Chiropractic for Fibromyalgia

Ask the Chiropractor- this week I was asked about Fibromyalgia and Chiropractic for relief.  It was a different ask, the person had already tried chiropractic and felt worse afterwards.  There is a different approach when dealing with systemic issues like Fibromyalgia. Take a listen and learn how we would work with Fibromyalgia. #healthy815

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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- Hello, and welcome to another edition of"Ask The Chiropractor.""Ask The Chiropractor" is a little podcast that I had put together'cause often people have questions about chiropractic and chiropractic care and they don't know who to ask or they ask the wrong person. What I mean by that is usually when somebody has a question about chiropractic, they'll asked their family doctor, but their family doctor has never studied chiropractic. They don't know anything about chiropractic. So you have a question about chiropractic ask the chiropractor, just like if you had a question about your teeth, you wouldn't ask your family doctor, you would ask your dentist. So let's talk real quick about the topic today. This weekend I was at a Girl Scouts, my daughter's Girl Scouts play and somebody asked me about fibromyalgia. He said, "My wife's got fibromyalgia and has asked we see the chiropractic clinic. And if so, my wife went to a chiropractor one time, and after going one time she was much worse than she was before she went in. So why would my wife seek chiropractic care knowing this?" So let's break it down real quick. That's kind of a tough question to answer real quick. Let's first talk about fibromyalgia. How does someone get fibromyalgia? Well, that's a great question. That's a question I don't have an answered to. Lots of different theories and principles behind fibromyalgia, but we know about fibromyalgia is that you have pain, not just here or there, but pain throughout your body. And usually when I see somebody who has pain throughout their body, I'm thinking more of a chemical or a systemic issue than a simple I banged my elbow, get my elbow, put some ice on the elbow, and the elbow feels better. It's not that easy. We have to look at the body as a whole mechanism all at once, not just maybe one or two spots in the vertebrae. So we always do at our office is we always start off with taking some full spine x-rays. And when we talk about a systemic problem like fibromyalgia, some of the key areas we like to focus on are the tailbone and the very very top of the neck. Out the very top of the neck there's a nerve that comes here called the vagus nerve. And the Latin vagus means wanderer. And vagus nerve, basically, it's about the size of a piece of linguini and it comes out between your C1 C2 area and it travels on. It goes all throughout everywhere at, generically speaking, belly button up. And the vagus nerve's job is to be the opposite of the fight and flight. You've heard of fight or flight or we call it sympathetic nerves. This is when your body is responding to a harmful, dangerous, life threatening stress that fight or flight kicks on and your body goes into what we call a catabolic mode, where you don't really care about the long term when you're fight or flight, you only care about the next five minutes because, genetically speaking, we're all hunters and gatherers. And the only stress we should have like that would be like a pack of wolves or a bear. And if you don't get through the next five minutes, nothing else matters. So that's a fight and flight. And the vagus nerve is a turn the fight and flight off. It's to tell the body we're no longer in fight or flight. Let's go back to healing, repairing, and feeling better. So when someone comes in, they have fibromyalgia and they have this aching feeling of weakness throughout their body, the first area we look at is how's that vagus nerve doing? Is that vagus nerve telling all the body parts that the danger's gone, it's time to relax, go back into homeostasis and heal? And I talked about the top of the neck and I also talked about the tailbone because I said belly button up is the vagus nerve or belly button down would be your tailbone. So we really wanna look at your hips and your upper neck and see what's going on, both with the alignment and your posture to see if you can make changes there. Now, a lot of times when it comes to fibromyalgia other systemic body problems, rheumatoid arthritis and stuff like that, we don't adjust a lot of places. We kind of like pinpoint just a couple spots because sometimes less is more, as I say a lot with fibromyalgia. So when somebody tells me they went to a chiropractor with fibromyalgia and afterwards they were in more pain or more discomfort, a lot of times in the back of my mind, you know, again, I'm not there, but my thought is less is more. Maybe the chiropractor adjusted every spot they saw on the x-ray instead of just trying to really zoom in those couple of spots. Now this isn't the case for everybody with fibromyalgia, but this is the case we find with some people with fibromyalgia. Now, will I be able to adjust these spots and make fibromyalgia go away forever? No, we're not. But when you have fibromyalgia and you live in a constant discomfort, you know, anything we can do to make it better, you'll take. And a lot of people with chiropractic care report they feel much better after getting chiropractic care. So that's kinda how we do it in this office. Now, again, you're talking about a systemic problem everything. You can't just be one adjustment here, one adjustment down there and feel better. We also look at some physical exercise. We need to get you up and moving around. And this is one of those weird conundrums because the more you do, the more you move around, the more sore you are, the more pain you're in. So for us, it's about trying to come up with a couple powerhouse, easy to do, quick exercises and quick stretches to have a lot of bang for their buck that won't upset you more.'Cause again, we talk about a systemic problem flushing the bad stuff out and