal Misalignments?

There is no more active time in life than childhood; it is a physically demanding stage of life. Learning to master most activities, walking, climbing, bicycle riding, skateboarding, and so on, leads to many falls, bumps, and jars. These can cause spinal misalignments to start and set the stage for a life of performing at less than optimal. Everyone benefits from clear communication between brain and body. A check for misalignment takes less than five minutes. Why not make sure your child is growing up balanced?

Please read the following research from doctors around the world about children and spine health:

 

• According to Abraham Towbin, M.D. of Harvard Medical School, “Life for the new born depends upon the preservation and healthy function of the brainstem and spinal cord at the level of the upper neck.”
• 50,000 newborn deaths occur each year in the U.S. Approximately 10,000 of those are due to unexplained respiratory failure, known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Doctor Towbin sites “respiratory depression or failure is a cardinal sign of a spinal cord or brainstem injury that occurs during birth, but which frequently escapes diagnosis.”
• Dr. Godfrey Gutmann, a German medical researcher, discovered that over 80% of the infants he examined after birth were suffering from cervical spine (neck) injuries, causing many types of health problems.
• J.M. Duncan, a medical researcher, measured the amount of force required to severely injure a baby’s neck during delivery. He found that 90 pounds of force could cause stillbirth, while less could sprain the upper neck, causing health problems. Duncan commented, “This is not what most obstetricians would consider a great force.”
• Dr. Biedermann, from the Dept. of Surgery, University of Witten-Herdecke, Germany states, “A majority of newborns suffer from micro-trauma of the brainstem tissues.” Depending on the severity of the trauma, the effects of this damage will have a variety of manifestations not limited to SIDS. These range from “paraplegia, arm paralysis, cerebral palsy, seizures, inclination to infections in the throat, nose, ear region, disturbance of concentration, headaches, learning disorders, and the other neurological deficits”.
• Dr. Biedermann identified the K.I.S.S. Syndrome (Kinematic Imbalance due to Suboccipital Strain). In nearly all-600 children, ranging in age from birth to 3 had the K.I.S.S. Syndrome. From the 600 children, 114 were chosen for precision upper cervical care and follow-up study. Their symptoms included restricted motion of the cervical spine, torticollis, cervical scoliosis, facial scoliosis, asymmetric muscle tone, retarded development of the hip joints, retraction of the head and arching of the back, slow development of motor skills.  The most common cause of the K.I.S.S. Syndrome is the uses of forceps or vacuum extraction, moderate to extreme twisting of the head during the birth process, prolong labor, and multiple babies in the womb. 

 

Dr. Biedermann comments “The pathogenic importance of asymmetric posture in infants and young children is disregarded, with the condition being either dismissed as unimportant or not recognized at all.”

All subjects in the study had a precise upper cervical correction of the Atlas (1^st bone in neck), and according to the Dr. Biedermann the correction “simplifies and shortens the course of the infant’s problems, and significantly reduces the need for lengthy programs of physiotherapy.”

 

  15. How can NUCCA help heal cancer, diabetes, and heart problems?

The NUCCA chiropractic adjustment method is offered to help you create your own health, not to treat disease or its symptoms. As such we do not claim to cure these specific problems. What we do promise is that keeping yourself well adjusted and allowing your body and brain to communicate freely and clearly through your nervous system will help you to achieve your peak performance and enjoy your life more fully. It will give your body the best possible chance to heal itself, and as such the NUCCA method can certainly assist recovery in any condition.

  16. How can an adjustment so gentle do any good?

When it comes to influencing such a delicate and sensitive part of your body as the brain stem, gentleness is considerably safer than more forceful approaches. The more accurately the adjustment is delivered, the gentler the adjustment can be. The NUCCA method is gentle because excess force is simply not necessary. The head and neck respond very easily to a light touch. The specially trained sensitivity of a NUCCA professional as he or she lightly contacts the neck is all you need for a successful adjustment.

 

The most frequently asked questions about health are:

 

01.  What is Health?

Health is defined by Dorland’s Medical Dictionary as a condition of optimum physical, mental, and social well being, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmities.

 

02.  How do I gauge my Health?

Often people gauge their health by what kind of symptoms they may be experiencing. Symptoms are not a very good gauge of health because sometimes they are the last things to show up in an illness. Some of the time our perception of the symptom is also misleading.

 

03.  Am I sick or am I healthy?

Let’s take an example of a person who you see vomiting in the toilet. Is that person sick or healthy? You see another person just sitting at his desk doing work showing no symptoms of any ailment. Is that person sick or healthy?

Now you probably guessed that the person vomiting is sick, but what if I told you that an hour ago that person ate some bad fish. His body is now reacting with a healthy response to expel the tainted material from the body.

What about the person sitting at their desk? That person has undetected lung cancer that is spreading to multiple sites in his body. That person has no symptoms that would lead anyone to believe that he had lung cancer. He is not healthy.

So are symptoms the best way to judge health?

