Wellness Posts by drsyed

Migraine Headaches and Chiropractic--Some Amazing Stories

2009-05-20T14:17:05Z

Wellness.com - Migraine Headaches and Chiropractic--Some Amazing Stories by drsyed

In my 15 years of Chiropractic service, I've had the good fortune of helping hundreds if not thousands with various types of headaches. The most painful and complex cases have usually been migraine sufferers. Amazingly, some of my most amazing "MIRACLE" cases-and many chiropractors have such stories-have been migraine patients.

I remember in my first year in practice, a Medical Doctor brought his wife, with terrible daily migraines, in because all else had failed. His wife was now unresponsive to 8 ADVIL she had to take early in the morning to have any chance of warding off the terrible "whopper" as she called it. I examined her and noticed a major "subluxation" in her first vertebra of the neck, commonly called the atlas. Upon adjusting her atlas, her headache disappeared and she was no longer sensetive to light or loud sounds. I asked them to return to my office the next day and her headache was no more. I explained how that subluxation may have been preventing her body from healing itself. I released her from care in a few short weeks when I realized her adjustment was beginning to hold. She would return periodically for wellness checkups to ensure that (or any other) problem could be contained before it got out of hand. In a couple of months, she informed me that she was moving out of town. I helped her search for another chiropractor who would be convenient for her. 2 years later I had the occasion to visit an out-of-town post office to purchase some stamps. She heard my voice from the back room where she worked and rushed to the front and said with tears in her eyes, "Dr. Syed, I'm so pleased to see you again. I just wanted to tell you that I haven't had a single migraine since that first adjustment you gave me and now since I've moved to this town, I've been seeing my chiropractor regularly."

This story has been repeated many times in my office since then. As a result of seeing many migraine successes, I've been fortunate to have been invited as a guest speaker at many places on the topic. The most significant of those places have been the New England Headache Center, the Norwalk Hospital and most recently the Milford Hospital, right here in Milford, CT.

Just recently we had another amazing "migraine miracle" in the office when a gentleman with terrible migraines for over 15 years came in to try Chiropractic after having taken thousands of pills, several x-rays and even a number of MRI's. Amazingly, within a couple of weeks of starting Chiropractic care, his migraines have resolved completely.
I find that many patients with this horrible ailment are actually suffering from a "subluxation" in the neck region. A subluxation is simply an area in the spine that is not functioning properly. These subluxations may retard a person's ability to regulate or heal themselves. So in actuality, we aren't healing anyone-EVER! All we do is identify if a person has subluxations and if so, where they may be. Then we carefully restore the function of the spine in those regions and the body begins to regulate itself just as it was always meant to be.

Hmmm...come to think of it, the miracle is actually the function of the body when it is expressing full vitality and wellness in the absence of subluxations.

Who knows, help for this nagging and chronic epidemic may be easier than you think.

Have a beautiful, healthy and well day!
Dr. Behjat H. Syed

Blood Pressure and Chiropractic?

2009-05-04T12:18:35Z

Wellness.com - Blood Pressure and Chiropractic? by drsyed

As a chiropractor, I've always wondered about the sources of blood pressure. If you read medical/health literature, you would know that over 90% of blood pressure cases are 'idiopathic'. That means that the cause is medically unaccounted for or simply unknown.

I'm not so sure it is unknown. Ask anyone who has blood pressure and they'll most likely say it is due to stress. Emphatically, I believe it to be the truth and the whole truth. You see, blood pressure is controlled by chemicals released in your bloodstream, mostly from your kidneys and lungs. When the control of these chemicals is reduced, blood pressure may not be as controllable by the body.

So the great concern is who or what controls these chemicals and their release. Well, if you guessed it was your nervous system, you're absolutely right.

Now let's go back to stress for a moment. You may know that stress is of 3 major types: physical, emotional and chemical. Stress, folks, lives in your nervous system. So when your nervous system is under stress, how well does it control the rest of the body, blood pressure included? Not well enough!

So clearly, blood pressure is merely a sign or symptom of the underlying problem - stress on your nervous system.

