Chiropractic Concussion Care: Neck First

In this episode of Ask the Chiropractor, Dr. Brant Hulsebus delves into the often overlooked connection between neck health and concussion care. As a chiropractor in Rockford, Illinois, and team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs, Dr. Hulsebus emphasizes the importance of evaluating neck posture and alignment to mitigate concussion severity. The episode explains the anatomy of the cervical spine, the role of good posture in reducing head injury impacts, and the benefits of chiropractic adjustments for concussion recovery. He also discusses collaborating with medical professionals for comprehensive care and highlights leading research supporting chiropractic care in concussion management.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. thanks for tuning in today. I wanted to talk a little bit about concussions, where we currently are recording this. It's the fall and kids are going back to school. It's sports are restarting now when it comes to football and other sports. We all know that one of the biggest fear that most parents have is concussion stuff. Kids with concussions quite a bit. Now, this summer I had tons of concussion patients coming in. None of them were kids. They were just adults who hit their heads. And a lot of people don't think about chiropractic when it comes to concussions, and I want to try to explain to you why maybe you should be thinking about chiropractic when it comes to concussions. When you look at the research that's being done today for concussion care, chiropractors are leading the way. If you stop at thinking about it for a moment, you cannot have a head injury without a neck injury. You can't whip your head forward and back without injur in your neck at the same time. And I wanna discuss a little bit of anatomy and a little bit of physiology of the cervical spine and the midbrain Inside your neck, you have your cervical bones, your seven cervical vertebras. The spinal cord goes through those vertebras, and your neck is supposed to have a nice curve to it when you look at it from the side. The good neck posture. Your mother probably told you to keep your head back, keep your ears over your shoulders. Good posture. So don't put your head straight. Good posture. Now, when you have good posture, everything sits in there the way it's supposed to be. It's, that's, everything functions good, everything behaves good, but if you have bad posture and your head starts coming forward, that increases the weight on the stress on your neck. The research shows every inch forward is 10 pounds more pulling down on your neck. So if you're con concerned about concussions, one of the first things you should do is go get your neck posture evaluated by a chiropractor. There's a lot of research today coming out that says the best defense against a severe concussion is having a healthy, strong neck first. And we can't put a tape measure around your neck and measure your neck, and then have you exercise and remeasure and see if it got stronger. It. We could do that with your bicep, right? If you don't have big arms or big, guns, as the kids call 'em, you put the tape measure on the arm, you give the somebody a bunch of weights, they start doing curls and their arm gets stronger and stronger, the muscle gets bigger. Not the same concept, but the neck because there's other things that can make your neck bigger. Your, being overweight makes your neck bigger. Thyroid conditions make your neck bigger. You can't really just have somebody exercise that, put a tape measure on their neck and say, oh, now your neck is stronger. But if we know that every inch four of your head comes, it puts more stress on your neck and weakens your neck. We can assume that having good neck posture lets you have a good, strong neck. Having good neck alignment as far as the chiropractor looking at the x-rays and making sure everything's nice and aligned first, we know that it's gonna be harder and more challenging to injure your neck if it wasn't already weakened before the injury. So if you're somebody who's concerned about concussions, go see a chiropractor. But let's put that aside for a moment. Let's say that you have a sub concussion injury, or concussive forces hit your head and we suspect a concussion or sub concussion injury. What are we looking at as chiropractors? Why would you go to a chiropractor? The spinal cord, as I said, is inside the neck with those seven vertebraes. It's got ligaments that come straight out called dentate, like dentist. They're called that 'cause they almost look like tooth like. And they're very strong ligaments, and they hold onto the side. Under those vertebrae is really strong. They do not wanna let go. So if you whip your head forward and backwards, or side to side or whatever angle you get hit, there's a lot of forces pulling back and forth and tugging on the spinal cord. Now the situation with that is it's gonna have to slide a little bit, but it won't go up and down too much.'cause those ligaments. Now if those ligaments weren't there, you would, spinal cord would slide up and down and your nerves would be ripping in and out of the spinal canal. It'd be really mess. So the spinal cord really can't afford to move much, 'cause the nerves coming out between the vertebra. So if you whip your head side to side, front to back, whatever direction you get hit, the only thing left to do is for the spinal cord to pull down something has to give. So the spinal cord pulls down and we've witnessed the midbrain come through the hole in the base of your skull called the foramen magnum. Now, when the midbrain comes down through that hole, what happens is it clogs the hole, first of all. So your spinal fluid goes up and down your spine, around your brain, and as your brain does different functions and activities, it requires energy. Whenever there's energy being used, there's always a byproduct afterwards. Normally what happens is that goes into your spinal fluid. Your spinal fluid then puts it into your veins. Your vein picks that up. It goes through your kidneys, and your kidneys filtered out, and it's outta your system. But if that hole is clogged now, the spinal fluid regeneration isn't as good. It's not working as good as it could. It's building up. Not only that, but we've also been able to demonstrate the venous pressure. The return blood outta your head can't exit as much as it comes in. And this is why you get a thriving headache.'cause the blood vessels are pulsing into your head area more than it's coming out. So it's the backflow that you're feeling when you get a chiropractic adjustment. A lot of times to your C one C two people feel a little lightheaded afterwards. I was taught a long time ago. That's a blood rush going to your middle ear. That's why you feel this way. Today with motion MRI machines and the new equipment we have, it turns out that's not true. It's better when you do that C one adjustment. We're able to actually visualize