Tag Archives: Chiropractic care in Grand Ledge

Researching Chiropractic: Stroke, Constipation, and Amenorrhea

Chiropractic clinical case histories have been a regular feature of our patient newsletter since its inception. There seems to be no limit to the health problems that respond to chiropractic care. How many people suffering, on drugs, facing a life of limitation could be helped by chiropractic care?   Probably most of them.

Strokeman-3803551_1920

A 40-year-old man had a 7-year history of right-sided lower leg weakness following a stroke. In addition to leg weakness, he had postural alterations, reduced right-sided lower back strength and altered balance.

He began chiropractic care. The patient reported improvement in strength and balance. Objective improvement in posture, motor strength, balance and surface electromyography and thermography studies were also revealed. (1)

Constipation

A three-year-old girl suffered from a full year of constipation. She was unable to have a non-laxative induced bowel movement. After 4 or 5 days of no bowel movements her parents would begin giving her laxatives until it triggered a bowel movement, which was reported to be large, very firm and an overall traumatic experience for the child. 

Spinal examination revealed vertebral subluxations of her neck (cervical spine). Chiropractic adjustments were utilized to correct the cervical subluxations and after two office visits, she started having daily bowel movements. Within a three-month period of weekly chiropractic visits and adjustments, the patient’s constipation resolved completely. (2)

Amenorrheawoman-3083379_1920

A 26-year-old female sought out chiropractic care following a work injury to her rib and low back. Upon her initial assessment she reported she hadn’t had a menstrual period for “several years”. Following three weeks of care, the patient reported improvements in her rib and low back pain complaints. In addition, the patient reported to be menstruating normally. (3)

Do you know anyone with the above issues?

Please refer them to us. We can help! 517.627.4547


  1. Russell D. Improvement in motor strength, balance & dysautonomia in a male stroke survivor following the assessment & correction of vertebral subluxation: a case study. Annals of Vertebral Subluxation Research. December 12, 2019:166-170.
  2. Merkovich AP. Resolution of chronic constipation & dysautonomia in a three-year-old female following chiropractic care: a case report & review of the literature. Journal of Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health, Chiropractic. August 23, 2019:100-104.
  3. Stofer J, Alcantara J. Resolution of amenorrhea, rib and low back pain following chiropractic care to reduce vertebral subluxation: a case report & review of literature. Annals of Vertebral Subluxation Research. December 5 2019:162-165

 

Researching Chiropractic: Non-epileptic seizures, Intention tremor, and Breech babies turn

There seems to be no limit to the health problems that respond to chiropractic care. How many people suffering, on drugs, facing a life of limitation could be helped by chiropractic care?    

Probably most of them.

Non-epileptic seizureschiropractic-3516426_960_720

A 36-year-old woman who was diagnosed with a non-epileptic seizure disorder called chronic psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) began chiropractic care. She was suffering from tremors, loss of muscle control while staying conscious, dizziness, vertigo and fatigue as well as experiencing 6-10 full body convulsions every day lasting from twenty minutes to one hour!

She had been suffering from PNES for approximately six years. Her medical doctors prescribed drugs and psychotherapy for her conditions but she continued to get worse. In desperation her MD referred her to a chiropractor. 

The chiropractic examination found upper cervical vertebral subluxations with related postural and structural distortions. After her first adjustment she had no symptoms for two days. She had three visits the first week and two per week for the next five months. After five months of chiropractic care she was completely symptom-free. (1) 

Intention tremorbaby hand

A 20-month-old boy was suffering from a shaky right hand. He was diagnosed with intention tremor (kinetic tremor) meaning that the tremor occurs while the arm is moving such as reaching for a toy or food. He also walked with his arms behind his torso and had speech delay.

The child was brought in for chiropractic care and his subluxations were addressed. The parents were told to do cross-crawl at-home exercises as part of the care plan. 

