Dazed and confused…

Purely coincidentally, I’ve had two patients in the past two days with the exact same complaint: Lightheadedness, confusion, and disassociation from their bodies. One had gone to get an MRI and X- rays, but everything came back fine. One had severe neck pain, one didn’t.

Both had had dental work recently. Imagine lying back at an awkward angle for a long time, while tense…. Sure enough, both had upper cervical (neck) vertebrae out of place. The tight muscles were pulling on the bones, which squished the blood vessels and cutting off the blood supply to the brain!

I treated both with acupuncture and medical massage, relaxing the muscles and gently easing the vertebrae back into place. Both patients reported instant improvement, and neither needed a second session. Please remember this next time you have a headache or confusion following dental work, or any other stress on your neck.

Note: Chiropractic would have jammed the bone back in place, but not treated the cause of the problem – the tight muscle pulling on that bone – so the misalignment would be likely to return. I prefer to work upstream, on the neurological and muscular system, which control the skeletal system. My method also avoids that whole risk-of-stroke thing (!).