How The Blair Chiropractic Technique Helps Treat Neck Pain

What is Neck Pain?

Neck pain is an umbrella term for a collection of related symptoms that can be caused by a variety of conditions. It is typically characterized by pain in the neck, shoulders, and back that radiates into the head and down the arms. 

Neck pain is one of the most common causes of discomfort in the United States, with 60-80% of adults experiencing the condition at some point in their lives. 

Signs and Symptoms of Neck Pain

Unsurprisingly, the most common symptom of neck pain is pain, stiffness, discomfort, or tenderness in the neck. Depending on the underlying cause, these symptoms may be present at all times or only when the neck is in a particular position. 

Long-term neck pain is often accompanied by a wide range of secondary symptoms, including headaches, insomnia, trouble concentrating, numbness or tingling, and dizziness.

How the Upper Cervical Spine Affects Neck Pain

The upper cervical spine is a group of seven vertebrae that support and sit below the base of the skull. Because of their position in the spinal column, the upper cervical vertebrae play a key role in stabilizing and supporting the muscles, ligaments, and nerves of the neck and shoulders. As a result, proper alignment of the upper cervical spine is essential for maintaining strength, flexibility, and range of motion in the neck, shoulders, and back.

When there is a misalignment in one or more vertebrae in the upper cervical spine, it can trigger a cascade of musculoskeletal problems, including pinched nerves, strained muscles, and poor posture. Without treating the root cause, these problems can eventually manifest as episodic or sustained neck pain. 

How Our Upper Cervical Treatment for Neck Pain Works 

Our treatment for neck pain is focused on identifying and targeting the underlying source of the condition using the Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Technique. By employing advanced diagnostic tools, Blair practitioners are able to restore misaligned upper cervical vertebrae to their natural position, alleviating neck pain symptoms and allowing the body's natural healing mechanisms to resume. 

At Blair Chiropractic Clinic, our expert Blair chiropractor, Dr. Gordon Elder, has a two-step approach for treating neck pain. During your first appointment, Dr. Elder will perform a brief assessment of your spinal health to determine whether you are suffering from a vertebral misalignment in the upper cervical spine. Typically lasting 25-30 minutes, this assessment will enable Dr. Elder to give you recommendations on the best course of action for further treatment.

If a misalignment is detected, Dr. Elder will proceed to the second step of your treatment plan. To locate the precise location of the misalignment, Dr. Elder will use a range of 3-D imaging tools to scan the upper cervical spine and pinpoint the vertebral misalignment. You'll have an opportunity to review the findings of this process and ask Dr. Elder any questions you may have. 

Finally, Dr. Elder will perform a series of gentle, low-force corrections to the primary area of concern. The goal of this step is to restore the natural alignment of the upper cervical spine, removing a painful source of pressure on the neck and kick-starting the body's natural healing processes.

Following the initial adjustment, patients will return for regular, gradually spaced-out check-ups to ensure their adjustment has stayed in place for 3 months. Over the course of 3-5 months, most patients average between 10 and 15 appointments with Dr. Elder.  

If you’re suffering from neck pain, don’t suffer in silence. Located in Lubbock, Texas, Blair Chiropractic Clinic also services Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland, Odessa, Abilene, El Paso in Texas, and Hobbs in New Mexico. 

Published by Vic Belonogoff: A Blair Chiropractic doctor helped heal vertigo, among other conditions that Vic Belonogoff suffered from, and it gave him his life back. He continues to see an upper cervical chiropractor as a preventative measure. Vic Belonogoff is passionate about upper cervical chiropractic and how much it helps patients.

Relief from migraines, vertigo, trigeminal neuralgia, backpain and more in Luboock.

Actual Patients tell their stories of improvement from migraines, vertigo, nerve pain, and back pain after starting Blair Upper Cervical Care in Lubbock.

I’ve been having migraine headaches for thirty-something years now. 