The frequency of his intention tremors significantly decreased and his parents reported a marked improvement in his co-ordination and appetite. Also, his energy levels increased and frequency of colds/infections had improved. His parents noted that he was speaking in three-word sentences. (2)

Breech babies turnbreech baby

Five pregnant women between the ages of 24 and 40 (pregnant 30-36 weeks) began chiropractic care. They all suffered from related pain and had babies in breech presentations.

When sacral subluxations are corrected using chiropractic procedures the pelvic cavity opens, the uterus has less stress and the baby is able to turn into the ideal presentation for delivery.

All the women had their babies in normal vertex positions within 10 adjustments (with 5.8 adjustments being the average). All five women went on to have normal vaginal deliveries. In addition, they had decreased back, pelvic and head pain. (3) 

If you know anyone suffering from any of these 3 situations, please share this article and encourage them to seek chiropractic care. We can help!


  1. Friedman R, Puro S. Resolution of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures following chiropractic care: a case study & review of the literature. Journal of Upper Cervical Chiropractic Research. February 11, 2019:1-10.
  2. Stone-McCoy P, Pogrelis ZC. Resolution of intention tremor following chiropractic in an infant with vertebral subluxation: a case study and selective review of the literature. Journal of Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health, Chiropractic. February 25, 2019:11-18.
  3. Mulcahy R, Mayo E. Resolution of breech presentations confirmed by ultrasound following chiropractic care using Webster Technique in five women: a case series. Journal of Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health, Chiropractic. March 11, 2019:19-27.

Chiropractic for pets?

Is Chiropractic for pets beneficial?

Sure! Why not? Of course, chiropractic is for dogs and cats. After all, animals that have spines can have subluxations that chiropractors can correct – to the benefit of all creatures with spinal columns.

In fact, since chiropractic’s inception in the American Midwest (Davenport, Iowa) in 1895, Doctors of Chiropractic have had many different kinds of four-legged patients: dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, cows, bulls, etc.

Chiropractors have taken care of championship race horses, expensive show animals and everyday dogs and house cats. It’s a shame that many people don’t know about “animal chiropractic” so we have highlighted a recent chiropractic animal adjustment case study. Read it here.

A note from Dr.C.– I have been taking care of dogs, bobcats and other animals for many years and have some wonderful stories to share.

Chiropractic for pets

Strength Training for People My Age

This article originally appeared on StartingStrength.com

by Mark Rippetoe (age 61)

strength training

I was born in 1956. That makes me “old.” Granted, I’m pretty beat up these days. I’ve had my share of injuries, the result of having lived a rather careless active life outdoors, on horses, motorcycles, bicycles, and the field of competition. People my age who have not spent their years in a chair have an accumulation of aches and pains, most of them earned the hard way. And for us, beat up or not, the best way to stay in the game is to train for strength.

The conventional wisdom is that older people (ah, the term sticks in the craw) need to settle into a routine of walking around in the park when the weather is nice, maybe going to the mall for a brisk stroll in the comfort of the air conditioning, or a nice afternoon on the bicycle, checking out the local retirement communities – at a leisurely pace, of course. For the more adventurous, a round of golf really stretches out the legs. Maybe finish up with a challenging game of Canasta. Your doctor will tell you that this is enough to keep the old ticker ticking away, and should you choose to rev the engine like this every day, you’re doing everything you need to do to maintain the fantastic quality of life enjoyed by the other old people at the mall.

Standards, unfortunately, are low. Your doctor often assumes that he’s also your fitness consultant. When you get sick, go to your doctor. When you are deciding what to do to extend your physical usefulness, how about taking a different approach than asking his permission to get up off your ass? How about asking yourself whether your current physical condition is as good as you’d like it to be? If it’s not, what would be the best way to improve it?

I’m pretty sure you know that walking around in the mall – sometimes more accurately referred to as “shopping” – is not capable of making anything change for the better. One of the benefits of being a little older is that most of us have had the opportunity to learn that all major improvements come with a price tag. There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, as an intelligent man once said. Reversing the entropy takes a significant expenditure of energy, and a brisk walk just isn’t significant. Sorry.

