Dr. Mark and Dr. Chip's Healthy Blogs

A Natural Approach to Pain Chiropractic care takes a very different approach. Pain, or other symptoms, is a language your body uses to alert you that a limit has been reached or a change needs to be made. This usually involves the functioning of your nervous system. Because it controls and regulates every cell of your body. Every nerve message between your brain and body travels the spinal cord. If a vertebra is out of place, even slightly, it can put pressure on the spinal cord or the nerve roots that exit the spine. The resulting interference to nerve communications can be the cause of a host of health issues. A series of precise spinal adjustments help restore proper spinal function. The result? Revived brain to body communications. Oh, and less pain. If you’re experiencing pain, get a thorough spinal examination. Chiropractors have been able to help many who were threatened with surgery. Or told to “learn to live with it.” It’s an all natural solution that has helped mil...

·          Can I adjust myself?           You do see people, ever so often, twisting or popping their neck are turning in their chair to pop their lower back. This may lend towards a temporary relief of pain but without realigning all the spinal vertebra, the problems will return over and over. At Natural Health, we check the whole spine on every patient that comes in to make sure the spinal structures will heal in place as they should. “Cracking” the neck or back over and over lends towards ligament instability which the body responds to by putting calcium in these areas causing arthritis and degeneration. The overuse of over-the-counter, and prescription (like opioids), pain medication lends toward this problem as well as you have not fixed the cause of the problem, only covered it up.

·          Will adjustments make my spine too loose?           Putting the vertebra back in place and getting the ligaments to hold the vertebra in correct position actually helps the spine to tighten and strengthen. If a person has spinal subluxations, or misalignment , it means that the ligaments are already loose and are allowing the vertebra to move to far or misalign and get stuck out of place. This misalignment causes joint inflammation and disc height reduction which can then cause the resultant spinal nerve pinching or irritation. The chiropractic adjustment helps to restore normal nerve function by realigning the vertebra and getting the ligaments to strengthen. There may be a need for nutritional support as well is this may be the reason why the ligaments have weakened in the first place.

Natural Health is a “Safe Haven” for Health Truth             What we mean by “safe haven” is that our patients and our patient’s families are welcome to ask us about any question related to health and we will find the true answer for them. Many folks are hesitant to talk about health issues with their usual MD because they know of the blowback they will get when discussing natural health issues. Mainstream medicine has its own philosophy on treating patients and much of their information comes from research done by drug companies and drug salesman that, of course, are biased and perhaps not in your best interest. We understand the need for these companies to make money but we don’t agree with the misinformation that causes patients harm to their health and possibly fatal consequences.             At Natural Health, we are interested in giving our patients truthful infor...

What is normal Blood Pressure?             For all the years of my professional career, the normal blood pressure number that we’ve known about is 120/80. To be clear, this number was meant to be the average of the population. This means that some people’s normal blood pressure could be 150/90, and some people’s normal blood pressure could be 100/60. The thing to remember about blood pressure is that it is meant to be taken in a resting state. This means that you can’t rush into your doctor’s office after waiting for 2 hours in the waiting room, and being upset, have your blood pressure taken and it’s higher than 120/80, and then being told you have high blood pressure. A person needs to be in a resting position for at least 10 minutes without any stimulating stressors on the body, like coffee or caffeinated drinks or watching the news, and then have the blood pressure taken in both arms and see what the number is. Then do the...

Where Is My Health? Knowing where to look is the fastest way to find something. We help so many people recover their health because we know where to look. One of the key tenets of chiropractic is that health is our natural state. When someone isn’t healthy, we look for what could be interfering with this natural ability by looking for the underlying cause of the symptom. Typically, we find a disturbance in the controlling or regulating impulses of the nervous system, producing a myriad of conditions that go by thousands of different names. The most common source of compromise in this brain/body communication is from the moving bones of the spine. Headaches? Look to the spine. Acid reflux? Look to the spine. Inflamed tonsils? Look to the spine. Asthma? You get the idea. Does that mean chiropractic can cure everything? Of course not. But to regain your health, it’s a great place to start looking! Call today so we can check your health -- 217-228-2040

What causes Hiccups? As you may or may not realize, hiccups are symptom due to a spasm in the diaphragm. In the world of natural healing, we feel that anything can cause anything.  There must be some trigger though, for that individual to have the hiccups. This could be due to food allergies, indigestion and bloating, excitement, stress or other emotions, and subluxation in the cervical spine. The nerves that come from the spine at the C4 spinal level innervate the diaphragm.  We have had very good success in stopping hiccups by adjusting the upper cervical spine, especially the C4 area if it is subluxated. The T6 spinal level is involved with digestion and adjusting this area can also alleviate digestive problems that can stop the hiccups.  We have also found that using nutritional supplements to help with digestion, i.e. enzymes and betaine hydrochloride, reduce the indigestion and bloating and help to alleviate the food allergies which could lead to the sympt...