Blood is the lifeline of your body. It carries all the substances, fuel, oxygen for life, and the construction materials to build, repair and rebuild everything in your body. That means to all your cells, tissues, organs, muscles, ligaments, cartilages and joints too. Your blood also carries away the waste materials, carbon dioxide from utilized energy and used oxygen, that is necessary to keep the cells and organs from succumbing to toxins and poisons of life’s activities. If blood is cut off altogether from an area of the body, it will die rapidly from lack of oxygen. That’s something a lot of people may know. But the fact that reducing the blood supply to any area causes it to function poorly, the less blood getting there the worse it is, is little known or thought about by most people or their doctors.
One little known fact of blood flow has been observed, known and utilized in Chiropractic since the early days of our science. Early Chiropractic scientists noted that areas where there were “subluxations”, spinal vertebra malpositioned and pinching the nerves that emit from the spine, had areas next to them that were measurably COLDER than the other areas nearby. That led to the development and use, as early as the first 1900’s, of heat measuring devices that would, as you dragged them down along a patient’s spine, go HOT HOT HOT COLD HOT HOT HOT. And the colder spot would show you where the pinched and malfunctioning nerve was located. That is where the Chiropractic adjustments were needed.
The reason that this occurs is a remarkable fact: Every artery in your body is controlled by moment-to-moment control by your nerve system of that artery’s current diameter, and thus how much blood it is carrying. You may have learned a bit about this if you knew of the two automatic (subconscious) nerve systems named the Sympathetic and the Parasympathetic. When you are being chased by a bear (or even in your mind, chased by a tax audit or by an irate spouse) your body subconsciously activates the Sympathetic Nervous System. That is known as the Fight or Flight nerve action arrangement. It will usually call on your Adrenal Glands (which hopefully are not exhausted like so many patients arrive to me in pain, inflammation, auto-immune, allergic and may be somewhat tortured) to give you Adrenaline to power up your Fight or Flight power and speed. Also nerve control on a Macro level in Sympathetic, Fight or Flight, mode opens up the arterial diameter to get more blood and thus power function and get-more blood to your Lungs, Heart and Skeletal muscles. Why? To get you power to fight the bear, hit him hard, and/or to run away with plenty of blood, energy and oxygen to survive. That is done by nerves opening all those major arteries, at the same time SHUTTING DOWN arterial blood flow to your gut and digestion. You won’t need to Digest that much when in a fight for your life.
The opposing side of the Automatic (“Autonomic”) nerve system is the Parasympathetic. It does essentially the opposite to the Sympathetic. It is the “Vegetative” activation mode of your nerves on a Macro basis. It is activated when you’ve comfortably finished a meal, and now will relax. The blood flow is relatively reduced to all the fight or flight areas of your body, and the arteries are opened to get more blood to your digestive system, stomach, organs of digestion, intestines. They are now getting the lion’s share of your blood, and the areas needed to Fight or Run and Respond Fast are getting a reduced amount. Nerves are opening the arterial size (diameter) of blood flowing to your gut, and relatively closing, reducing the blood to your muscles, heart and lungs.
That’s one area of Nerve/Blood Flow dynamics that is useful to understand and which is important. But on a more “Micro” level, all individual limited arterial lines are under moment-to-moment control as to how much blood is being delivered. When a nerve is interfered with, generally after a time if it stays that way, the blood flow to the area the nerve serves is diminished. The reduction is so important that it reduces the health of the area served. The organ getting the blood gets interfered with and begins going downhill, eventually resulting in a nameable disease. The bone being served can be weakened. The tissue being served can be failing and even die also. This is serious. It can affect a lung, an intestine, a hand or fingers, a hip ball joint. There are as many failures as there are nerves, and areas in your body served by them and by blood vessels. Which means everywhere in your body.
I have been called to treat thousands of patients with this problem being the cause of their misery. An external and visible example is the woman who came to me, saying she knew she was dying, who had been diagnosed at Kaiser only with Raynaud’s Disease. Googling: Mayo Clinic “Cold fingers or toes. Areas of skin that turn white then blue. Depending on your skin color, these color changes may be harder or easier to see. Numb, prickly feeling or stinging pain … most commonly affects fingers and toes. But it also can affect other areas of the body, such as nose, lips, ears and even nipples.” “In Raynaud's disease, smaller arteries that supply blood to the skin narrow. Primary Raynaud's is caused by disruptions in how the nervous system controls blood vessels.”