with motion MRI machines that the midbrain gets pushed back into the cranium. When that happens, the venous flow brushes out and the spinal fluid rapidly starts to regenerate and it takes a couple seconds to level off after the cervical adjustment. Pretty cool, right? Let's talk about the midbrain. Now, not only acting like a plunger, but not only that, but just putting pressure on the midbrain. What is your midbrain? You know what's its function? Think of it as like your relay center, right? The nerves come from your body to your spinal cord, to your midbrain, and then your midbrain will relay relayed to the part of the brain. The brain will then take that to the midbrain and then out. So if my relay center is getting jammed. Am I gonna function good? Is my body gonna behave the way it's supposed to? No. Now typically, I know when I played ball and if I hit my head wrong, I had to sit for a little while. Do you think sitting and not doing nothing will make that mid-brain pop back into place? Probably not. Chiropractic adjustments though, have been able, as I said, under a motion MRI machine. We've literally watched it happen. I've watched these videos myself. When the midbrain pops back in. So if we have concussion, I recommend going to the chiropractor for concussion care. Now I live in Rockford, Illinois, and the Illinois law say chiropractors cannot do return to play. So what I have is I have a friend of mine who's at the orthopedic place. He'll do concussion evaluation. He'll do the testing, he'll do all the questions, and he'll diagnose you with a concussion. Then you'll come over and see me and I'll start doing the chiropractic care in order to help restore. The proper alignment of your neck, the proper posture of your neck, and get the pressure off the midbrain so your brain can fully heal. You'll go back to that other doctor, they'll reevaluate you, and then they'll say, okay, you can go back and play again. This is how we typically handle these projects or these patients from these. Okay, now we have lots of other cool stuff that we do. When you have the concussion, we have lists of foods you can eat, not eat activities you shouldn't and shouldn't do everything else. And the orthopedic doctor and myself, we had the exact same list even before we compared it so we were already on the same page about the things you wanted to avoid and not do and the things that you should add more of. So we already saw that part of it. The part they didn't understand was the chiropractic adjustment, and that's what we do. So we have a really good relationship here in my community in order to accomplish the goal that's best for the patient. Now, recently at the Professional Hockey Chiropractic Society, which I'm a member of taking care of the local hockey team here. We even worked out more stuff now. So now we're doing neurological exercises to help restore that curve of your neck in the office. So we've even gone a little step further now and even got more advanced care. So we know how to adjust you when you have a concussion. We know how to tell you what to avoid and what not to do. We know how to give you extra homework and stuff to speed up the healing process, but then we refer you off for the examination. Now, are there chiropractors that know how to do the examinations? Absolutely, but every state has its own laws, requirements, and I can't speak for all 50 states that can speak in the state that I'm in charge of, and that's Illinois. And Illinois. We're not allowed to do the return to play. You have to go see a medical doctor for that. Okay. Hopefully if you know a chiropractor, they have a connection like we have where you can refer back and forth to each other and work together for the benefit of the patient. So let's recap. If you have a child playing a sport and you're concerned about a concussion, before everything starts, go visit your chiropractor. Have the chiropractor take a good look at the cervical spine. In my office, we take x-rays before the season starts so we can keep that x-ray as a baseline. In case something does happen, we know what the child, the athlete looked like before the injury. So now when is it safe to go back? Now we have a pre and we can do another x-ray later on, see how much they match up. If I'm running about concussions, I'm gonna have my child's, my athlete's cervical spine checked both for posture and alignment. And I'm gonna work with the chiropractor to come up with exercises, routines, and things I can do in order to maintain a good strong cervical curve and cervical posture in the neck. That won't stop a concussion, but that'll make the child have less severe concussion should the concussion injury occur. Now, if my athlete has a concussion or suspect a concussion, I'm gonna call my chiropractor and see if they can do the evaluation, who they recommend to do the evaluation once the evaluation's been performed and the. S athlete has concussion, then I'm gonna go seek chiropractic care to help correct the damage that was done and then follow up with the original tester to make sure that we're clear and ready to go back. If you look at Harvard Medical School, you'll see that the number one guy in brain trauma injuries as a chiropractor, his name's Dr. Ted Kerick. I've had the opportunity to meet Dr. Kerick several times. If you go into YouTube, type in Jim McMahon, the 85 Bears quarterback and type in chiropractic, you'll see how a chiropractor restored him back to being himself after all the head injuries he suffered from. I talked about the motion MRI machine. That was from a friend of mine. His name was Dr. Long Year, like 2020 was a long year. You can look him up. He's outta Jacksonville, Florida. He has those videos available online so you can see 'em yourself. So can chiropractors help with concussions? Chiropractors don't treat concussions. Chiropractors help fix the cervical spine. Does the cervical spine need to be fixed a lot after concussion injury? While you can't have a head injury without a neck injury? So go in to see the chiropractor after concussion is a very good idea. Now, will you be referred to a chiropractor right away? My friend might refer you to me 'cause we had a good relationship, but I would say 95% of the time the answer is no because they don't know what we do. And if they don't know what we do, you probably shouldn't ask them. If whether or not chiropractor could help you should probably ask a chiropractor, because remember, if you ever have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, the only person that's qualified to answer that question would be a chiropractor. If you have a question for me or the next time you'd like me to answer for you, leave a comment or a message wherever you're listening to this or watching this, and maybe next week you'll be the question of the week. Everybody stay safe. Have fun playing the sports athletes. Good luck this season and again, feel free to reach out if you have any questions. Thank you for tuning in.