I asked all the following people how they got into Upper Cervical Chiropractic. Below is each person’s response. Enjoy!
Dr. Jaime Browning: “Simple. It changed my life. After years of wear and tear through volleyball, I had debilitating migraines. While playing collegiate volleyball, I suffered serious migraine attacks, did everything the medical profession had to offer, and still had no relief.
After realizing no medication could touch my pain and symptoms, I resorted to long periods in bed, isolating myself from my family and friends. And as if that was not enough, I started to develop severe TMJ. I could hardly open my mouth, and the pain was unbearable. And as Dr. Eddie Weller says, I met a man (for me, it was Dr. Steve Conicello), he moved a bone in my neck, and it changed my life. TMJ was instantly gone. It’s been almost two years now, and my migraines are now occasional headaches (rated a 4-5, scale of 1-10, 10 being the worst). They are annoying, but not debilitating. I have my life back! And through the retracing process, I know the outlook is even sweeter! How could I not dedicate my life to a healing art that NO one can touch?”
Dr. John Goodfellow: “I first saw Dr. Crowder during my second trimester. I was taking the last Erhardt Radiology seminar and Dr. Crowder often attended. When he entered the room, I noticed something different. He was one of those men that people immediately noticed when he walked in the room. I then became acquainted with Dr. Crowder Interns through the student clinic and found myself on his Sunday Session list and his intern list. I didn’t enter his intern program until my seventh trimester. So, I had exactly one year in his office.
Dr. Crowder taught us to be an extension of him in the process of checking a patient. We learned how to record patient findings in their file. We then learned Chirometer followed by Spinal Balance Checking. After we checked out on supine leg checks, we graduated on to NCGH readings. Following NCGH readings, we were taught to set the patient up in the posture constant chair. If we were allowed to stay long enough, we had the opportunity to set patients up for an adjustment and assist with spinographs.
He did not directly teach us toggle recoil or x-ray analysis or anything clinically about upper cervical. All that we learned came from his questions and watching him. I was further educated by Dr. Crowder following his death.
In 2002, I was asked to help in his office. I had the opportunity to review hundreds and hundreds of files. I witnessed how Dr. Crowder made choices in patient care. I followed his x-ray analysis. I followed graphs and when adjustments were made and more importantly, when they were not.
Although I learned so much while Dr. Crowder was alive, my Chiropractic Mentality was such that I learned significantly more after his passing.”
Dr. Nathan Clark: “Upper cervical specific technique corrects the subluxated spine by opening the channel between the brain and the body and body and the brain. No other technique that I have used or seen is its equal.
People respond better when they get a specific adjustment of the upper cervical spine.
Traditional manipulation of the spine did not yield the results I was looking for. Some people would get well but many would not. This is why I made the transition to upper cervical chiropractic.
By the way since I began using HIO most of my patients (the people who really needed care) are much happier and are on their way to recovery.”
Dr. Kevin Broome: “This is a great answer to your question. I went to undergrad with intentions of going into forensics. I majored in criminal justice and minored in chemistry. Towards the end, Doc asked me, “What about chiropractic school?” It had never entered my mind. It made sense so I jumped on it.
I chose Sherman mainly because of its location. I was living in Charlotte, NC at the time and it’s a short drive away. When I enrolled at Sherman, I thought upper cervical was chiropractic and chiropractic was upper cervical. I had NO IDEA that anyone was adjusted in a different manner than knee chest!
I remember calling Doc and saying, “What in the world have you sent me to?!?!?” People were having their hips, low back, mid back, everything adjusted. It was an eye opener for sure! I learned all the techniques but never doubted what I was going to do.
I was and still am so passionate about the power of upper cervical; my atlas was never adjusted by anyone at Sherman. To me, its life or death. My fellow students and I needed the practice in student clinic but no one was going to “practice” on me. It’s that important. That may read harsh, but when your symptoms were as bad as mine, you would have made the same decision.”
Jonathan Verderame: “I came to Palmer with the idea that Gonstead was chiropractic.
I had no idea what upper cervical care was until I joined Delta Sigma Chi, wherein my pledge brothers as well as the members enlightened me. I am continuously blessed to be surrounded by some of the most emanate docs in North America, who understand specific Upper Cervical Chiropractic like BJ Kale among incalculable others.
A current member of the fraternity is performing the follow up NUCCA Hypertension study at Palmer; just two examples of the countless leaders of the profession who have made a huge impact in my life.
The final truth about the magnitude and importance of performing only specific upper cervical care arrived last November when I discovered a mom had died following an adjustment:
http://www.myfoxny.com/dpp/news/local_news/091123-mom-dies-after-a-chiropractic-adjustment
Technique:
I have a deep respect for NUCCA, yet Blair resinates with me the most. I also want to learn more about adjusting toggle with a solid head piece, and of course what BJ was performing in his Research clinic.”