A daily brisk walk, or a jog, or even a 9-minute pace for three miles can produce enough cardiorespiratory stress to keep your heart and lungs in pretty good shape, true enough. This, of course, means that it’s not a terribly difficult thing to do. For most doctors and for many of their patients, the calculation stops there. But not dying of a heart attack is really just a small part of the much larger picture of an active life well-lived. You interact with your environment using all the muscles of your body, not just your heart and diaphragm, and strength is the difference between the things you could do when you were 25 and the things you can’t do now.

Strength – as well as a tolerance for childish nonsense – is the thing we all lose as we age. Squatting down, standing back up, putting things overhead, pulling things up the driveway, loading the groceries, wrestling with the grandkids, teaching the dog who’s boss, mowing the yard, putting the broken lawnmower in the truck again: simple physical tasks we took for granted years ago are often problems for older, weaker people, as well as a source of potential injury that can be expensive and debilitating.

For most of us, this happens because of inactivity. If you do not use your muscles to produce enough force to convince them to maintain their ability to do so, it shouldn’t be surprising that they become less capable of doing it. And walking, running, riding a bicycle – physical activities whose performance is not limited by strength for even moderately active people – cannot increase or even maintain strength.

This is important to understand: physical stress followed by sufficient recovery (in theory, the stress shouldn’t kill you) produces adaptation. The adaptation is specific to the stress. That’s why sunshine on your arms makes your arms brown, not your feet; the shovel makes your hands callused, not your face. So running produces better running, not better strength. And if you want to get stronger you have to stress your ability to produce force, since that’s what strength is. Running is good for the heart and lungs, and that’s about all. A proper strength program is good for the heart, lungs, and everything else too.

Even those of us who have trained for strength for decades have noticed a downhill slide in our physical capacity. Our ability to produce power – the ability to produce force quickly and explosively – diminishes with age whether we train it or not. This is due to changes in the motor neurons and the muscles that control the explosive parts of the system, and even training cannot completely halt the process. The ability to react quickly with our bodies – to a loss of balance, a rapid change in position, or a falling jar of mustard – is the way power is displayed in everyday situations. Strength training should involve some explosive work too, but just maintaining strength slows the loss of power capacity.

The loss of strength also means the loss of muscle mass. Muscle tissue is not merely the stuff that generates force and moves us around. Muscles, in a very real sense, are glands that actively participate in the physiological regulation of our bodies. Muscles produce signaling substances that affect all the systems that must be maintained for continued normal functioning. A chronic loss of muscle mass is associated with poor health, and a profound loss of muscle mass is highly correlated with death.

The absence of skeletal loading is typical for older people, since we now hire the heavy work done instead of doing it ourselves. And just like muscles, bones adapt to the “stress” of being unloaded by getting thinner and less dense. Running is not a weight-bearing exercise in the sense that strength training is. It’s just a “you-bearing” exercise, and the impact of repeated footfalls affects only the legs. In fact, people sensitive to impact have far fewer problems with the static nature of barbell training than they do the repeated impacts of running. A barbell sitting on the shoulders or held overhead in the hands loads the skeleton in a way that other exercises cannot do, and a strength training program always results in the preservation of bone density. Coupled with the strength necessary to control your balance, this is the best insurance against the tragic and often fatal hip or pelvic fracture that an older person can acquire.

But the loss of strength can be slowed down quite a bit, and for older people who have never trained before, a vast amount of improvement can take place in a relatively short span of time. I have trained many older competitive “masters” lifters who started out as disinterested gym members and then experienced a sudden change of attitude when their strength doubled with six months of lifting weights. These people will tell you about the difference strength training – not running – has made in their lives..

Being strong is better than not being strong, strength must be prepared for specifically, and physical stress that lacks force production as a limiting factor cannot make you stronger. As you age, your strength goes away, and unless you do something to address this situation, you will be weaker. Much weaker. This is bad. So, make your plans now.