Can NUCCA Help Multiple Sclerosis?
The most common misconception about NUCCA care is that it only helps back and neck pain. Although our doctors can certainly help those who come to us seeking relief from back and neck pain, these patients represent a small percentage of those helped by NUCCA doctors. Patients suffering from a variety of conditions, including digestive disorders, have had their health restored through NUCCA care. NUCCA chiropractors recognize that the body is a self-healing organism controlled and coordinated by the central nervous system, which is protected by the skull and spine.
NUCCA Care – A Simple Concept
NUCCA care is based on the universal law of cause and effect. For every effect or symptom, physical or mental, there must be a cause. NUCCA doctors focus on locating and removing interference on the nervous system that can be the cause of the health condition. Removing this interference allows the body to heal itself naturally without drugs or surgery. A NUCCA correction is very controlled; there is no twisting, popping or cracking of the spine. This precise yet gentle touch allows the head, neck, and spine to return to the proper position, thus removing the interference and restoring balance to the body.
Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, potentially debilitating disease that affects the brain, brain stem and spinal cord. MS affects more than one million people around the world. This disease is unpredictable and varies in severity, from a mild illness in some patients to a permanent disability in others.
Symptoms typically begin between ages 20 and 40, with women being afflicted twice as often as men. The most common symptoms of multiple sclerosis includes numbness and tingling in the arms and legs, difficulty walking, impaired balance, muscle weakness, visual disturbances and memory loss.
Your central nervous system contains millions of nerve fibers that carry electrical impulses from your brain and brain stem to almost every tissue, organ, and cell in your body. The degenerative process of MS is called demyelination. This is the destruction of the fatty substance, or myelin, which coats and protects the nerve fibers. This fatty substance functions much like to the insulation that shields electrical wires. In patients with MS, the body mistakenly destroys the myelin sheath, which becomes inflamed and swollen and detaches from the nerve fibers; then, hardened (sclerosed) patches of scar tissue over the fibers. Eventually, this signals from the brain, brain stem and spinal cord that control muscle coordination, strength, sensation, and vision. This results in some of the permanent disabilities that may develop in patients with MS.
Medical Treatments for Multiple Sclerosis
According to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the typical medical treatment for MS includes a variety of Interferon drugs (Avonex, Rebif, Betaseron, Copaxone, Novantrone and Tysabri). For acute relapses, corticosteroids such as Prednisone are used, as well as muscle relaxants, antidepressants, anticonvulsants, central nervous system stimulants and NSAIDS.
Multiple Sclerosis & Physical Trauma
For more than a century, physicians and scientists have unsuccessfully attempted to determine the cause of multiple sclerosis. The textbook, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatments, states that trauma may trigger or precede exacerbations.
An article in the European Journal of Neurology concluded that there is a definite sub group of MS patients which trauma, specifically whiplash of the neck, appears to worsen the natural course of MS. In susceptible individuals, these injuries can unleash critical changes in the central nervous system and trigger the onset of MS symptoms.
A renowned expert on Multiple Sclerosis, Dr. Charles Poser of the Harvard Medical School, published a similar article entitled “Trauma to the Central Nervous System May Result in Formation of Enlargement of Multiple Sclerosis Plaques”. Dr. Poser concluded that trauma to the head, neck or upper back can act as a trigger for the appearance of new or recurrent symptoms in some patients with MS. He further stated that only trauma affecting the brain and/or spinal cord can be considered significant, as in the case in some whiplash injuries.
At the very least, these studies show that indeed there is a relationship between trauma and aggravation or creation of MS. However, in this particular situation, the symptoms of multiple sclerosis may not develop for days, months or even years after the injury.
Upper Cervical Care & Multiple Sclerosis
Some of the newest and most relevant research on Upper Cervical Care has demonstrated the link between MS and the upper cervical spine. A study published in 2005 revealed that 100% of the patients with multiple sclerosis had a history of upper cervical injuries, although the injuries could be months or years old.
Another recent case study by Dr. Erin Elster, an Upper Cervical chiropractor, showed that the correction of the upper neck injuries may reverse the progression of multiple sclerosis. Elster’s report published in The Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research stated “According to medical research, head and neck injuries have long been considered a cause of multiple sclerosis, but this is the first research to show that the correction of those injuries can have dramatic effects on reversing MS.” The same, promising results Dr. Elster had with MS patients are now being duplicated in Upper Cervical centers across the country.
Although Upper Cervical care is not considered a cure for MS, studies show that patients suffering from multiple sclerosis benefit greatly from Upper Cervical or NUCCA care. To see if NUCCA can bring them the same, positive results, MS patients should schedule a spine and nervous system examination by a NUCCA chiropractor.
Our team at Corrective Spinal Care of Colorado is always ready to answer any questions you have, call us today!
