Blogs - POSTURA PRESS

Mobility and Cognition are Related. if you want to stay independent, Keep Your Body and Mind Healthy as You Age

The State Of Oregon did a long term study of mobility and cognition on folks over 65. They found that within ten years of developing a slow, cautious gait, for any reason, they developed cognitive decline– measurable cognitive decline.

The reasons given for the gait problems were the usual suspects: knee arthritis, a bad hip, a gouty ankle, persistent dizziness… It was a long list. It doesn’t seem to matter why a person is not walking properly. What mattered was that the mind goes when the body goes. Keeping the body functioning and moving prevents the cognitive decline.

What I want in my patient’s outcomes is simple: They should have a smooth, easy, persistent gait. This is what will guarantee the best health as they get older.

Knee pain and dysfunction are preventable.

The Tibia has to be squarely under the Femur for the best performance of the knee. This is an achievable goal, with proper care. In more than 3 decades of providing care to patients’ knees, I have found that misaligned Tibias are the major source of knee pain. This includes folks that have had multiple surgeries and knee replacements. In every case with a history of Orthopedic care, the patient did not get the Tibia aligned with the Femur. This is the source of knee arthritis. If you know the words “meniscus”, “cruciate” or “collateral’ you have suffered a misalignment or subluxation of the Tibia.

This can be a critical issue for independent living.

Living in your own home is something most people do not think about until it becomes an issue. Having to move because of stairs or other features of the family home is not uncommon due to physical limitations. Staying mobile and fit to remain independent in your own home becomes vitally important. You might not think about it until you are about to lose it. Assisted living is a necessary option for some folks because of physical limitations. By the time most people are in their 70’s they should be doing something daily to keep fit and in shape to stay independent. If not, they are sliding into dependent living.

I say to patients, “Do you want to be living somewhere where dinner is at 5 every day and you can’t be late?” They all say no, they do not want that. I use this as motivation to get them moving. Walking an hour a day can keep you in your own home. That can be very challenging. First, your knees must be functioning properly. My book, Got Knee Pain? Where’s Your Tibia? teaches you how to asses and adjust your own knee so you can do this yourself, at home. Then, start walking. Start with 5 minutes if that is all you can do. Stay at 5 minutes for 7 days, on day 8 increase to 8 minutes. Stay at that for 7 days, increase incrementally. Be persistent, as if you want to stay in your own home.

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Aging, Knee function, knee pain, Mobility

The knee is a critical structure

Knee Function

Elderly man walks happily along a path in the park

The knee is a critical structure in the human body. I’ve had more than one patient contemplating suicide because of knee pain and dysfunction. It wasn’t just the pain that drove them into depression– it was the lack of mobility. The mobility of a patient can be intimately tied to knee function. This is not fully appreciated by people until a knee is injured. I feel lower extremity function is critical to managing the injured pelvis and low back. For any patient whose primary complaint is low back pain and has pelvic girdle injury I feel the need to examine the lower leg from the knee down to the foot and ankle. Any of these components that have subluxations and dysfunctional motion patterns can interfere with stabilizing the pelvis. This approach to evaluation and adjusting is not typical. It will require some new thinking to fully appreciate it.

With over 30 years in practice, I have yet to find a case of an arthritic knee that had the Tibia aligned with the Femur. In my opinion, knee arthritis is the result of a subluxated Tibia. I’ve had discussions with chiropractors about managing their own knee injuries and many resist care because they have a partially torn ACL or meniscus. They think that these injuries doom them to dysfunction. This is not the case. Even with terrible degenerative changes and complete loss of joint space, realigning the Tibia to the femur can improve function and reduce pain.

There is still Hope for Treating older injuries

I once treated a knee injury that had occurred 57 years earlier. He had medical care at the time of the injury and had access to orthopedic care for the entire time. Not one provider ever realigned the Tibia to the Femur. He walked with an obvious limp, using a cane, and had no joint space between the two bones. It was obviously arthritic and inflamed on the first office visit. By the sixth visit to realign his Tibia, he came in without his cane. He had forgot it in a gas station and was really upset, with me. His mobility had increased so much that he didn’t need the cane anymore. He was upset with me because I caused him to leave his cane. I only saw him on a few more occasions, but his wife would later tell me that his life had improved since the loss of the cane. At election time he was out canvasing the neighborhood instead of working the phone banks. He was more active and had increased his social interactions. She felt this was a very good thing and she thanked me. He was able to stay in his home until age 96 where he slipped away in his sleep. I think about the many orthopedists and care providers he worked with after his knee injury. If just one of them had thought to assess his Tibia early on, how much more active would he have been? How much more would he have experienced in life? I cannot treat every person who has knee pain, but I hope to treat many of them by showing other members of the medical community an effective way to do it.

