Time: Yesterday, Mid afternoon
Scene: “The Lab”/ Wise Chiropractic and Wellness
Patient: “Bob”, retired white male, early seventies
Chief Complaints: Ten years of terrible balance and no equilibrium, leaning forward all the time, some lower back and leg pain (mild), constant numbness and burning in his feet...and oh yeah: whenever he walks more than 5 feet, he cannot stop.
Sounds like the beginning to a bad joke, right?
A guy walks into a chiropractor’s office and crashes headfirst into the wall.
The Doctor says...
(I haven’t thought of a good punchline yet.)
That’s right, Bob can start walking just fine, but once he’s rolling, he can’t slow down or stop without crashing into walls or furniture. Inconvenient, to say the least. He certainly won’t be touring any china shops anytime soon.
This condition had started over ten years ago, but had been getting seriously worse over the last two years. Bob tended to downplay his own problems-- he was mostly just upset he couldn’t play golf for the last decade, but the looks on the faces of his wife and daughter clearly indicated a high level of frustration, exasperation, even desperation... in other words, this situation was drastically decreasing the quality of ALL of their lives.
Bob seemed lucid enough in conversation, but his wife told me he was having trouble remembering things. When I saw his forward-slumped standing posture, I immediately thought of Parkinson’s, but those patients have more trouble initiating action, not ceasing it. He needed a walker, but refused one, so he carried a cane as a compromise with his wife. Unfortunately, the cane did nothing to slow him down, keep him up, or keep him from lunging forward, so he still pitched into things regularly.
Previous diagnoses and medical treatments had focused on spinal stenosis, peripheral neuropathy, MS, high cholesterol, herpes-type viral infections...you name the specialist, they said, and they’ve been to see ‘em. You name the test, and Bob’s had it. You name the drug, and he’s been on it. He had also been under chiropractic care, lots of massage therapy, and he “even tried acupuncture” a few times. However, nothing in a decade had done ANYTHING to slow him-- or his condition-- down.
Current medications listed were a statin(!) for high cholesterol, Lyrica for peripheral neuropathy, and a beta blocker for high blood pressure. I asked him how long he had been on a cholesterol drug, he said “Oh, about 30 years.”
I did a spit-take. “Say what!? Which ones?”
“Mostly Lipitor for 15 years, then switched to Zocor, then Vytorin and Crestor...”
This was red flag numero uno.
Statins, especially the last two he mentioned, are notorious for causing peripheral neuropathy, and the longer you are on them, the more likely these “side-effects” will show up. Three decades of statin use, with progressively stronger drugs, can cause a lot of serious neurological problems if unchecked. A plan of action was formulating in my mind, as we typically do really well with peripheral neuropathy cases. Get him on some CoQ10 stat, lots of essential fatty acids, give him some chiropractic adjustments and CLRT treatments... he should respond fairly well.
However the real bomb dropped a few minutes later, when his wife casually mentions his... wait for it... pernicious anemia of 50 years! At this point, chocolate milk flew out of my nose! (Or would have, had I been drinking it. Keep in mind, this is 24 minutes into the case history before they let me in on that slightly significant tidbit.)
“Oh, but it’s been under control,” his wife continued. “He takes a B12 shot every two weeks, and his hemoglobin is fine.” Obviously the anemia part had been more or less under control, but the B12 in the shot was not getting to his nervous system for some reason. When I looked it up to refresh my memory, I saw that almost ALL of his neurological symptoms could be caused by advanced B12 deficiency! I looked over all the MRIs (lumbar, cervical, brain) and they were all clear. Nothing of any medical interest at all, and his chiropractic findings were merely a hypo-lordotic neck curve and some serious forward head carriage. All of the sudden this was a lot more complicated.
I recommended a conservative trial of chiropractic and cranial laser treatments, and before I treated him, I asked him to walk up and down the waiting room to see him in action. Sure enough, with his head down he gained speed from one end to the other, and then he went through the open door into my adjusting room, and a second later we heard the muffled bang of his lower body hitting my adjusting table.
His wife said, “See?”
Yep. I saw.
With him supine on the table, I examined the active and passive ROM of all his lower extremity joints. His ankles were especially rigid with very little motion in any direction. I adjusted his ankles, knees and hips with the Impulse adjusting instrument, which taps at 6 Hz, and is an excellent way to stimulate joint proprioceptors. Then I adjusted his atlas as a “double anterior” listing, tapping from A-P on both TP’s.
Next I used my 200mW red laser and bathed his cranium/cortex in light. The points that I chose first were the cranial reflex pathways for the calves, ankles and hips, and C1. After that I lasered the “executive decision” areas of the prefrontal cortex, the medial PFC( mPFC), and the major chronic stress area for men, the right orbital PFC (rOPFC). Total laser time was about a minute and a half.
Like Dr. Frankenstein raising his unholy creation for the first time, I slowly brought the table to upright and had Bob stand up. First thing that was evident was his posture: instead of stooping over like Nixon looking for seashells on the beach, he was fully upright with his head and shoulders pulled back.
His wife was the first to comment. “Oh my GAWD, Bob! You’re standing up straight!”
Bob shrugged. “Yeah I guess so.” He shrugged his shoulders a bit. He was mildly impressed.
Take a walk, I said. And he did exactly that: he casually strolled across the room, chatting to us about something (I don’t recall what as he was headed towards a glass table with a lamp on it), but as he got near it, he stopped on a dime, pirouetted, and turned around. He sauntered back toward us, turned around again, a did another lap, still chatting.
His wife’s jaw was hanging wide open. “You STOPPED!”
Bob shrugged again as if to say “Yeah, what’s the big deal?”
“Oh my GAWD daddy, you STOPPED!” His daughter was also impressed.
He made a few more successful laps back and forth.
I gave them my nutritional recommendations, and after that he made it to the bathroom without crashing, the front desk without leaning on it, and to his car without any help whatsoever.
I scheduled him for two days later to check on him, and when he came back in, he said that he had walked around the entire Publix supermarket “like a normal person” the day before for the first time in 3 years. No motorized scooter was needed this time.
This impressed him.
As I have only seen him twice so far, I don’t know if he will completely recover... but I can tell you one thing, it’s a helluva start. The initial results with Cranial Laser Reflex Technique, chiropractic, and basic nutrition are extremely promising.
Oh yeah. I thought of the rest of the joke.
A guy walks into a multidisciplinary doctor’s clinic and crashes headfirst into the wall.
The MD says ”Looks like you need a little pick-me-up. Here’s an antidepressant.”
The PT says “Your problem is weak abs. Lets strengthen your core.”
The straight DC says, “Yep. Definitely an atlas subluxation.”
The acupuncturist says, “The dampness in your spleen has stagnated your chi.”
The CLRT practitioner says “Your holographic biophoton field is hemorrhaging light! Get me a laser, stat!”
The front desk girl points to the small piece of plastic connecting his shoes and says, “I think he needs to quit stealing shoes from K-Mart.”
Ok, I’ll keep working on that one.
The video following this post is from Bob's second visit, where he demonstrates his rediscovered ability to stop and turn.
‘Til next time from the Lab,
Dr. Nick
PS: We are holding 2 “Crash Courses” in CLRT in the UK this June! Come learn this amazing technique that takes the hard work out of great results.
Visit www.lightforhealth.co.uk/education for more information.
