Body by Blower - Dr. Brian Blower DC
When to Start on Your Road to Health
By Brian G. Blower, DC
Oct 6, 2011 - 11:23:01 AM

A mother brought her son in to see me a few years ago for he was experiencing pain in his lower back and leg.  The son was then only 11 years old and although he was a large boy for his age he didn’t differ much from the genetics of his mother.

After an initial consultation and exam to determine his cause of leg and back pain I suggested to the mom that her son will have ongoing problems with his legs and lower back unless she helps us by actively partaking in a program to solve and then maintain his lower spine’s strength and integrity.  I expressed concern over his immediate need for treatment through chiropractic adjustments of his lower back and also his upper spine too, right at the top of it as it is joined to the head. 

When attempting to outline to someone some complex findings about the spine it becomes an art in itself to explain in acceptable language what steps are necessary for the improvement of spinal and nerve function.  Care must be taken to not underscore the importance of early ongoing correction and then maintenance of the spine and extremity joints to attain long term potential health of our young ones especially.

At the time of my exam and then treatment along with an explanation of findings I could tell the mother was overwhelmed at my diagnosis and denied the existence of spinal problems and also the immediate need for intervention for her son.

She failed to follow my advice and as her son felt better after his initial spinal corrections she let time pass and ignored the signs of further compromise of her son’s posture and strengths.

A few weeks ago they appeared again, almost three years later.  She was telling me of her son’s latest problem, that of sore feet along with his lower back pain and now she was also concerned at the look of his turned-in ankles as he was displaying rather gross foot pronation bilaterally. 

The boy also had headaches and posture difficulties and he had developed a sort of shuffling gait as he struggled along on his swollen turned out ankles and feet. 

I asked her how she had been helping the son with his conditions and she replied that she had taken him to her medical doctor who had given her the “wait and see” attitude.  Hanging around and doing nothing until things get so bad that any gross intervention will seem like a helpful step too often reflects usual care. But why let your teeth rot before you put a brush and some floss to them?  Perhaps years ago before we knew of bacteria and periodontal disease “wait and see” dentistry had to do, but not any longer.   And parents believe me when I tell you now that waiting and seeing the young spine harden into an adult one, where if it is bent it stays that way, is sheer ignorance on your part.  “As the sapling is bent, so grows the mighty oak!”

Look at your posture, others do.  Look at your children and your loved ones and friends, and their children too.  Check them out and see if they are enabled when it comes to exhibiting proficiency in their ongoing energy exchanges while fighting gravity.  See if they are straight and level across the lower ears and shoulders and straight across their pelvis bones too.  Look to see if they are twisting into a yaw position as they dip one ear over and the shoulders are lowering too.

Does it matter if this tipping and stooping is happening?  Of course it does, posture is a great way to read the signs of stress.  And does our young man with the strong headed mother show stress in his posture, in his gait, in his foot and back pain?  Yes my friends, that is exactly what he is structurally crying out and few if any are able to hear his woes.  And fewer still are trained to really help but some are able and ready to do something positive for him. 

Stress means to 'draw up tight' and reflects this condition by the effected parts buckling, twisting and bending till the function of the stressed parts become non-functional.  Early in our life and with a great degree of compromise our parts may struggle along at a limited amount of function and we may see something like our stressed young man.  I write this with a broken heart for I know from my many years in practice that this boy and so many other children who are rapidly fusing up their young spines into bent over hardened adult ones will never get their mothers or fathers to help them receive the care necessary to slow down and even reverse some of the compromised spine and body stress they are trying to live within.

Think like this with me, we live within our bodies and that means we are alive within the hollow parts.  These hollow parts allow us the movement necessary to exchange chemically, structurally and even mentally to establish ongoing adaptations which are necessary to take on the constantly shifting and changing conditions upon us in our “Garden of Eden.”

Stress reflects a balking of the movement of those things within the hollow structures, the highways of exchange in our bodies.  Stress is the result of an inability to properly adapt and manage stressors.

Our young man is not adapting well and will continue to work less efficiently as he grows locked into his compromised distorted and struggling body.  Mom please wake up here!  He has only you to guide him and fend for him for the next most vital years.

Locked up in a stressed body our boy is hobbled with a future of more back pain along with the loss of his leg and foot health.  Add to those ailments the headaches and upper back restrictions on the nerves and structures that support and feed the heart, lungs and organs of digestion.  Later as his youth disappears and his adult time arrives we will put his health care burdens onto the public purse.   By multiplying him by millions we have some of our present health care status clearly defined and in front of us.

I am not a guy that will waste my time and life energies on problems; rather I would like to say that I have spent my freedoms on finding and delivering solutions to human suffering and early demise.  After the initial years of schooling to prepare, it took the best part of two more years in the chiropractic four year college courses to get the “big idea” of health restoration through chiropractic art and philosophy.  I guess if it took me that long I shouldn’t be upset at parents for their inability to grasp these ideas readily.

Health restoration and maintenance is a challenge for us and will continue to be ongoing for we will never get most of the potential up and running, just as we cannot have a perpetual motion machine.  However we can turn our thoughts a bit and get a lot more of our health potential in a very simple and straight forward way.  

Think of the hollow systems of our body and we come up with three.  See how easy it is now?  Where is our boy’s mom when we need her?  

First we all know of the hollow system of the heart and its vessels reaching most of the cells.  And we also know what happens when it is stressed and drawn up tight too.

Then we follow this system up with the second hollow one, that of the viscera with the intestines and organs.  This is our chemical plant that extracts the glucose for our muscle and brain as well as detoxing and elimination.  Imagine it up tight.

Finally the third hollow system, which is the thorax, the ribs and chest which includes the spine and skeletal system throughout our body. Imagine if we draw this part up tight and go to breathe and move.

Now visualize our boy with his body showing early breakdown.  Since the nervous system which has to run through the already tortuous pathways of the spine and body structures is the supreme life nurturing piece of our anatomy how about we take the stress off of it first and then see if the rest of the body doesn’t improve a lot too.

Do you think I could get this thought through our Mom’s way of thinking?  No I could not and cannot and our boy is becoming a man and he will do without the care he could and should have to de-stress himself and get a better chance at having a more healthy future. 

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