My book, Advanced Adjusting Techniques: Chiropractic Care for Physically Compromised Patients, shows Chiropractic students how to align the Tibia. I have written another book, Got Knee Pain? Where’s Your Tibia? that details simple techniques for adjusting your own knee. My hope is that these offerings will help to treat and prevent future knee pain for many people.

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How Proper Pelvic Bone Alignment Can Change Women’s Healthcare Forever

Women's Health

I was an anatomy dissection instructor at Life West Chiropractic College for seven years. I observed that more than half of the female cadaver’s I dissected had the uterus, fallopian tubes and an ovary shifted to one side and adhesed to one psoas muscle. The fibroid tumor would be formed on the side of the shift. So if the uterus was pulled over to the right side, the fibroids would be on the right side of the uterus. I wondered what was causing this and if it were preventable.

Pain due to Pelvic Injury is Treatable and Preventable

In 1992 my wife, Diane, was in a car accident. Her right foot was on the brake pedal and the event displaced her right hip bone. This was very painful for her. She had a history of cervical cancer. She was in her fifth year of being post-surgery and she was getting checked semiannually. Her next semiannual appointment was two days after the car accident. I went in with her as I knew the doctor and I wanted to propose an experiment. I told her about Diane’s accident and how it changed the shape of her pelvis. I asked her to do her regular pelvic examination, give me her verbal findings and then let me adjust her and redo the pelvic examination. She agreed and said “I was taught in school that these bones don’t move, but I’ve had babies and I’ve been adjusted by chiropractors, so I know they move.”

While Diane was on the table, I showed the doctor how Diane’s pubic bones were misaligned. Her right pubic bone was higher than the left one. I also showed her how Diane’s right abdominal wall was tighter.

The doctor acknowledged that she could see and feel this. She began her examination and Diane arched her back off the table. She was in terrible pain. In at least 45 exams over the past 6 years, neither the doctor nor Diane could recall an exam that did not elicit a pain reaction like this.

The doctor said “I can’t get to the right ovary; the uterus is in the way. This feels completely asymmetrical” and then commented that she can easily get to the left ovary. Diane said it didn’t hurt as much for the doctor to go to the left. I waited for her to finish her examination and then I realigned Diane’s pelvis. When the doctor performed the examination a second time, both were shocked that there was no pain. The doctor said, “I can easily get to the right ovary, this feels symmetrical in here now. Could this be the source of all the undiagnosed pelvic pain I encounter in so many of my patients?”

When the marriage ended, Diane moved away and I didn’t see her for thirteen years. When we finally met again, I inquired about her gynecological health. She had stopped getting adjustments and she ignored her pelvic misalignment for thirteen years. She said, “I am scheduled for a hysterectomy next Tuesday morning. I can hardly wait to get this shit out of me!” I asked if she thought that the car accident in 1992 was responsible for her need to have a hysterectomy. She said, “absolutely.”

Women are Suffering due to Pelvic Misalignment

I feel that gynecological health is related to pelvic alignment. The condition I saw in the anatomy lab years ago was in fact preventable. Pelvic alignment is not looked upon by the gynecological and obstetrical doctors as being important. I feel this is wrong. Women need to know that their health and reproductive viability are connected to proper health care which includes pelvic alignment.

Sally Hill is the registered nurse and midwife who wrote the introduction to my book The Level Pelvis Method for Pregnancy and Birthing Ease. I taught her how to align a pelvis to help with labor and delivery for her patients. I saw her a few months later and she said that what I had taught her was “killing her”. I asked “why?” She said that she was now the “go-to person for all difficult labor and deliveries at Alta Bates and Summit hospitals”. I asked how many of those were caused by misaligned pelvises. She rolled her eyes and said, “all of them…” as if it was a stupid question. I suggested that if we could make this information available to the gynecological and obstetrics communities, we might be able to change the profession. She laughed so hard she almost rolled off the table.

I feel I have a huge responsibility to try to change things. Women are suffering from painful pregnancy, fibroid tumors and even infertility due to a misaligned pelvis. Babies are born with birth related trauma due to stalled labors. As unbelievable as it may sound, this is preventable with simple adjusting techniques that anyone can do. I cannot stress this enough. Opioid medications are not a solution. We cannot ignore the alignment of the pelvic bones.

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