Pain, tightness, limited range of motion: Shoulders that are just not working right, are sore, painful and have restricted motion, as well as those that have sustained injury take time and require restored alignment to heal as rapidly and completely as possible.  Often, ancillary procedures such as electrical stimulation, ultrasound, massage and gentle manipulations of the shoulder joint can assist in speeding recovery.  As with any area of the body that is not healing as rapidly as possible, nor functioning as well as is possible, the nerve supply to that area, in this case the shoulder must be evaluated to determine if any pressure on the nerves feeding the shoulder are compromised at the level where they emanate from between the vertebrae of the neck.  If such nerve pressure is detected, it must be eliminated if recovery and optimal functioning of the shoulder is to be achieved as rapidly and completely as possible.

Pain, tingling, numbness, weakness into arms and/or hands:  Symptoms such as these almost invariably have their causation in the misalignment of the neck bones, bulging or herniated cervical discs, arthritic growths in the neck and forward head posture.  Their most common cause are irritation to the nerve roots that exit from between the vertebrae in the neck. With our comprehensive protocol, we first determine if the patient is strong enough to hold a permanent structural correction of the weak areas that are causing the irritation to the nerves in the neck.  If they are not, it is a waste of time and money to attempt to start that correction and focus should initially be solely on pain relief and beginning the process of freeing and/or strengthening the components of the neck and then retesting 2 – 3 weeks later to then see if that patient is ready to begin instituting a permanent correction.  Once all the biomechanical measurements are correlated, we can then begin to teach each patient what they individually should do to restore the normal relationship of the bones, discs, nerves, muscles and ligaments in their neck.  Patients with bulging or herniated discs or postural muscles that are particularly resistant to change respond very well to the spine and disc decompression protocol that we offer.  The purpose of all of the above is ultimately to remove the pressure from the roots if the nerves in the neck, thereby allowing the arm symptoms to subside.

Carpel Tunnel and wrist pain:  By now most of us are aware of the toll that prolonged typing, texting, improper use of gym weights and other repetitive hand motions take on our wrists.  When it’s gone on long enough to misalign the small bones in the wrist, this can cause compression of the nerves that travel between these wrist bones causing localized pain.  This is called Carpel Tunnel Syndrome.  Very often, an allied component of, and frequent co-causative agent in this type of wrist pain is pressure on the roots of the nerves in the neck, nerves that feed the muscles of the wrist, weakening the wrists strength.  When both the neck and wrist scenarios are present, it is referred to as a double crush syndrome.  If the nerves in the neck that are contributing to the wrist pain are not freed of pressure, there can never be complete healing of the carpel tunnel syndrome.  It is also imperative that once pressure had been removed from the neck nerves that the neck be stabilized with corrective exercises to prevent recurrence.

Pain, tingling or weakness in the legs: When more rare possible causes such as blood clots have been ruled out, these three symptoms most frequently result from pressure on the nerves in the lower back, and are sometimes also due to pressure on the spinal cord in the neck or lower back.  Locating the source of these impingements, gently freeing them as best as is possible, realigning aberrant spinal structure and rehabilitating the areas that have allowed discs or bones to affect the nerves feeding the legs and their muscles is the course of care that will correct the source of pain, tingling or weakness in the legs.