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#88 My Spine Has A Fever?

4/14/2014

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            Fever is a pretty amazing thing really.  With the rare exception of fevers caused by sun or toxic exposure, fevers are a process initiated and controlled by your own body in response to an environmental need, a germ.  Your body knows that there are certain germs, both viral and bacterial, that really like the temperature to be 98.6 degrees, normal human body temperature.  So when your body temperature goes up, when you have a fever, the germs are able to be killed much faster.  Today there are studies that support the concept of just letting the fever do its job and not taking fever reducing medications (anti-pyretics).  Accordingly, I have been an advocate for 25 years of what I call the 102 rule.  Now I hear of Dr. Oz promoting similar ideas on national TV.  It takes time for radical ideas to become main-stream.  Ask if you want to know more about the 102 rule. 

            With this as an introduction, can the spine have a fever all by itself?  Truthfully, no, not a fever, but it sure can get hot.  A fever is one type of hot in which the nerve system raises the entire core temperature of the body to help kill germs and assist the immune system.  The type of hot I am talking about in the spine is due to increased blood flow and inflammation (swelling) to the parts of the spine; joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs, and nerves.  Sometimes the experienced clinician can actually feel this heat coming off your spine by using the back of his hand while you are lying face down on the examination table.  But mostly you feel the heat when I press on your spine with my thumb during the examination.  If it hurts when I press this is not normal so I ask for you to tell me how much it hurts, how hot it is.  Technically, there are 5 levels of heat that I record.  0 means no heat, no tenderness at all.  1 means that there is a little heat, it’s tender.  2 is painful and means that there is a moderate degree of heat.  3 has you flinching as I press, indicating a great deal of heat.  And a 4 is almost literally on fire.  The pain is intolerable.  In its own way the spine has a fever.   

            There are 2 really important things to remember with this spinal fever:

1)      First, there is a purpose to it.  Its main job is to get your attention to motivate you to do something to get rid of the cause.  But remember that your body has what I call a “late warning system.”  Generally, the fever needs to get to a certain level for a certain period of time before you even notice it.  This is due to your pain threshold, different for every person. 

2)      Second, there are 3 consequences to this fever whether you can feel it or not:

     a.       Eventually, if the fever gets high enough, there will be pain.

     b.      The fever will always cause the joints of your spine to wear out faster.

     c.       The fever will cause other health problems as it spreads.

Remember, your spinal fever has a purpose just like the whole body fever.  So whether you feel it or not, it will cause ill-health and accelerated spinal degeneration.  As a result you don’t want to just mask it over with drugs.  You want to address the cause.  We measure this with your TSV.

            To address the cause there are really only 3 things you can do.  One is active and two are passive.  In other words, one you do to yourself, and the other two are done to you by someone else. 

            Active – Stretch your spine daily to encourage good global motion and circulation.

            Passive – Chiropractic adjustments to improve motion to those joints damaged by stress, injury, and scar tissue.

            Passive – Decompression for the really tough cases with severe disc herniation/degeneration. 

Conclusion – Fevers, whether they be of the whole body variety or are limited to the spine, have a cause.  Chiropractic is nothing if not the search for cause.  Thanks for reading.     

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    Dr. Rick

    After writing an article per week for a year, I just kept going.  These are most of my collection.  They are written with my existing patients in mind, so some stuff may seem odd or unusual, but would make perfect sense to those who know chiropractic and who know me.  Enjoy and share!  For my personal blog visit: 

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     Hello, My name is Andrew and I am a happy, healthy one year old.  But I wasn’t so happy or healthy when I first met Dr. Rick a few months ago.  I had been having problems with my ears for four months, I couldn’t sleep at night and I was miserable.  We’d been to the doctor lots of times but nothing was helping.  In fact, all the medicines the doctor had tried seemed to make me worse instead of better!  Both the regular doctor and the Ear-Nose and Throat doctor said that if the antibiotics didn’t work, then they’d just have to put tubes in.  Now my Mom and dad weren’t about to let them do surgery on me, especially since they had been reading and learned that tubes can cause more problems than they solve.  My mom and dad did a lot of praying.  Then my mom heard that sometimes babies who have a traumatic birth like mine have ear trouble.  You see when I was born they used a vacuum extractor and forceps to pull me out.  I guess all that yanking on my head, hurt my neck.  She also heard that chiropractic care can be the answer.  Now she was skeptical because she couldn’t imagine a chiropractor helping ear infections!?!  But at that point she was willing to try anything!!  Happily, a few weeks of adjustments and my ears were all cleared up.  In addition, I no longer had a stiff neck or shoulders and my whole personality was happier.  I have to tell all babies who have ear troubles, don’t let them give you tubes until you at least try chiropractic care first.  After all, it can’t hurt and if you’re like me, you could be perfectly well with no drugs and no surgery.  In my family, we thank God for Dr. Rick, because I feel better, my mom and dad are happier and sometimes, I even sleep through the night.