04.  Where does health come from?

If you wanted yourself, family, and loved ones to be healthy, what would you do for them? Would you give them more drugs? Would you give them more surgeries? At Keystone Spinal Care, we understand that health is all the organs and tissues of your body working like they are suppose too. We also understand that the nervous system controls every cell, organ, and tissue of your body. If the body is not functioning as it should, would it make sense to look to the nervous system first? After checking the nervous system then it is critical to analyze the building blocks of the body which are the foods a person eats. Without the proper building blocks in our diet our nervous system is limited in its ability to fully heal a person. The other health components that will create the health of your dreams are proper amount water & sleep, stress management, exercise, loving relationships, and spiritual health such praying to God, forgiving yourself and other for past hurts and mistakes, and meditating. Health is the coming together of all these components which will keep you and your love ones living life abundantly.   

The most frequently asked Chiropractic questions ask are:

01.  What is Chiropractic?

Chiropractic is based on the scientific fact that your body is a self-regulating, self-healing organism. If your body is not self-regulating or self-healing system we must look to the nervous system. The nervous system directly or indirectly controls every function of your body. If the nervous system is impaired, it can cause malfunction of the tissues and organs throughout the body. Chiropractic is the science and art of locating interference to the nervous system and removing them so the body can function optimally and health be restored.

 

02.  What can Chiropractic Help with?

Here is a very short list of conditions upper cervical spinal corrections have helped.

	Neck and Back Pains (including Low Back Pain)
	Migraines and other Headaches
	Sinus Problems
	Digestive Disorders
	Torticollis
	Shoulder and Arm Pain
	Juvenile Idiopathic Scoliosis
	Knee Pain
	Neurological Disorders
	Attention Deficit Disorder, ADD or ADHD
	and more

If you have a condition not present on this list, and you want to know if Keystone Spinal Care could help you, do not hesitate to call us at 724-216-9000.

03.  Nervous System and Your Spine, what's the connection?

Nervous tissue is very delicate tissue. Luckily, your brain is encased in a hard protective case (your skull) to protect it. Your brain then extends into your vertebral column or spine, which is composed of 24 movable bones, and becomes your spinal cord.

Over your life you have accidents and injuries that tear loose the connective tissue that holds your spine together. This creates a weakness in the spine and allows it to break down and lock in a stressed position. A subluxated (or out of place) spine affects the very delicate nervous tissue that travels through it, thus causing dysfunction in the body.

04.  How do I know if I have a Subluxated (out of place) Spine?

A Subluxated Spine shows up as Body Imbalance. Body imbalance is determined by leg length disparity, postural measurements performed with a specially designed level.

You can even have a Subluxated Spine and not know it. Like the early stages of tooth decay or cancer, subluxations can be present before warning signs appear.

05.  How Long Until I Feel Better?

My average client will experience some relief by the 4^th week of care. 50% of my clients notice some relief in their symptoms the same day as their initial correction. 90% of my practice members can feel a difference in their posture the same day as the initial correction. Many factors are involved with you feeling better, including:

1.      Type and severity of the condition(s)

2.      How long you have had the condition

3.      What other treatments you have had

4.      Medications you are taking

5.      Compliance with the doctor’s recommendations

6.      Age

06.  Can I have Chiropractic Care after Back Surgery?

Yes.  Rest assured that your chiropractic doctor is specifically trained to deliver a completely safe and gentle NUCCA spinal correction which requires no bending, twisting or cracking of the spine.

07.  How Long Will I Need Chiropractic Care?

The doctor will specifically design a treatment plan to get you the best results in the shortest amount of time and the least amount of adjustments depending on your specific circumstances and case. Our job is to offer you the very best care and we stand ready to help all patients, regardless of their health goals.How long you decide to benefit from chiropractic care is always up to you.  

08.  What type of education do Chiropractic Doctors get?

Today’s Doctor of Chiropractic is well educated. 

To practice chiropractic, graduates must pass demanding National Board Examinations.A chiropractic education never ends.Most doctors complete postgraduate instruction for license renewal and to stay current on the latest scientific research.  

09.  Will insurance cover chiropractic?

It depends. Some practice members of ours have insurance, but their policy does not cover chiropractic.

The members that have chiropractic coverage will need to determine whether we are a participating or a non-participating healthcare provider. If we participate then the answer is “Yes”, insurance will cover chiropractic fully if you meet your deductible for the year. However, if you have chiropractic coverage with your policy, but we are not a participating provider usually a person pays for the cost of the care upfront, and then submits the bill to their insurance company for partial reimbursement.   

10.  What if my policy doesn’t cover chiropractic?

Your health affects everything you do and everyone you know.  It is your most valuable possession.  Yet, each of us is free to place a different value on our health.  It’s convenient when an insurance company or third party pay’s the bill.  But be careful!  Don’t allow the profit motive of a huge corporation to make the decision for you.  Find out how we make chiropractic affordable for just about anyone. 

11.  What if Chiropractic doesn’t work?

If we’re unable to find and correct the cause of your particular health problem, we will refer you to other specialists who may be able to help.  Your health is our primary goal.