Prepare to have your health questions answered here on Safe, Effective, Natural Solutions
with Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center in downtown Ventura.
Now here's Dr. Todd.
Good afternoon.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley, board certified non-force doctor of chiropractic and practitioner of
functional medicine.
Most of the time, most of the shows are about, predominantly about functional medicine, about
how to use more advanced testing to identify places where your organs and tissues, your
heart, your liver, your immune system, your kidneys need a little support, some nutrients,
some better food, maybe some exercise to get them functioning at their peak so you can
reverse or eliminate your dependency or prevent your dependency on pharmaceuticals for the
rest of your life for things like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, low thyroid,
anemia, et cetera.
For last week, I talked about how I am a non-force chiropractor.
I've been a practicing chiropractor since 1989 when I graduated where I got my doctorate
of chiropractic degree at Palmer College of Chiropractic, what some people call the Harvard
of chiropractic because it attracts students from all over the world and it is where the
profession was founded by Daniel David Palmer back in 1895.
So I got a number of questions after last week's episode.
I talked a lot about some of the understanding how the body works, understand how non-force
methods can work, how you can release tension, correct headaches, neck pain, back pain, sciatica,
carpal tunnel syndrome, rotator cuff injuries, plantar fasciitis, all the things that most
chiropractors address with traditional adjusting methods with some kind of application of force
or with deep tissue massage or with physical therapy, some combination thereof.
How do I help people with those things without using any kind of force?
How does non-force chiropractic work?
What does that look like?
And it's difficult to describe on the radio.
It's much easier to show you in my office.
But ultimately, the non-force method I use is called network.
The main non-force method is called network spinal analysis.
I use a number of other non-force methods.
I've developed myself, but all of them have one thing in common.
They all are means of sending feedback to your brain to help it release patterns of
tension that have built up in tissues throughout your body, patterns of tension in your muscles,
and also hypersensitive nerves.
So just sitting a lot in lousy chairs, beds that are too soft, having poor posture creates
patterns of tension in your muscles.
And these can be felt.
They can be palpated.
So just by running my hands along or touching certain muscles, doing a physical exam to
identify places where you're holding tension anywhere in the body.
But along the spine in particular, there are little nerve endings that come directly from
the spinal cord up to the surface, which can also be felt, which allow me to figure out
exactly where the worst tension is on your spine right now.
And all I have to do is hold a contact to send a signal to your brain to help it figure
out what muscles it needs to use to release that tension.
And when it does that, because it has to figure out what muscles to use, it learns something
from that every time we do it.
And so it becomes a more lasting method, more lasting results than if you apply force.
So I love using non-force chiropractic and helping people find and identify a way to
get a lasting solution for a problem as opposed to just a short term relief from pain.
So this is one of my favorite case studies.
This is a patient in his 40s who was referred to me by another chiropractor.
He'd been getting regular chiropractic adjustments with a local chiropractor in a neighboring
town and then he had another injury.
He had gotten a car accident and that chiropractor worked on him for a little bit, but he got
to the point where he just wasn't getting any better.
This chiropractor strongly suspected that he had a herniated disc and he knew that was
something that you're not going to do a regular adjustment on.
So he sent him to me.
Well, I did a physical exam on him, found some issues which I'll describe here in a
minute, but I told him we definitely need to get an MRI immediately.
And he had good insurance, so I just told him to go to his regular MD and have him order
the MRI so that the insurance would pay for it.
So this was July 2009.
The MRI comes back and he's got a 6 to 7 millimeter herniated disc at L4.
This is the fourth vertebra, the second to last vertebra in your lower back.
And it's compressing that sac that surrounds the spinal cord that I've described before
that protects the delicate spinal cord inside the fluid-filled sac.
So there's pressure on that.
That's what's causing his low back pain.
He also had a smaller disc bulge in the vertebral lobe at L5, but it was obvious that most of
his symptoms were coming from L4.
Well, his family doctor that ordered this scan told him he needed to go see a neurosurgeon
immediately.
And I agreed.
But we both knew the neurosurgeon was just going to recommend surgery, and the patient
said, you know, I don't want to have surgery.
