GASTRO ESOPHAGEAL REFLUX DISEASE, GERD, is such a common problem that the drugs prescribed for it are the most used in the country! Who would guess that? Those drugs are “Acid Blockers”. And when you add to them all the non-prescription antacids (Tums etc.) think of the amount of medication sold and taken for that type of problem! The bad effects of the medications include cutting your production of your very needed stomach acid, and creating side effects eIsewhere in your body. I have seen thousands of these patients over the years. And let’s cut to the punchline: Generally I fix them, and quite quickly.
What’s the deal? Why so common a problem? The answer comes usually in understanding the term “Hiatal Hernia”. The words HIATAL HERNIA (Hernia: word meaning a part of the body that passes through a hole it wasn’t meant to, sometimes a hole that shouldn’t have even been there at all.) Hiatal: in this case referring to the opening “hiatus” (hole) that exists in the diaphragm to allow the food tube to pass through the diaphragm after its descent from your mouth and throat. The food tube then connects to your stomach which needs to lie beneath the diaphragm, which is the large dome shaped muscle of breathing. Hiatal Hernia can be also be known as an Esophageal Hernia. Though some are detected by MD’s, many are not. Our testing technique catches them all!
So then, what is a Hiatal Hernia? It is the wrong location of the topmost part of your stomach, which should be below your diaphragm, poking its way above that muscle and finding itself in the chest compartment where your heart and lungs should privately reside. The entire stomach should be fully in the abdominal, not in the chest, compartment. All parts of the stomach need to be in the abdominal compartment which has in it the other organs involved in digestion such as pancreas, liver, gall bladder, the small and the large intestines.
How does the top of the stomach end up passing through a meant-to-be snug hole in your diaphragm that should have tightly held the food tube (esophagus) in the right place? Answer: the diaphragm’s hole must have gotten too big, weak and lax to allow the stomach to slip upward from where it belongs. Why? Like so many things that can go wrong in a body, look to the controlling system for all your muscles (remember the diaphragm is a muscle), cells, organs and tissues of your body: YOUR NERVE SYSTEM! Pinched nerves to the area caused the problem.
The nerves that went wrong and cause a Hiatal Hernia and GERD are ones right between your shoulder blades. The level of the nerve impingement and pinching is found at Thoracic Number 5 (T5). To get an idea where T5 locates, think of where a bra strap would commonly pass across a woman’s back. That level would commonly be at T6. An inch above that is T5.
I regularly need to Chiropractically adjust the mid-back area on most all of my patients. Why? Because they have pinched nerves (“subluxations”) there. I’ll explain some of the common causes of mid-back nerve compression and malfunction. All the nerves of Blood Sugar Regulation come out from your spine in your mid-back. That’s right: Too many calories, too many carbs, too much sweets or bread etc., which are the cause of the epidemic of both Low Blood Sugar and then Pre-Diabetes and Diabetes are also the very common cause of mid-spine subluxation. That nerve compression there causes your getting a Hiatal Hernia and GERD. The mid-back will also twist to compensate for problems above and below it. That means Neck and Low-Back problems cause Mid-Back subluxations. Postural stress (like sitting in a chair in front of a monitor all day) also take a big toll on the mid-back, causing you thoracic subluxation. And “Stress” itself (Mental and Emotional Stress) which wear out your Adrenal Glands affect their nerves causing subluxation. And the nerves to and from adrenals locate where? Right in this same mid-back area!
When you add those cause factors up, you can quickly understand how most patients are literally dying to have their mid-back nerves adjusted by a truly competent Chiropractor. So with so many millions of individuals with mid-back nerve malfunction, whether they feel pain in that area of the back or they don’t, it’s no wonder that the areas served by those exact nerves, failing to get adequate nerve signaling, fail. And a key area served by those exact mid-spine nerves are: the diaphragm muscle, the valve between food tube and stomach (the sphincter muscle that must open and close competently). That valve must let food down into the stomach, and then close and stay closed to keep the food, once that chewed food is mixed with powerful stomach acid, down in the stomach. That acid mess must not back-flow into the food tube. Acid that flows back (“reflux”) burns and causes pain and health problems. That stomach valve is a muscle that, you guessed it, needs nerve control too to be able to competently open and to competently stay shut. It fails when the nerves to it, in the mid-back, are suffering from subluxation!
Fail each of these areas do, and often, due to nerve compression between the shoulder blades. That means the stomach, its valve (“sphincter muscle”) get harmed. GERD which stands for Gasto Esophageal Reflux Disease is one common effect of that. Reflux is the back-motion of the acid that should only be in the stomach, up into the food tube. The pain from it can force a person to not lie down, to even sleep sitting up! The stomach has a miraculous bit of construction. Its lining, which is made of living “meat” is not broken down by the strong stomach acid which is so powerful it digests meat! That is a miraculous thing. But the esophagus (food tube) isn’t lined in the same miraculous way the stomach is. Stomach acid will eat through it! And cause pain and symptoms. Stomach acid can even get up so high and destroy the vocal chords in severe cases. And because the stomach gets itself pinched in a hiatal hernia, blood flow to its own lining can be reduced. That means acid can hurt its own stomach lining, and cause damage. Result: ulceration, or burning through, of the stomach lining. That’s a “stomach ulcer”. But ulcers can be cured! Usually very easily when I adjust the mid-back, the hiatal hernia stomach itself back into place, and use the correct nutrients and/or juice to heal the damaged areas (spine, stomach lining and valve).
To achieve this, you also need to have the top part of your stomach manually repositioned to be below the opening of the diaphragm. That is put it back fully where it came from and where it belongs.
Adjustments (spinal AND organ) and nutritional correction, that’s what it takes. Adjust the spine. Get whatever is wrong, right. And that means un-pinching the nerves in the middle back. Adjust the stomach back down to put it back fully below the diaphragm! That’s done with my hands too. Then take supplementation to heal the spine and valve, and if needed, the lining. Then the CAUSE of the problem is fixed. That’s big-time different than the medical approach, with its symptom cover-up medication, and those drugs’ bad side-effects. All the while the medications just try to diminish the pain and symptoms, while never correcting the underlying cause. Understand that GERD and Hiatal Hernia correction is done by a minority of chiropractors, usually by the small number well-trained in “Applied Kinesiology”, the less known and mastered muscle testing technique of Chiropractic.
Let’s summarize what causes these problems: Pinched nerves in mid-back cause weak diaphragm muscle, top of the stomach incorrect position, stomach pinching at the diaphragm, and stomach valve failure. Stomach acid then back-flows into esophagus (food-tube). The lining of stomach can be typically burnt by your stomach acid because the stomach’s blood flow and lining integrity are hurt. That’s the cause of reflux, acid, burning, chest pressure, etc.
Drugs harm by suppressing the production of acid you need to digest. And their side effects disrupt your health.
Let’s summarize what fixes these problems: Chiropractically adjust and correct through a proper chiropractic program the pinched mid-back nerves which caused the problem in the first place. Chiropractically re-position by adjusting the stomach itself fully back below the diaphragm where it needs to be. With exact supplementation heal the spine, stomach lining and, if an ulcer exists, heal the ulcer into disappearing and being replaced by healthy tissue.
That’s how I help people heal and correct these problems. Actually really help by fixing the true problem. Recently I treated another patient with severest reflux. He couldn’t sleep lying down for many years. He is able to get to sleep actually lying down for the first time after only a month’s treatment!
That’s the story on how to actually fix the most medicated, drugged and an actually quite miserable health problem in America!