Consider this excerpt from WebMD:

George Bakris, MD, spoke to WebMD. "And it seems to be adverse-event free. We saw no side effects and no problems," adds Bakris, director of the University of Chicago hypertension center.

Eight weeks after undergoing the procedure, 25 patients with early-stage high blood pressure had significantly lower blood pressure than 25 similar patients who underwent a sham chiropractic adjustment. Because patients can't feel the technique, they were unable to tell which group they were in.

X-rays showed that the procedure realigned the Atlas vertebra - the doughnut-like bone at the very top of the spine - with the spine in the treated patients, but not in the sham-treated patients.

Compared to the sham-treated patients, those who got the real procedure saw an average 14 mm Hg greater drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure count), and an average 8 mm Hg greater drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom blood pressure number).

None of the patients took blood pressure medicine during the eight-week study.

"When the statistician brought me the data, I actually didn't believe it. It was way too good to be true," Bakris says. "The statistician said, 'I don't even believe it.' But we checked for everything, and there it was."

"At the base of the brain are two centers that control all the muscles of the body. If you pinch the base of the brain - if the Atlas gets locked in a position as little as a half a millimeter out of line - it doesn't cause any pain but it upsets these centers," Dr. Dickholtz tells WebMD.

And now, consider this ABC News report:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7V95wyb63s]

Now remember, chiropractors advise patients to always pay attention to the cause rather than the effect. So if high blood pressure is the effect of stress on your nervous system, our advice is to pay attention to how much stress there is on your nervous system.

The best way to figure out how much stress may be on your nervous system is to consult your chiropractor. A thorough spine and nervous system analysis can reveal this in a reasonably short period of time.

Hey, who knows, help for this nagging and chronic epidemic may be easier than you think.

Have a beautiful, healthy and well day!

Dr. Behjat H. Syed

Give your Kids a Livesaver

2009-04-27T12:54:22Z

Wellness.com - Give your Kids a Livesaver by drsyed

Do children have spinal problems? Absolutely! But its presentation may not be so obvious. Go around your neighborhood and ask your friends if their children have spinal problems. Adults who experience spinal related problems such as headaches, low back and neck pain have their origins in childhood. Studies have shown by the time a child becomes an adult, they have experienced over 5000 falls and similar traumas to their body. Did you know that! I did not even know that fact. But I do know what the effects would be on my own children. The accumulation of falls can set up misalignments in the vertebral column, and as a child gets older, these misalignments will interfere with their health. Why not fix the problem now!

Many a time a child will not have any spinal symptoms. How about constipation? Can this be a spinal related problem! How about an ear infection? Don't you think a misaligned bone putting pressure on the nerve can cause an interference of flow of that nerve leading to that organ not working one hundred percent? Most healthcare professionals agree that these misalignments causing nerve interferences are called Subluxations.

You do have an option of getting children under chiropractic care so they would grow up as strong as possible by making these corrections to the Subluxations. Chiropractic adjustments have shown to strengthen the immune system by increasing the White Blood Cell count by fifteen thousand. Amazing! By strengthening their immune system, you are increasing a child's resistance to stresses in the environment. Would you consider this a little benefit or a life changing benefit for your child?

As a parent and as a chiropractor, I have learned that all parents want to maintain the health of their kids. But most do not know who to ask or what to ask. We are programmed that when we become sick, to ingest medications. Why not start with prevention and educate your children about prevention. When your children become adults they will have learned from the best teacher in the world-you, about optimal health. Therefore, they will lead a happy and healthy life.

When your children go boating, you provide them with a life saver. When they have a sweet tooth, you give them a Lifesaver candy. But above all, you can give them the ultimate life saver. The gift of optimal health through natural chiropractic care.

Yours in Health,

Dr. Behjat H. Syed

The Problem with Neck and Back Pain

2009-04-09T15:19:10Z

Wellness.com - The Problem with Neck and Back Pain by drsyed

As a chiropractor who sees tons of patients complain of low back, neck pain and other spinal pains, it strikes me as to how our society views pain in general. Pain is seen as something that should be suppressed. It is an annoyance at the least and a disability when extreme. That is true. Many of my patients know about my own history of spine conditions arising largely from when I was hit by a car at the age of 5 while walking back from school. My left femur was badly fractured and my pelvis was crushed. I was unable to walk for a year and learned to walk again at the age of six. My chronic condition is a constant reminder to human suffering such as the cases we see in our office. My patients also know that the only reason I'm not in a wheelchair is because of chiropractic. As such I empathize with those who are in pain and are suffering.