Do you think you can help me?
And I said, well, let's see.
We'll give it a shot.
We'll give it some time.
I've explained before how there are so many muscles that can contribute to low back pain
and make your low back an accident waiting to happen.
Well, he was a classic case of this.
All of his hip rotator muscle, the small glutes and the piriformis, his psoas muscle, and
his hamstrings were all super tight.
I think his hamstrings were probably the tightest I've ever seen.
When he was lying on his back and I tried to lift his foot, it came up about 12 inches
off the table.
With his leg straight, lifting his foot up, it came up to about an angle of 20 degrees
from the table.
Well, you want your leg to be able to get up to 90 degrees.
And if you can't get it up to 90 degrees with your knee locked straight, then that's tight
hamstrings and that is going to contribute to low back pain.
So I knew that even if he ended up needing surgery, if we could get the tension out of
those hamstrings and all those other tight muscles that were overloading his back, contributing
to him, if not causing him getting the injury in the first place, that it was going to give
him a much better outcome even if he ended up having to have the surgery.
So three months later, he has hardly any pain radiating down his legs.
He still has some pain in his back, but it's better.
So I said, now go see the neurosurgeon.
But I don't want to get surgery.
You know, you know, you don't have, you know, I don't want that.
I said, well, you don't have to get surgery.
Just tell the neurosurgeon that you're still having some low back pain and occasionally
some pain radiating down your legs.
So he'll order another MRI and then we can see what this disc looks like.
Right.
Okay.
So we had an excellent neurosurgeon in town back then who's since retired, but I sent
dozens of patients to him and I knew that he was conservative and I knew that he wouldn't
recommend surgery except as a last resort, unless it was the only option.
And I also know that if he needed surgery, he was the best because he had excellent outcomes.
So this neurosurgeon orders another MRI.
This is October of 2009 now and the MRI showed a five millimeter herniated disc at L4.
So in three months, his herniated disc has shrunk by 25% from six to seven millimeters
to five millimeters with conservative care only.
No adjustments, no force of any kind, just stretching and giving his brain feedback to
help it relax all those muscles so that the disc could actually heal.
And of course this very smart neurosurgeon said, well, if you've got that much improvement
in three months with conservative care, just keep doing what you're doing.
So fast forward a year, patient's doing great, no pain at all, nothing going down his legs,
no back pain.
He's back to lifting weights and his back is feeling stronger than ever.
And I told him, I said, you know, I wish we could get another MRI to see what that disc
looks like now.
And he says, you know, I never get to see that.
I've helped so many people heal herniated discs.
I know if I could get another scan, we're going to see it shrunk even smaller, but somebody
has to pay for that.
And of course, you know, I can always send you off for an MRI.
Nowadays they don't cost that much.
I can get a lumbar spine MRI for about $275 cash if you don't want to wait on your insurance
to pay for it or get permission or go see the specialist to get permission to, you know,
sometimes you have to go through two or three appointments just to get permission to get
the scan.
Anyway, back then it was more like $1,200 for a lumbar MRI.
So he went back to the neurosurgeon and I don't know how he did it.
This is really rare, but he got this neurosurgeon to order another MRI.
He probably told him he had a little pain in his back going down his leg once in a while
or something just to give him a reason to order the scan.
So this is a little over a year later.
It's November of 2010 and his MRI says stable mild diffuse disc bulge with stable mild spinal
stenosis.
Well, what does that mean?
Basically he has no herniated disc anymore.
It's stable.
There's no signs of inflammation.
There's no signs of something that's prone to tear more.
And mild stenosis means there's just very little, stenosis means narrowing.
So there's very little narrowing in the canal.
Basically there's nothing that's going to be pressing or rubbing on his spinal cord
anymore.
Well, it also says the neuroforamina are adequately patent bilaterally.
Well, what does that mean?
The neuroforamina, those are the little holes on either side of the spine where the nerve
roots exit.
And patent just means they're not blocked.
So it's basically saying there's no pressure from a disc bulge on the spinal cord and there's
no tissue that's pressing or interfering with or narrowing the openings in the spine where
the nerve roots exit on either side, which makes it very easy to understand why he's
feeling great.
