Techniques

At Heartland Chiropractic Clinic, we use various chiropractic techniques, or ways of adjusting, to treat a patient because people respond differently to different techniques. Some of the techniques we use are the Activator Method, manual adjusting techniques (using hands), Gonstead, Neuro Emotional Technique (NET), Total Body Modification (TBM) and other muscle testing/kinesiology techniques.

We also use other healing techniques to help our patients. We base our treatment around the Home Run Formula to address a patient’s health concerns.

What makes a person sick, or “dis-eased”? In chiropractic, we have spoken for a long time about the triad of health, composed of structural, emotional, and nutritional health. Imbalances in any of these can lead to bad health and symptoms. Another fourth component is also important, that of toxicity.

First Base – Emotional Factors

Have you ever noticed that when you get stressed you have the same physiological response to it? For example, when your husband or wife nags at you (assuming they do, of course), do you always get tight in the shoulders? What if you are behind in work at the office? Does your lower back get tight? When you are nervous about something, do you have a strange feeling in the pit of your stomach? Those are physiological (body function) responses to an emotional event. They can affect your health. Can you see after a lifetime of a bad marriage how your neck could become chronically stiff and painful? How your lower back could always be painful when you are at work? How you could develop an ulcer or irritable bowel from being nervous all the time? These physiological reactions to stress are what Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET) aims to address. It is not a replacement for counseling. Its aim is to unhook the emotion from causing the response in the body, like the chronically tight neck or painful back or irritated digestive system.

Emotions are not just psychological, they are also physiological, and therefore almost always have some effect on the body. Body reactions to an emotion can get patterned. For example, if you once tried to ask someone to the prom and were turned down, it may have caused you to feel rejected and hurt your self-esteem, which is alright if you just leave it at that and have no further effects. However, if the situation becomes patterned and generalized, such as fearing rejection whenever asking someone for something or having low self-esteem whenever you are told “no” in any capacity, it becomes a problem. You now have a “neuro-emotional complex” which can affect your health.

Now this is important. The Chinese believed that emotions could also enter the acupuncture meridian, or flow lines of energy, and could be just as destructive as any bacteria, virus, or toxin. NET aims to bring up the emotion, find whatever pattern you have set in your body, bring out the physiological response, and then treat the acupuncture meridian by gentle stimulation with the hands on the spine (no needles) or by holding certain points. This also deals with your “emotional reality”, what you believed happened, whether it actually did or not. As long as you believe it happened, to your body it did. To bring up the emotion, we use muscle testing/kinesiology, while accessing your subconscious memories.

Some patients state that it has helped them work through things in their counseling much faster. Others report just feeling better about themselves, being more relaxed and able to cope. It lets the nervous system work better because it doesn’t have the physiological response to the emotion to deal with anymore.

Second Base – Toxins

We live in a chemically polluted world. Ever read what’s in your box of cereal? The label to your soap or laundry detergent? What about your deodorant? Ever been gassed by a car head of you on the street? Well, then you should know how many chemicals we are being exposed to, and I haven’t even mentioned all the synthetic drugs we often take. These toxins have to go somewhere if there are too many for the body to handle, and the liver and kidneys are the places of choice for the body. In addition, the Chinese believed toxins would enter the acupuncture meridians and would also affect their function.

So how do you get rid of them? Well, nutritional products is one way, but one of the fastest ways is with homeopathics. The goal of homeopathics is to activate the body’s own defense mechanisms and healing ability. It uses plant, mineral, and sometimes animal substances in very small doses to stimulate the body’s defense systems, beginning healing, and dumping toxins. It was developed by a German doctor, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, in the 1800’s. He found that dilutions of substances would often reverse the symptoms that the same substance could provoke when given undiluted. For example, if coffee makes you sleepless, a specific dilution of coffee would reverse those symptoms. There are many homeopathics for many problems, whether physical or emotional.

Third Base – Nutrition

Put down your Burger King or beer before you read this one. This one is of major importance. We eat very poorly in our society. We eat too many simple carbohydrates/sugars, which cause problems with blood sugar levels, the digestive system, and heart/circulatory systems, to name a few. The foods that we do eat are nutritionally poor. The consumption of sugar and other refined sweeteners now exceeds 150 pounds per person per year. Is it any wonder that our nation is tremendously overweight, chronically tired, and more sick than we have ever been.

In general we start with the hypo-allergenic diet, which eliminates the simple sugars and most allergenic foods. Most people feel much improved just from that. However, we also recommend the blood type diet as described in the book Eat Right for Your Type by Peter D’Adamo. We find that it refines the diet better. Just by getting on the right diet, your health can be greatly improved. However, even with this diet, sometimes people are in such poor shape that they need specific nutrition for a particular problem. We use whole food concentrate supplements, which means they are not synthetic and are made from whole plants that are concentrated.

Home Base – Structural

With this, we have now hit a home run for problems. The structural component is addressed with chiropractic adjustments. Chiropractic affects the nervous system, which we now know is an integral part of both the immune and hormonal systems. There are many ways to adjust. They all work, and we try to pick the best for your individual case.

Structural also includes physiotherapy, which is why we use electrical muscle stimulation and exercises to help speed the healing. Acupuncture fits in here, too, balancing the meridians/energy in the body.

Once we have addressed all these areas, we have hit a home run! Most problems can be addressed by addressing each of these four areas. You may have one or all of them as a factor in your health, and we assess them all to speed your return to health.