I have had back problems my entire life. The nerve pain got so severe that I couldn’t sleep at night. 

The one and only adjustment I’ve had, I’ve only had mild headaches, my vertigo had gone away. 

I’m able to climb roofs, do everything I need to, physically, and play with my kids. 

With no jerking, popping, or twisting, we seek to find the problem, restoring the body’s ability to heal itself since 1949. 

to find out if BlAIR upper cervical may help you or to schedule a screening, call: 806-747-2735

Schedule of care at Blair Chiropractic Clinic in Lubbock, TX.

One of the most frequently asked questions we get is: “How often do I need to come?”

The goal is to not see you because you are well. Dr. Gordon elder explains the process to get you there.

Once the spine has been injured and it’s affecting the central nervous system, the brain, or the brain stem spinal cord, it takes a while for it to heal. Now, different tissues in the body heal at different rates. Ligaments heal at a different rate than muscles. Nerves, blood vessels, they all have different rates of healing. We have observed that people tend to heal in cycles. And sometimes one thing has to heal before another thing can heal.

So as a chiropractor, once somebody has injured themselves, and I correct the problem that’s keeping them from healing themselves, then I want to check more often in the beginning. Usually, we start out at twice a week. Now, that’s not necessarily a treatment twice a week. I hope it isn’t, but it’s a check to make sure that things are still progressing. And then, we go down to once a week, and then once every other week, and then once a month. My goal is to get you to the point where I’m checking you, if possible, once every six months again without finding anything, in the same way, that a dentist would be looking at your teeth, not wanting to find a cavity.

We don’t rely on symptoms to tell us when to treat you. When something needs to be fixed because as the body starts to go back to its normal position sometimes things will hurt, muscles will get stretched.

So, we do not rely primarily on how you feel to know what you need. We use objective tests for that and that’s what those tests are for.

We know that in the beginning, the bones are more likely to go back out of alignment, and so we check more often. You’re not necessarily going to know, at that time, whether it’s in or out. It may feel like it’s out and it’s not. Or it may feel great, and it’s actually just gone out of alignment and needs to be fixed before you do feel something. So that’s why we design each treatment plan for the patient. But also based on the scientific knowledge we have of how fast things heal and what cycles people go through in that healing process.

About 50% of my patients don’t need another upper neck adjustment during the first three months, but I don’t know which 50% you’re going to fall into. I want to catch it almost as soon as it happens.

In the beginning, if you go back out of alignment relatively quickly, you tend to lose progress or regress relatively quickly. As time goes on you could go out of alignment and the body is stronger. And so you don’t regress quite so quickly so, we don’t need to catch it quite as quickly.

It’s best to keep to the recommended schedule.

There are two common mistakes people make:

1. They start feeling better right away and they stop coming in.

2. The other one is that it takes a while for them to start feeling better, so they get discouraged and stop coming in.

We found that the first three months is the most critical time period. If we can make it through the first three months or three month period without having to readjust the spine, we know that it’s getting pretty stable. So in the beginning you may feel real good, but it’s not stable. So we need to keep checking it to make sure that it stays in alignment long enough to get stable.

On the other end I’ve had patients come in where it’s taken almost three months before they really started feeling better. Just the process that the body had to take to get to that point.

And so I encourage people: Go through the schedule that I recommend at least for the first three months. Once you commit to that and we get through that, then we will discuss what the next step is.

I try not to check you more than I really need to,

and so we will space those off but, based on particular times where we know, okay, things are going to be about this stable at this point. And as we go on, you’re going to become more stable and there are certain mileposts, that once we hit, we know that we can safely go on to the next level. 

How can we help more people, better?

Dr. Gordon Elder discusses what chiropractic is and what to expect from him as a Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractor in Lubbock, TX

Helping more people in the best way possible is our goal.

I’m very open to using other professionals. Health is too big for any one person or any one profession.