This woman had so little blood supply reaching her right hand that the flesh on three fingers was literally rotting off of her. Even under her fingernails the flesh was just mush. White mushy junk, which before had been supple skin and muscle, was now just dying and useless. Painful. Exceptionally cold, freezing hand to my touch. They diagnosed Raynaud’s but aren’t chiropractors, so could not actually restore the neck nerves (at the lower neck, brachial plexus, arm-shoulder-hand network of nerves) to normal by adjustment (or by any other way). I thought we’d save her life, but at first I did think she would lose the rotten fleshed fingers. In one week of chiropractic and spot on supplementation, her hand was as warm as life. And over a couple months the dying tissue that I expected would die gangrenous, all grew completely back. Early in treatment, I sent her back to Kaiser to get from them at no charge the test I wanted to run on her arteries blockage from plaque. That was a failure too, with some arteries nearly completely blocked, without blood.
Which brings us to the second of the Tales of Two Blood Flows. Which is the blockage of arteries with plaque, the number one killer, cause of death, in America and on the whole planet. It is the cause of Heart Attacks and of Strokes. Those two kill more people than any other causes, and by a wide margin. It was discovered in the 1950’s that arterial gook, plaque, made up with a bunch of cholesterol in it, clogged arteries. When a chunk of that junk broke free and floated down the blood stream to block an entire tree of arterial blood supply, the area starved of oxygen died quite quickly (in a few minutes). If that area of blood vessels went to the Heart: Heart Attack, Cardiac Arrest. If it went to a part of the Brain, then starved for oxygen and suddenly the brain cells died, a Stroke. An actual area of dead brain tissue caused by stopped blood delivery. Only recently has the Medical field learned and all now are agreed: INFLAMMATION is a key ingredient to the Plaque, Heart Attack, and Stroke universe. So you smart ones must think again: “How are my Adrenal Glands doing?” Are they chronically exhausted, worn out, and causing wide-spread Inflammation?
The obvious first idea that doctors had was to stop eating food that contained cholesterol. No meat, butter, dairy, eggs, animal fat. That seemed logical; it just was false. The population generally ate less of those foods to limit cholesterol, and cholesterol levels, plaque, heart attack and stroke actually got even worse! And people got even fatter too! It wasn’t until the 1980’s that some of the most aware doctors learned the hard fact that your body, your liver, makes the cholesterol that is high in your blood, and will gum up and block your arteries out of Carbohydrates. Out of Bread, Cola, pasta, potatoes, rice, beans, sweets, desserts, sugar. OUT OF TOO MUCH CARBOHYDRATES, which is the deadly error most people make in their eating. Remember too: Too much carbs is the other main reason that your Adrenals burn out!
For the woman with Raynaud’s Disease, with interfered neck nerves to her hand, arm and shoulder nerve problems, who ALSO had obstructive arterial disease, plaque, which was killing her, we had to DISSOLVE HER ARTERIAL plaque.
We often send our patient to get a Calcium Score Test (CAC) to find out how much, a numeric evaluation of, the plaque that is blocking his/her arteries. Then we have to do 4 things that most all normal (and her Kaiser) doctors couldn’t even think of, let alone do.
In brief, we have to DISSOLVE (gradually is the way of it) the plaque already blocking their blood lines. And we have to Stop making new plaque. Both are done nutritionally. Precise Chiropractic Adjustments help the troubled organs recover.
AN UNUSUAL SPECIALIZED NUTRIENT TO DISSOLVE PLAQUE (with both published studies showing plaque removal, and my own experience demonstrating it on my patients on objective image testing).
TWO SPECIFIC NUTRIENTS TO REDUCE FUTURE CHOLESTEROL IMBALANCES AND PLAQUE FORMATION.
A precise and little known nutritional supplement that corrects FATTY LIVER DISEASE.
A NEW WAY FOR YOU TO UNDERSTAND AND CORRECT YOUR EATING so that each meal or snack isn’t making new Cholesterol in your liver, that will end up clogging your arteries and stopping blood from flowing.
Voila! Like my (shown on the CT scan I ordered on him) Severe Artery Blocked, Brain Fogged, Mentally and Physically weakened, patient said to me yesterday after only a week and a half of treatment: ”I WAS DYING AND DIDN’T REALLY WANT TO CARRY ON OR HAVE THE ENERGY TO LIVE. I DON’T KNOW WHAT SUICIDAL IS, BUT I THINK I WAS. NOW I’M ALERT, ALIVE AND LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE.” YUP.