But this is amazing.
He's gone from a six to seven millimeter disc herniation down to one that's so small they
didn't even put a number to it in the summary.
And if you read further down in the report, if they don't mention the size, then you know
it's less than two or three millimeters if you read enough MRIs because that's the smallest
number they ever put that's associated with any symptoms.
Typically a two or three millimeter disc herniation has no symptoms.
Anyway, further down in the report, it did say that his bulge was now a, quote, stable
bulge of two millimeters.
And you know, so that basically means he's got no herniated disc at all, no nerve irritation
and no instability.
So this is unheard of to shrink a herniated disc from six to seven millimeters down to
two, which is basically nothing without surgery.
And this patient went back to lifting weights.
He kept doing all the stretches.
Most importantly, he kept doing all the stretches that I showed him to keep the pressure off
of his back so he wouldn't re-injure the disc, including hanging upside down and twisting.
And that probably sounds kind of scary.
So we'll come back to that.
I certainly didn't start that when he came in.
In fact, what made the biggest difference when he first came in is I had him lie.
This is what I do for somebody that comes in.
I've had people walk in or come in on a walker or be carried in by somebody or crawl in even.
And I do what I'm about to describe and they can stand up and walk out in one visit.
Sometimes I'm not saying that fix the problem, but it just reduces enough pressure that you
can get a dramatic reduction in the pressure on the nerves.
So I lie him on the floor with his feet on the wall with his hips bent at 90 degrees,
his knees bent at 90 degrees and his feet pressing against the wall.
So he's lying on his back and then I strap his hips with a strap to the wall.
And then I have him lying flat on his back.
So his back is totally supported.
There's nothing that you're going to do that's going to damage the back in any way because
it's fully supported and he's lying on his back.
And then his hips are attached to the wall.
And then I either use a strap around his rib cage or eventually I just grab his forearms
and have him grab my forearms and I gently pull.
I stress gently pull.
This may sound like if you were, if you're hopefully you can visualize this and I'm actually,
you know, giving you something that's of use to you to understand how I can help.
But you know, if you were there watching it, you might, and you don't realize how gently
I'm pulling it might look like some kind of medieval torture or something.
But I trust you, I promise you it's not.
It's a very gentle stretch.
And the most important thing is I'm stretching for just a little bit and then releasing and
letting the muscles relax and then stretching again and relax, letting it relax.
And promise you this, I don't know of any other doctors that do this kind of traction.
Most doctors, if you need traction, they put you on some kind of machine where you're strapped
to this machine for maybe 20 minutes or 45 minutes, sometimes longer.
In the old days, they used to use these horrific cables and wires in a hospital bed and, you
know, put you in traction and leave you that way for days or weeks.
They don't do that anymore.
But most doctors, if you need traction, they're going to use some kind of machine to stretch
you where they might be helping to stretch a little bit on some kind of table that bends
or a machine that strap you onto and it kind of shakes and twists and pulls a little bit.
The problem with that is the machine can't feel where your limitations are.
So when I'm doing this on the floor where your back is totally supported and your back's
not moving at all except for the stretch that I'm providing, I can feel the response.
I can feel and see the reaction and know exactly how little to stretch and how much to stretch.
Where's that safe limit?
So by monitoring the body's reaction the entire time, I know exactly how much pressure or
how little pressure to use.
And this removes the compression from a compressed disc.
Your discs are compressed all day long when you're standing and sitting.
Your discs, especially in the low back, are being compressed.
And two thirds of your body weight is carried by that last lumbar disc or the last two lumbar
discs.
L4 and L5 are the most commonly ones that you hernia because two thirds of your body
weight is being carried by these little pieces of cartilage that are about a quarter of an
inch thick.
It's a little bit thicker than that depending on how big you are and about an inch and a
half in diameter.
So think of that.
Two thirds of your body weight is being supported by this little piece of cartilage that's about
a quarter of an inch thick and about an inch and a half in diameter.
But normally, it's a wonder everyone doesn't get a herniated disc, but normally they're
incredibly strong.