Chiropractic; modern chiropractic started in 1895. People have been manipulating joints and bones since the beginning of time, evidently. We know the Egyptians did it, the Asians have done it the American Indians... In Europe, there was a profession called the “Bone Setters”. But modern chiropractic where we have taken western science and married it to the manipulation of joints has been around since 1895. In 1895 is was seen as a competitor to medicine, to chemistry, and surgery. And there was some bad blood between medical doctors and chiropractors. It still exists even today, however, many years this is. But they really are two separate and distinct sciences. They are both interested in getting and keeping you healthy. Chiropractic in general has many, many different techniques. There are over 200 different techniques. Some are better than others. All of them work for some people.

The question is:

“Can we help more people, better?”

So my goal as an Upper Cervical Chiropractor is to do the least possible and let your body do the most possible work because then you’re going to be stronger. You’re going to be healthier. You’re going to need me less. So we want to be as accurate as possible. We take some very precise X-Rays that look at the actual shape of your joints. We can see how they are supposed to line up. We can see how they are misaligned if they are. We correlate that with some neurological tests to see: is that misaligned bone actually putting pressure on nerves? Because if it is; it may be keeping itself from healing itself and pulling itself back. So then we decide which joints it is that actually need to be treated, to be fixed. And we slide that bone back into place, let it go back to normal. And make sure it stays that way; make sure it gets strong.

So the type of chiropractic that I practice; the Blair Chiropractic Technique is very precise and very accurate, as accurate as we can be. Now does that mean that we have reached the end and there is no more progress? Oh, I hope not! I want to help even more people. I hope there is more research done; more research that I can avail myself of, maybe that I can do myself to help my patients even more along the lines I have chosen.

However, I’m very open to using other professionals. Whether that be physical therapists, massage therapists, medical doctors, colon therapists. Because health is not… It’s too big for any one person or any one profession. My goal when a patient comes in to see me is; let’s fix the nervous system so your body can work as well as it can. And then if there’s something still left over, let’s find out who you can now go to and get the best effect from because the nervous system is working the way it is designed to.

Short Introduction to CBCT Analysis

This is a Cone Beam CT scan.

It is slowly, but surely taking the place of regular X-rays.

The first thing I look at is this 3 dimensional  view.

This gives me a good overview of what I am looking at and what to look for. I do my actual analysis on the 2-D views that you see on the right side of the screen. But this gives me some good overall information. I can look at the discs and the disc spaces, I can look at the holes between the bones where the nerves come out. I can look straight down from the brain through the cervical spine just to see what is going on there. So that's always what I start with first, just to get an overall view of what is going on.

Then I move to the 2-D views.

The first thing I do is I create these red lines that kind of square up the skull so I have some reference points. On this picture here, the head is pretty level, but on this picture here you can see there's quite a bit of tilt towards the right.

We want to look at the top joint in the spine where the skull sits on the top bone in the neck. Looking at the joints here on each side, and we'll take some measurements of it.

I'll just do a real quick version of it. We spend a bit more time. There's a bit more of a process to it when we are really analyzing something. It's about the same on both sides on this particular patient.

Then we're going to look at each side particularly.

So I want to look right down the outside edge of that joint there. We're going to see that over here. And we need to change the angle a little bit so we can see right down the joint. Alright, now it clears out. Looks pretty even there. The outside edge of the atlas and the outside edge of the occipital condyle, or the bottom of the skull. Let's take a look at the other side.

Overall this process takes about an hour.

Now if you look here, you can actually see a very small misalignment there. On this particular patient the atlas, or the bone underneath the skull, has moved a little bit to the left and forward of the actual skull itself and gotten stuck.

So we have to design an adjustment to slide the bone right back down there.

One of the tools that help us do that and again I would be a little more careful when I am actually analyzing it. We're going to look at what the angle is there so we know how to place our body in comparison to the patient to slide the bone back into place without twisting and popping. There is a lot of other things that we analyze...