Julie Horton: “Now this is a good story! It was an incredible (coincidence?) the way I found Dr. Nathan Vuagniaux. He made a flyer on Upper Cervical Care as a last minute decision to put in a 5k race goodie bag that I had received. I had signed up for the race weeks prior, but at the time of the race I was sicker than I had ever been in my life and unable to participate. I’m so glad he made that flyer because if he hadn’t, I may have made the biggest mistake of my life… having selective vestibular neurectomy surgery. I was a week away from my pre-op appointment with my hearing and balance specialist when I found out what was really wrong with me.
I found out that I have a severely misaligned upper cervical spine due to four concussions in my life. My C1 and C2 vertebrae were so severely misaligned that they were twisting my brainstem causing damage. I was blown away and and in a state of confusion for days as this was so far off from anything I had been told was wrong with me. I thank God every day for finding the answer and for Dr. Nate making that flyer! The bizarre and frustrating thing is that Dr. Nate’s office was in my town the whole time and I never even heard of this! Why hadn’t I heard about this before?”
Dr. Joey Miles: “I ended up at Logan College for my chiropractic education. The biggest reasons I chose Logan was two fold: 1) Life University was going through their challenges with CCE. And 2) Logan was where the Activator Method of Chiropractic started, and this was the adjustive procedure the doctor used to help my family.
On a side note, the chiropractor that helped my family and introduced me to chiropractic, had an Upper Cervical focus, primarily because as a child he had Polio and was flown to Davenport, Iowa where he received H.I.O care and got well.
When I arrived at Logan, my roommate was Dr. Adam Tanase. He was about to graduate, and really took me under his wing to teach me what he had worked through and learned while at a school that truly doesn’t teach much Chiropractic principle or practice. Dr. Tanase encouraged me to begin reading the Green Books and to always ask questions when a professor at school was teaching things that didn’t quit make sense. He then began to explain to me the Chiropractic principle along with the practice and procedure of Upper Cervical care.
To be honest, I was mesmerized and excited about everything he was sharing with me because it made so much common sense. Even though everything Dr. Tanase shared with me made sense, I didn’t come to Logan to learn Upper Cervical, I came to learn Activator. So I chose to put that UC stuff on hold for a while so I could pursue the Activator procedure.
I quickly became involved in the Activator club on campus and within a short period of time, I became president of the club and traveled all over the country going to instructor conferences. I would teach the technique during club 2-3 days a week.
What truly excited me about the Activator Method of chiropractic was the system it utilized which consisted of pre-tests to determine if a subluxation was present, and post-tests after the adjustment to see if what you did worked. What a concept! Believe it or not, this common sense approach was vacant in most of the forms of chiropractic being taught at the college. Activator had reproducible objective tests for both pre and post assessment.
Now after teaching the technique through most of my education, a friend of mine, Phil Myers, come to club and asked me if I would check him but NOT adjust him. At the time, this was a very strange question. I was used to checking and adjusting students all throughout my time in club, no one had ever asked to get checked but NOT adjusted.
My question to him was, “Why would you not want to be adjusted?” Phil explained that he was under Upper Cervical care and my adjustments could possibly interfere with his care.
He had also heard that I used leg checks in the technique I was teaching and one assessment to determine if he was “holding” was a leg check. I hadn’t really heard anyone talk or care about “holding” since my talks with Dr. Tanase. I figured I would humor Phil and check him.
He laid down and I preformed a prone Deerfield-Thompson leg check. Phil’s legs were balanced.
I had never checked anyone when their legs were balanced to start. I had heard you might find it but it was rare, so when I saw this, initially I thought to myself, “Phil must have just been adjusted.”
So I asked him, “when was the last time your were adjusted?”
He said, “six weeks ago.”
I thought to myself, “Liar!” But I went on with my assessment. I performed every Activator “Isolation” test I could think of, and I knew a lot of them. I checked every single segment of his spine, his hips, knees, elbows, I mean everything I could think of. No positive test showed up. His legs stayed balanced in a neutral position and with the knees in flexion.
Frustrated, I brought Phil up off the table. I said, “Ok Phil, what’s the deal? Seriously, when were you last adjusted?”
He said, “Six weeks ago. Why?”
Extremely frustrated, I told him “Because I couldn’t find any indication of subluxation/nerve interference in your body.”
The reason for my frustration was that I wanted what he was living: a subluxation free state. I got great results symptomatically with the procedure I was using, but I continued to see the same subluxated patterns show up, not only in myself, but all the people I checked regularly. After examining Phil, he showed that he didn’t even need an adjustment.
Being, what I considered anyway, a Principled subluxation based chiropractor, I knew that the adjustment wasn’t what allowed the body to heal, instead it was not being subluxated. So then I asked Phil if I could go with him the next time he went to see his UC chiropractor.
Phil said,”Sure, but he (Dr. Robert Brooks) is in Tulsa, OK.”
Once again, I was kind of thrown for a loop. I said, “Phil you are crazy. Here we are at a chiropractic college with tons of doctors and students, and you drive 5-6 hours south to get checked and sometimes adjusted.”
Phil said, “Yeah, and according to your checks, I have been ‘holding’ for six weeks.” He had a point.
Phil then asked if I would continue to check him so he would know when we needed to make the trip. I agreed and I checked Phil everyday for another six weeks. Finally, after checking him for six weeks Phil laid down on the table and his left leg appeared to be 1 1/2 inches shorter than the right.