So these discs are kind of like a slice of an onion made out of cartilage with a series
of concentric rings, like the slice of an onion with a marble in the center that supports
the weight of the vertebra above and acts like a fulcrum or a pivot point so that when
you're bending and twisting and turning, it provides that space between one vertebra and
the next.
But when you tear some of these fibers, some of the concentric rings, some of the layers
of the onion, then that marble becomes more like a jelly bean.
So it's always like a jelly bean.
It's just as hard as a marble when it's fully supported.
But if you tear some of those rings, then some of that jelly in the jelly bean, the
contents of that is pushed back through the breach, through the tears in these fibers
towards the back or towards the side, creating a disc bulge that presses on the spinal cord.
And if it goes toward the side, then it can press on the nerve roots or sometimes both.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley talking about safe, effective natural solutions to almost any health challenge.
Today, we're talking about herniated discs.
I mostly talk about things like rheumatoid arthritis and low thyroid and diabetes and
heart disease.
But today, I am a non-force chiropractor.
And so today we're talking about a herniated disc case.
So a vertebral disc in your back is kind of like a slice of an onion.
When you tear some of those rings of the onion and the material in the center pushes back,
creating a bulge that presses on the nerves, that's when you feel the symptoms of a herniated
disc.
So the best way to make it strong again is to take the pressure off of that disc, to
decompress it.
And eventually, the way to make it strong again, so after we decompress it with some
traction on the floor and get the muscles released to take some of the tension off,
then the best way to make it strong again so that it's less likely to tear more in the
future and to fully heal it, basically to make it strong, is you want to put these fibers
of this disc in traction and rotation.
So you want to decompress and rotate a little bit because they're circular.
So the best way to make those circular fibers strong again is to decompress and rotate them
by hanging upside down and twisting.
That may sound pretty scary and I certainly didn't start with that.
I can imagine that that might sound kind of scary if you've got this huge 6-7 millimeter
disc herniation to hang upside down and twist.
So I didn't start with that obviously.
For the first couple of months, all I did was have him on the table and release the
tension from the spinal cord as I've described before and then doing this traction on the
floor.
And after a couple of months, then I started doing some other stretches to prepare him
to hang upside down for at least another month.
It was probably around the third month that we were able to get him to actually hang upside
down and twist.
Well, he's been doing that ever since on his own at home and his L4 disc is still doing
great and he's doing great.
He's still doing great because he's a great patient.
I wish all my patients were as dedicated to doing their stretches as he is.
He's smart and he knows it works.
So actually I've got lots of patients who think stretching is a huge hassle in the beginning.
You might be wondering, oh my God, I'm not going to go to him.
He's going to make me do stretches.
Who has time for that?
Well, here's who has time.
I'm not going to give you a handout with a list of 20 stretches and say good luck or
say watch this video.
I'm going to design maybe two or three stretches that are going to make a huge difference for
you immediately.
So if you spend a few minutes every day doing these stretches, you're going to feel the
difference and you're going to want to do them because they work.
So it's but you can't you can't learn this from a video or looking at a picture in a
book.
You have to be shown exactly how to do.
You're as different as you.
You're as different as everyone's different and there's no there's no one size fits all
stretch.
The stretch the same stretch the same sort of like a hamstring stretch looks different
for you than it does for the next person.
So you need to be shown specific ways to stretch your muscles given where your attention is.
The whole point is to release tension in your body and help your brain figure out how to
relax those muscles so that they keep getting longer and looser over time and so that they
stay that way and so that your pain goes away and so that your pain stays away.
And then later if you do something like lifting something you shouldn't or bending and twisting
pulling weeds in the garden you know you have some kind of a setback.
It's much easier to fix then because you're keeping your back limber and loose so that
your spine and your other joints bend instead of breaking and you just get a few little
micro tears which will heal easily versus major tears that may end up requiring surgery.
So I've helped hundreds of people with herniated discs avoid surgery but I very rarely get
to see the follow-up MRIs to see and confirm how much the disc has shrunk.
