Is Multiple Sclerosis a disease brought on by head and neck trauma?
In the paper titled “The possible role of cranio-cervical trauma and abnormal CSF Hydrodynamics in the genesis of Multiple Sclerosis”, Dr. Raymond Damadian (the inventor of MRI and UPRIGHT MRI) discusses findings in 8 diagnosed Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients that were chosen at random. So lets rewind just a second as the traditional understanding of MS is described as an auto-immune disease of unknown origin. From my ten years in practice, as well as all the other Chiropractic papers I have read, almost every patient I have ever talked to with MS has had severe head and neck trauma. This trauma is usually via whiplash in some sort of motor vehicle accident or sports injury. So when Ray Damadian showed in this paper that MS may be a structural issue and not some unknown, idiopathic disease, it made total sense to me as an Upper Cervical Chiropractor. His research matched and validated my observations in practice. So what that means is that MS can be helped by correcting the structural alignment of the cervical spine! This made me want to shout it from the rooftops and let every Neurologist out there that diagnoses and treats MS know this information, as it could save lives and prevent others from undergoing years of needless suffering and medication.
So if you know of someone suffering from MS let them know that Upper Cervical Chiropractic may be able to help. To find out more call our office at 603.380.9184
So what prompted Dr. Damadian to do this study? Well, he had been working with Dr. Scott Rosa, a mentor of ours in New York, on developing imaging techniques using UPRIGHT MRI to visualize the Upper Cervical misalignment and the changes pre and post adjustment. What was interesting was that they found that Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow actually moves better after an Upper Cervical correction. Then they looked deeper and found that CSF changes were happening at areas of restriction in the soft tissue of the brain as well as in the cervical spine. So then they started thinking about who might have changes more visibly, and low and behold MS patients have lesions that show up on the brain and in the cervical spine. When Dr. Damadian started investigating what might be causing those lesions, they concluded from this paper that the lesions would show up around areas of high pressure and consistently around the ventricles where the CSF is created and pumped out into the brain. When the fluid balanced after Upper Cervical corrections, the lesions were reduced.
You may be wondering why this information doesn't seem to be widely know. The problem is this research is very hard to do and very time consuming. The vast majority of papers on MS never discuss a trauma component and never link the problem to one that can be corrected by Upper Cervical Chiropractic care. It is a shift in how MS is typically understood and treated. So that’s why I am talking about this topic today, to get the word out there and to share Dr. Damadian's and Dr. Rosa's research. If you or someone you know suffers from the symptoms of MS, call our office to find out more about how drug free Upper Cervical Chiropractic care can reduce the problem that causes Multiple Sclerosis and its associated symptoms.
603.380.9184
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21970155
