Restoring Your Abnormal Neck Curve Premier Chiropractic - By: Dr. DeeDee Wampfler

Restoring Your Abnormal Neck Curve

Premier Chiropractic - By: Dr. DeeDee Wampfler

I remember a patient I had years ago who came in to see me because she woke up unable to move her neck and was in severe pain.  She was in her twenties at the time and was and probably still is a nice, happy, and energetic woman.  She had no injuries or accidents leading up to this and so this pain was quite unexpected, although if memory serves me right, I think she had experienced something like this in the past, although not this bad.

After talking with her and examining her spine, she had several areas of concern, but there would have been no way of me knowing she had a complete reversal in her neck curve if I hadn’t taken X-rays, which revealed how serious the situation was.  The spinal vertebrae in her neck were all bending the wrong way.  This spinal conformation is definitely abnormal and it’s no wonder that she had experienced episodes of not being able to move her neck after just a regular night at sleep.  

When the neck vertebrae are reversed to this extent, it is the complete opposite of a normal neck curve known as a kyphosis and indicates she had some kind of trauma to cause this to happen. The only trauma/accident she could think of was that she remembered skipping/bouncing down the stairs when she was younger and remembers hitting her head hard on a wall or support beam that you sometimes see on staircases that aren’t completely open usually because there is a lower floor that the stairs descend under.  

By adjusting her neck, upper, and lower back, we were able to get her moving her head that day and reduce the amount of pain that she was in.  She needed further care the next couple of weeks to get her fully out of the acute pain and was feeling pretty normal even after the first adjustment, but correcting her neck curve required further care including specific extension-compression traction in order to remold the ligaments that run in front of and behind the neck vertebrae.  Ligaments respond to load over time, which is what traction is and is what causes that spinal transformation to happen.  

There is no way for normal biomechanical movement or function to occur in a person who has their neck vertebrae reversed other than to correct it, which isn’t always possible.  It really was a very good thing for her that she woke up not being able to move her neck and came in, because we were able to correct her neck to a straight position in just twelve weeks seeing her regularly.  This young woman would likely never have known she had a completely reversed neck as you couldn’t tell by looking at her.  If she hadn’t had the symptoms that brought her into the office, today, she would likely have an advanced form of spinal degeneration including bone spurs off the front and perhaps even the back of the vertebral bodies with very thin disc space that would be very difficult and perhaps impossible to correct.

Chiropractic Biophysics® (CBP®) technique is a full-spine posture correcting chiropractic technique that addresses abnormal postural rotations and translations.  This technique, which we have been certified in and practice as our primary method of spinal correction involves spinal rehabilitative care procedures including specific spinal adjustments, mirror image postural adjustments and exercises, and specific traction and is what enables us to make corrective changes to the spine like in this case.  I believe that if we would have continued care for another six months, we could have seen a near normal neck curve restored, however she was happy with the results she gained and did not continue with any further care.  I sometimes think about her and wonder how she is doing now and what we could have accomplished for her.