Who’s a Batman fan!?

You know, I’m a huge superhero fan, my two-year-old runs around talking about the Avengers. I’m definitely a Batman fan, but every time I watch those old Batman movies, the ones with Michael Keaton in them, I keep thinking that he’s going to get his butt kicked because he can’t turn his head left and right because of that stupid costume.

It’s like when superheroes wear capes, it’s like the dumbest thing ever! Yeah they look cool but someone’s going to choke him with it. I watch Batman, he can’t turn is head, I’m worried he’s going to get his butt kicked. I like Batman, I want him to win.

Hi, I’m Doctor Christopher Hood with Hood Chiropractic and I’m not here to talk about Batman today, I’m here to talk about something I see my patients deal with. When they walk around looking like Batman in that stupid costume because their neck hurts so bad they can’t turn their head. Let’s get real, you’re not Batman, you’re not worried about fighting crime. What you are worried about is driving the car with the kids to get them to school and you can’t turn your head right or left and you’ll get hit by a car. Or you can’t sleep at night because it hurts so bad you’re afraid to even lay down on the pillow cause it’s going to go into spasms. Or you’re like me, where your kids want you to wrestle with them and you can’t wrestle with them because you know that if you move a certain way it’s going to hurt all the way down into your arm.

I’m Doctor Christopher Hood, I want to get real, I want to help you guys, give you some good information that you can do right now to stop that, so you can start moving in the right direction. So, there’s a couple things about this. Every once in a while, like me, you’ll be wrestling with the kids, you hurt your neck maybe you slept funny. Grandma use to say, “Did you sleep in a draft?” where it hurts your neck and you wake up and it’s a bit stiff that’s a one time occurrence, no big deal right? But if it starts to occur repetitively over time it’s definitely a sign that’s there’s a larger problem going on in there.

Everyone gets something going once in a while. But if it's repetitive then I want you to take some action. First thing I want you to do is know what you’re doing. If you can place your fingers in there and feel that it’s in a specific area, once you develop that neck pain and really stiff neck which will actually call torticollis, that’s the clinical term you can feel it in there when you’re prodding you can feel a real specific trigger point in there. Do yourself a favor and ice it, don’t heat it! Wet paper towel on your bare skin, ice pack on the wet paper towel. 20 minutes at a time, only! That’s what you want to do.

But if it’s the entire side of your neck where you feel it up to the back of your skull, down into your neck, down into your shoulder that’s when you want to apply heat. I see it all the time, where patients are heating it every time or icing it every time. This is one of those times where you want to be really general and specific by what you’re doing. So again, pin point problem, ice, large area being invoked, heat it up. Same thing, nice easy gentle, 20 minutes at a time, ice or heat.

My concern with it is when it’s a long term repetitive problem. Is it’s not the wrestling the kids, the sleeping in the draft. But when you’re feeling it consistently, that’s what you call a forward head posture problem or a spinal misalignment problem. So, what we want to look at is your posture. So, when you look at posture you guys ever seen as people get old they start looking like they get this forward head posture, they get that hump on their back.

When you have chronic neck issues, if it's chronic its happening all the time for you and its repetitive, it’s the gateway to developing that old man old lady posture and that hump on your back. What happens is there individual spinal vertebra in your neck, they should have a normal curve in them. I’m always baffled when I talk to patients about this and they think the spine should be straight, but if you’re looking at the x-ray of the neck from the side. It should have this normal mark of curve where each bone lines up over the tip and the bones should be nice and square and white with no rough edges or arthritis, and the spaces in between, your disks should be nice and big and open. You have to understand the nerves that are actually running from your neck muscles down into your arm, heart, lungs, are coming from the space between our bones and the disks.

So, what happens to us in our modern Pokémon Go society, where we’re all texting, spending a life time on computers, if we lose that natural curve in the neck and that curve begins to straighten out. When it does, the weight of the head, which is like that of a bowling ball, which is about 12 pounds, shifts from the back-posture part of the joints where its designs to be, supported by big thick bone to the front which is no bueno, it’s not designed to support weight, so as the head moves forward the muscles are grabbing it, trying to stop that and that’s when we get the long term repetitive problems with the neck. If you have that, it’s a sign that your spine is miss aligned the weight of the head is causing arthritis or degeneration on the front of the bones cause it’s no weighted properly and over with like a rusty hinged on a door won’t open or close, that’s when you start seeing that old age posture, that hump on your back. That comes with problem like balance issues.

So, what we want to do is we want to evaluate you. You want to go to a chiropractor like myself, that evaluates that curve and starts getting you correct through exercise and adjustment to get that natural curve back in your neck. So that it stops it from being a problem and more importantly stops the old man posture the old lady posture and the hump on your back and long term disability ratings. I hate it when I see patients that we could have helped if they just done something about it when they were in their 20 and 30s now there in there 70 and 80s and they can barely move and their worried about walking down the street with the cane. So, if that’s you and you’re to the point where you want to do something about it now, where you’re proactive before you have to be reactive.

Go to www.hoodchiropractic.com log in, click on our website and come see us.

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I’m Doctor Christopher Hood and it’s a pleasure to serve you guys. God bless.