75 former NFL players are now suing the league for concealing the long-term risks of the concussions that often happen in pro football.

These NFL players say that, over time, these mild concussions lead to long-term health problems associated with more dramatic forms of traumatic brain injury. No, they didn’t have bleeding head wounds, nor did they spend days in a coma after a hard hit. But, they have symptoms like they could have have experienced these more violent scenarios.

So, what are the symptoms of mild brain injury, and what does this have to do with how we think about multiple sclerosis?

You are going to have to read the article at HealthCentral.com to find out.

I think this is the most important part:

You know, there’s a host of things that are related to the upper cervical spine, and when you start looking at all of them, there are two responses: first, “This is amazing and why haven’t I heard this before!?” or that this is all quackery, and you’re just making this up. (You can find all kinds of Internet experts who will tell you one way or another, who have never set foot inside of a chiropractic practice that does what we do.)

For issues of “fibro-fog,” TMJ or Migraine, these are all related to the upper cervical spine, in many cases.

The traditional progression of someone who really needs upper cervical care might look something like this:

It starts with the young girl who has a difficult birth. She is a colicky baby, but grows out of it. Her parents think nothing of it. She experiences a relatively uneventful childhood. At 8 she experiences a minor neck or head trauma, let’s say a whiplash injury. Again, she seems fine, so her parents think nothing of it. Six months later she develops minor headaches on a weekly basis, and by the time she reaches menarche, she has Migraines, and extraordinary menstrual pain during her cycle. She gets treated pharmaceutically. In her late teens she begins being treated for depression. By the time she is 30, perhaps after the birth of a child, she experiences prolonged fatigue and discreet muscle pains, and she is diagnosed with Fibromyalgia after bouncing back from one provider to the next for a year more.

Migraines, menstrual problems, brain-fog, fatigue, fibromyalgia.  All of them are seemingly unrelated problems.  Yet, clinically we have seen all of them resolve when we go back and finally deal with the injury that happened when she was a child.

I think we’re really on the cusp of a new awareness based on a new ability to explain what is happening in the relationship of upper cervical health to total well-being.

You can read the whole interview on upper cervical chiropractic and chronic disease here.

One of the reasons I chose to build my chiropractic practice around the upper cervical spine (the area between the head/neck) was because of the profound results I had personally seen in some friends and family under upper cervical chiropractic care. Stories of MS relief were part of that decision.

Now as an upper cervical doctor, MS often comes up in conversations that I have with friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. People want to know: can chiropractic care help MS? And what about upper cervical chiropractic care in particular?

For some people these are controversial questions, as they fly in the face of some of our assumptions about what causes MS and the role of chiropractic care. Yet, there is a plausible theory at work here- that could explain why.

Find out what I think in this video blog entry. Available in three parts.

MS and Chiropractic Care Part 1

MS and Chiropractic Care Part 2

MS and Chiropractic Care Part 3

As you can see medicine has already recognized that changes in blood flow in key areas of the body (think brain and spinal cord) are related to a number of diseases. MS might just be one of those diseases. And if upper cervical chiropractors can really influence blood flow at this level, then we can see why upper cervical chiropractic is appropriate for MS patients.

Additional thoughts: If you have watched all three videos, you have learned that the NUCCA correction decreases the amount of venous outflow in the brain. One may then conclude that there is more blood perfusion total in the skull cavity, which may mean more nutrition for key areas of the nervous system. How this may relate to a breakdown of the myelin is anyone’s guess. One point is clear: we need money for more research.