bringing the good stuff in helps you heal better. And the best antioxidant, you know, the best fuel (indistinct), the best way to flush your system bar none is exercise. That's how we're designed. We're designed to heal on the go. But again, I understand somebody with fibromyalgia the more on the go you are, the more discovery you are, the more inflammation you have. So we try to really focus on a couple really key stretches and a couple easy motions and exercises to work on. A lot of that to do what we call proprioceptive training. Proprioception is right now I know where my hand is and I'm gonna put it behind my head, and right now I can't see it, but I still know where it is. That's proprioception. So we come up with some easy proprioception exercises. Some of them, you know, you have to, you know, all you gotta do is sit on a ball. I means that's not hard. We have you sit on a ball and work on your proprioception. So that's some of the physical exercises we do to try to get you back. Nothing we look at is, you know, we talk a lot about here being a certified chiropractic wellness practitioner. I'll look at some of the anti-inflammatory things that we can talk about too in your diet and other things and supplementation, like fish oil. If you have fibromyalgia and you're not taking your fish oil, I think you're making a crucial mistake'cause fish oil is part of the inflammation response. I know some people take it, excuse me, I know some people think they take it for cholesterol and other reasons, but the core, the real reason why people take fish oils for the the inflammatory response. And you keep it in check. That's really what it does. As a side effect it can lower your bad cholesterols, a side effect, it can do all kinds of amazing things, but that's what the core level is. So we'll talk a lot about how you can take some supplements to decrease some of the neurological inflammation. Everyone knows I love resveratrol and turmeric because they're neurological antioxidants. So we'll talk about stuff like that. We'll also dive into some ways of detox, right? Maybe it's not the fact that you're lacking certain supplements. Maybe it's time to detox and get some of the bad stuff out. We talk about the easy ways of doing that too, oil pulling, Epsom salt baths, little things that are real easy to do that can make a significant difference over time. And then lastly, we talk about lifestyle changes. Like what are you putting into your body? You know, if you had the detox, you add supplements. Maybe we need to reevaluate what your average diet is. I've always had the joke here that if you can order it while you're in your car or get it at a gas station, you're probably not supposed to eat it. We're talking about little stuff like that. And we try to just help give you the guidelines and suggestions that kind of get you on your way. So does chiropractors help with fibromyalgia? Absolutely, chiropractors help with fibromyalgia. If you went to a chiropractor before and you got adjusted and you have fibromyalgia and you felt worse afterwards, well maybe you're just that toxic too. Maybe it wasn't the chiropractor missed his mark, maybe you're just that really toxic and you gotta get some of the stuff outta your system. You gotta flush yourself out. These are great questions to ask and you know it too, it's not bad to get another opinion too, even from another chiropractor. If you went to one chiropractor, got adjusted, and it felt worse afterwards, go see another chiropractor and have him look at your x-rays and look at your films and get their opinion too and ask them maybe why it happened. Maybe it was supposed to happen. You know, if you had a cavity in your tooth you might not know it's there but when they drill into it to clean it out, it might hurt more afterwards. But we all know what happens if you would've left that cavity sit there way too long. You know, it's gonna become a real problem, a serious issue. So a little bit of pain to get rid of the cavity isn't always the worst thing. Not every time you go to the chiropractor, you're gonna walk out feeling like a million bucks sometimes you're gonna walk out and be a little more sore. Maybe, you know, I didn't have that when I walked in, I sure do have it now. A lot of times, those are the things that were gonna become bigger issues that the chiropractor found and took care of. So don't let that be a thing that discourages you. So that's kind of how we look at things with fibromyalgia. So if you know somebody with fibromyalgia then maybe you can share this with them and let them take a look at it. If you have a personal question about your own case, you'd like me to look at or answer to you, feel free to shoot me a message below or go to Rockford DC, R O C K F O R D, dc.com, rockforddc.com and you can send us a message right there. Those messages all come back to me personally. So I will see that and I will be happy to answer you. And if you have a question for "Ask The Chiropractor," you're curious about chiropractic care or you know someone that maybe went to the chiropractor and told you something about it afterwards or had a reaction afterwards and you're curious, you know, is that normal? Should I suspect that? Go ahead and reach out, you know, ask away, you know. That's why we do these. That's why we do these whole things here at"Ask The Chiropractor" to get to the bottom of it. And so you could hear it right from a chiropractor's mouth what exactly what have happened and what you should expect. All right, well, I'm Dr. Brad Hulsebus. I'm a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. I'm the official team chiropractor at the Rockford Icehogs. I have my CCWP, Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner and I'm also part of the LCP, the Legion of Chiropractic Philosophers. So if you have a question for me, you'd like me to answer, get back to you, go ahead and leave a comment below. I'd be happy to see it and maybe next time we do this video, you'll come out, and you'll see that you're the topic of the week at"Ask The Chiropractor." All right, thanks everybody.