Chiropractic put me to sleep! (a brief case study)

Sleep is an essential part of life.  We need it to recharge and rebuild our body and our brain.  There are certain physiologic processes that work while you are sleep, so if you are having poor sleep, chances are you are also having a slew of other problems too.

Here a brief description of one of my recent patients and how chiropractic helped get his sleep in order.

History:

A 40 year old male patient comes to my office after a car accident for treat of injuries from said accident.  His car was rear ended while he was turning so he suffered a rotational whiplash injury.

Complaints: 

Pt complains of neck pain, headaches and upper back pain.  In a not-directly related complaint, the patient states that he hasn't been able to get a solid night of sleep since law school (which was a while ago, we are talking about 10 years+!) , not more than 3.5 hours a night without waking up.

Now, I've heard that people often sleep well after a chiropractic adjustment, but truly I haven't dealt with a sleeping problem like this, and to be honest, I was not trying to fix it either. 

My goals were to identify the injuries and subluxations*(vertebral joint restrictions), determine a treatment plan and correct them. 

Treatments:

• Chiropractic adjustments/manipulations.
• Myofascial release/muscle work (includes stretching)
  
• Class IV Laser therapy to the cervico-thoracic region
  
• Home exercises

Results:

After his first treatment the patient reported sleeping 6.5 hours! So far we've done 3 treatments and he slept 8 to 8.5 hours just the other day! (yes I was surprised too!)

We even joked about that this accident might have the best thing that's happened to him in a while because he found his way into my office.

The moral of the story is... if you have trouble sleeping and nothing has helped, maybe it's time to get your spine checked by a chiropractor.

Dr. Eric - Your Santa Monica Chiropractor

Subluxation: A misalignment in the bony structures of the spine. Subluxations can create pressure or irritation on the various nerves in your spine, and can cause a wide variety of symptoms throughout your body, such as localized pain, soreness, irregularity, and weakness. When pressure is applied on a nerve in your spine, the nerve energy is interrupted, and sometimes this can profoundly affect the function of other systems or organs in your body.