I was excited. This let me know several things. 1) Phil is human. 2) When Phil is subluxated his body manifests an obvious response that anyone could see.
We took a trip that weekend to Tulsa to visit Dr. Brooks office. It was quit an experience. I saw more amazing things in that one day in Dr. Brooks’ office than I had ever heard of on Logan’s campus.
When I got back to Logan I decided I really had to look into this Upper Cervical stuff. I bought my Volume 18 (where it all began) and Erikson’s Upper Cervical Subluxation Complex.
While reading these books, I began to feel that I had wasted so much time in my chiropractic education and also felt cheated in my education since the only thing I ever heard about Upper Cervical care at Logan was, “That’s B.J. Palmer nonsense and it doesn’t work.”
Tell that to the patients that travel many times, over several state lines, to specifically receive Upper Cervical care. Once you see the Truth, you can’t go back.
I have been learning ever since.”
William Soriano: “Dr. Accurso is a Thompson practitioner though at the time I didn’t know it, I thought all chiropractors did the same thing.
Onced I moved to Atlanta, I got a job working with a Life grad who, for lack of more PC discriptions, was a BROAD scope chiropractor. She didn’t believe in our philosophy and never attended any seminars on such. She employed several massage therapist and never held any lay lectures to educate her patients as to what chiropractic actually is, probably because she was clueless herself.
While working there, I got “adjusted” EVERYDAY until one Friday when she “adjusted” my atlas. That evening, I developed the worst headache, deep boring neck pain, and awful pain on the entire right side of my face. When I returned to work on Monday I told her what had happened and so, she “adjusted” me again. Later on that week when my pain hadn’t subsided, she continued to “adjust” me and also started using traction… it didn’t work.
I quit and then spent the next year with daily pain. I was only getting 2-3 hours of interupted sleep and I was making my wife almost as miserable as I with my constant waking and moaning out loud with pain. I tried all sorts of chiropractors, some gave me relief for 1-2 days, then out of nowhere the pain would return, I was beginning to doubt this whole chiropractic thing.
Eventually, while on a road trip to Palmer in Davenport as a Brother of Delta Sigma Chi, I heard Dr. Robert Kessinger talk about upper cervical neurology. What he said made the most sense since I first heard Dr. Accurso talk about this philosophy. I was ADJUSTED that night by Dr. Kessinger using the Knee-Chest protocol and my pain was gone! Two weeks later the pain returned and I started care with Dr. Anderson in Dallas, GA. I was in pattern and needed another ADJUSTMENT, but I never experienced any of those symptoms again.
That experience re-ignited my passion for chirpractic and I made up my mind that I would do whatever necessary to become a master of this upper cervical thing, I’ve been on the road to mastery ever since.”
Recommended Reading
* Subscribe to The Atlas of Life FREE Monthly Email Newsletter by clicking here!* Become a part of The Atlas of Life Chiropractic Directory today by clicking here!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I am a little long winded, aren’t I?
You should sit through my orientation classes…lol.
Great stuff!
That’s okay Joey you are not alone in that category. lol.
Brandon, another interesting blogpost. Way to go! I did have commentary on the following statement, though:
____
“He laid down and I preformed a prone Deerfield-Thompson leg check. Phil’s legs were balanced.
I had never checked anyone when their legs were balanced to start. I had heard you might find it but it was rare, so when I saw this, initially I thought to myself, “Phil must have just been adjusted.””
____
When properly using Thompson-Derifield (correct spelling of the name) leg checks, a patient presenting with even legs in extension is NOT rare. It’s not as common as a patient presenting with uneven legs, but it occurs approximately 20% of the time or so. Even legs in this position COULD mean any of the following: presence of Bilateral Cervical Syndrome (occiput problem, actually), X-Derifield (which could be a Cervical Syndrome, Negative Derifield or Positive Derifield), or it could mean that the patient doesn’t need to be adjusted at all. Further testing is required to figure out what the patient needs (or doesn’t need).
Simply having balanced legs on an initial leg check is completely meaningless in and of itself.
Steve,
You are exactly right. “Phil” showed negative for all Thompson cervical syndrome test and Activator isolation test for over 3 months of consistent checking. While checking “Phil” while he was holding, he also “cleared” several other chiropractic testing procedures such SOT and AK(I am not trained in these testing procedures so I am not sure how these test were done. This was what Phil shared with me during this time). This was what intrigued me to look into the Upper Cervical system of care that he was receiving. It changed my life by asking questions and receiving the answers.
And in a chiropractic college setting, which we were, it is RARE. In a practice setting where,hopefully your patients aren’t summiting themselves to a lot of over adjusting(as students typically do), then you are correct…it probably does happen around 20%. That is what I was taught from my Thompson mentors and Activator mentors.
I would have never made such assumptions after one test, such as the legs appearing equal. In fact, I used every means possible to find signs of Subluxation in Phil. Couldn’t do it. He was clear…for over 3 months. Something I am proud to say happens regularly in my family and practice.
Upper Cervical care has truly changed my life. Living without nerve interference is AWESOME!