Almost every day in the office we see cases of debilitating spinal conditions. Not all are as symptomatic. Some patients have only intermittent pain. All are suffering, however.

My mission is to educate my patients about the perils of loss of function of the spine. My aim is to shift the focus from their pain to their dysfunction. That's right, their dysfunction. We call this a SUBLUXATION. A subluxation is an area of the spine where the nerves are being affected. When nerves are under pressure, many things can go wrong. Not all those things are painful. In fact many may be completely symptom-free. Only a chiropractor can determine if you have a subluxation.

You see your nerves, coming from your brain through your spinal cord, exit the spine and carry VITAL information to and from the brain. Study of neurology will tell you that only 7% of your nerves carry symptom information. This means that 93% of the time, you may have no pain whatsoever. Your brain and nervous system control all cells, tissues, organs and systems in your body. Pressures on your nerves may reduce the function and cause all sorts of problems. You may not regulate your enzymes, hormones, digestion, detoxification, mental focus, stress, immune response or even blood pressure etc. if your nerves are under this pressure from a subluxation.

So the problem with neck and low back pain is not so much the pain itself. Rather the consequences of dysfunction/subluxation that may sap the living life from your well being. So is it important to rid yourself of neck and back pain. But the bigger question is what is the source of that pain in the first place. And is it beginning to affect the function of your very nervous system that keeps you alive, well and kicking.

When patients understand this aspect of their health and that their body was meant to be well, they become educated that back pain must be eliminated. But also that the cause or source of their pain, the SUBLUXATION, must be removed so wellness may be restored.

Have a happy, healthy day.

Dr. Behjat H. Syed, Chiropractor

Am I Programmed?

2009-04-09T15:15:50Z

Wellness.com - Am I Programmed? by drsyed

Let's take a fun quiz first and then talk about the results, shall we?

Please write down the first brand name that appears in your mind when you read the following terms:

1) Diapers

2) Vacuum Cleaner

3) Cranberry Juice

4) Orange Juice

5) The Purple Pill

6) Bottled Water

7) The Ultimate Driving Machine

8) Instant Relief from Pain

9) Gasoline

10) You're in good hands with ______

Done? Ok, then let me ask you how long it took you to answer the questions. Most people will say a couple of minutes. Maybe for a couple of questions you had to think (most commonly decide between multiple options). But the majority of the questions came to you by the time you were done reading the terms, right? That is because that is EXACTLY what the advertisers want you to do - think of them without really thinking!

These are classic examples of Pavlovian responses. (Please look up Dr. Pavlov if you don't know what I'm talking about). We have all been PROGRAMMED !!! This is great for advertisers but where does that leave us - the people. I believe it leaves us less able to think for ourselves.

Now although this problem is prevalent throughout society, it hurts to see how it's even crept into health care. This is downright DANGEROUS. How commonly do we hear people who have a headache get advice from neighbors, coworkers or even loving family members, "just take a painkiller". Or when you have indigestion, "just take this pill or potion". You understand where I'm going now. Why don't we ask the right questions rather than giving knee-jerk reactions to such body signals or symptoms.

Let's set ourselves free by promising to 'think' rather than give Pavlovian responses. Wow, I feel empowered just talking about it.

And finally, we should think about the 'causes' of symptoms and body signals before we think about their solutions. Remember, your spine houses the spinal cord from where vital nerve communication takes place between the brain and various body parts. Any disturbance in this vital communication link may lead to dysfunction in the body that can later lead to symptoms such as headache, indigestion, fatigue and stress etc. We call this disturbance or dysfunction a SUBLUXATION. So the key is be aware of the cause, the SUBLUXATION.

Please keep healthy and happy.

Dr. Behjat H. Syed, Chiropractor