I've helped hundreds of people avoid surgery for herniated discs in the neck and people
who were scheduled for surgery in a rotator cuff injury or for a torn meniscus in the
knee or a hip surgery or these barbaric surgeries they do for some doctors do for plantar fasciitis
or tension tension in the Achilles tendons and I've gotten most of them completely out
of pain by showing them how to do and by doing the work on the table showing them how to
do some stresses at home and then they can keep it that way forever so that they can
feel good forever as long as they keep getting an occasional tune up with me to deal with
the stress of daily life and keep doing their stretches at home.
Well I've also sent many patients to surgeons if they need it.
Some people just wait too long or occasionally have severe injuries injuries that require
surgery but in all of these cases I help relieve the tension around the damaged area before
they get the surgery so that I know that they're going to have the best possible outcome and
then I encourage them to come back after the surgery so that we can get the best possible
recovery and actually heal the damaged tissue.
I give them some nutrients to heal the damaged tissue and continue to do some stretches and
some other methods on the table to relax the tension around the damaged area so I can heal
as quick as possible heal as strong as possible and then eventually get them on some regular
stretches to restore and maintain the flexibility in these short tight muscles that contributed
to if not directly cause them getting the torn tissue in the first place.
Here's something else you can do with non-force chiropractic that you can't do within a traditional
adjustment.
Treat low back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or knee pain or hip pain and any patient
who's had a failed surgery who's had surgery and still has pain a year later two years
later five years later it's still about 50-50 with back surgeries that you're going to feel
any better two years later than if you hadn't had the surgery at all.
And you're not going to do a traditional adjustment on somebody who's had a spinal fusion.
You're not going to adjust someone's knee who's just had surgery there and still has
pain or someone's shoulder who's had surgery and you know it's just obviously still too
fragile to do anything forceful on it.
But you can always reduce tension in the muscles around that area which in my experience tension
in the muscles around that area and hypersensitive nerve endings in and around that area are
what causes almost all pain in the first place.
Tension in the muscles around the damage area as well as these hypersensitive nerve endings
that just get stuck on.
You can address both of these without any force and all of these methods that I'm describing
to do that simply involve the one thing they have in common is they're all about giving
feedback to your brain.
So we're giving feedback to the brain to help it realize that it's safe to relax those
muscles and reduce the sensitivity level in those nerve endings.
The only reason your brain is maintaining that tension in those muscles in the first
place is because it doesn't feel safe.
It thinks you're going to re-enter this area immediately.
It's on guard.
It's trying to protect you from damaging that same tissue again.
It's convinced that any minute now you're going to tear it again so it tightens up the
muscles and keeps them tight.
Maybe forever.
It maintains this heightened sense of alert in the nerve endings so that you barely touch
it and it hurts like you were sticking a needle in.
These are just protective mechanisms but there are always ways to convince your brain that
it's okay to relax those tender muscles and hypersensitive nerves.
These hypersensitive nerve endings and tender muscles, and I'm going to use that phrase
over and over again and I know it's difficult to understand, it's much easier to show you
when you're in the office what I mean.
But another way to think about it is hypersensitive nerve endings and over tight muscles that
your brain is deliberately keeping on this heightened state of alert even when you don't
have any damaged tissue that needs to be protected anymore.
The metaphor I like is they're kind of like scared children.
If you have a scared child, you can't force it to stop being scared.
You can't force it to stop crying, to stop being hypersensitive, to stop being tense
and worried.
You have to calm them down.
You have to gently convince them, make them understand that they're safe, that they're
okay and it's all right to relax and release that tension.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley.
I'd love to be a part of your New Year's resolutions to take care of your health better in the
new year.
Have a fabulous weekend.
Be safe.
I look forward to chatting with you right here on KDRFM next week at 4 p.m.
Happy New Year.
You've been listening to Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with Dr. Todd Binkley.
If you have a health question you want discussed on the show, email your health questions to
drbinkley at binkleyhealingcenter.com.
Take advantage of this opportunity to ask questions for yourself and for your loved
ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 4 p.m. for Safe, Effective Natural Solutions right here on 98.3 The
Word KDAR.