Occipital Sideslip: Nerve Shutdown at the Base of Your Skull
by Dr. Arlo Gordin
If I had just one adjustment I could do, for its amazing often miraculous result, it would be correcting the Nerve Short Circuit (“Subluxation” is the word for that in Chiropractic) called Occipital Sideslip. The Occipital bone is the one at the base of your skull, the one that joins to the topmost neck vertebra (The “Atlas” vertebra is the first bone at the top of your neck).
That joint of the top of your neck where skull joins to spine is frequently subluxated. That means that area is in misalignment, causing pressure on nerve elements. Sometimes a person feels the pain or pressure at the back below their skull, often not. But the effects of that all-too-common subluxation are felt by millions. Most who have it haven’t a clue what it is or that they do. When it is “out” and off to either right or left side, your health is severely impacted. Because the pressure it causes is on the top of the spinal cord, the area named the “brain-stem” is involved. The brain stem is a nerve area running many essential life processes including breathing and digestion. Pressure on that area will affect the connecting nerves running all the way down your body.
Even the test to find it tells you how far ranging this nerve short circuit has causing damaging effect. The test for it is to check the strength of both strong leg muscles on both right and left sides, the Hip and the Psoas. When both sides, both left and right have leg strengths that are absent, the bet is that you have Occipital Sideslip. Why would pressure at the topmost part of your spine cause weakness so far below that BOTH legs test incredibly weak? Because when the base of your skull slips out of place in this Subluxation, pressure is on the Spinal Cord itself, the lifeline of your nerve system. Other spinal subluxations cause pressure on a nerve root, one of 24 pairs you have, and affects that area that nerve root serves. But Occipital Sideslip impinges on your very Spinal Cord, the central cable of nerve energy that goes eventually to all the 24 pairs of nerve roots!
So failing both right and left hip tests caused by pressure under your skull, means the spinal cord is being blocked in nerve impulse carrying capacity that far away in your body. Because it is part of the Upper Cervical (Top of the Neck) circuit board, it is involved in the many things too that are classic for subluxation of Cervical One and Two (“Atlas” and “Axis” as those two have their own names, while the rest of the spinal vertebra have to be content being called by their numbers!). Upper cervical subluxation is so important to nerve health and integrity that for over a decade Chiropractors worked only on analyzing and adjusting that one area, leaving the rest alone!
Today I corrected the occipital sideslip on a woman whose nerve system had collapsed in a toxic shock. For months she had remained unable to function or even stand on her feet. It took 2 people to get her on a table to be examined and adjusted; her legs couldn’t hold her. They had no strength. After adjusting her Occipital bone, she reported: She could make a fist for the first time, she could raise up her arms, she had more strength. And the second she was adjusted she could hold her legs off the table under her own power, something that she couldn’t do at all a moment before.
Repeatedly I have corrected a Side-slipped Occipital Bone on a patient with Migraines or recurrent headaches. As I know to expect, this will relieve the headache. And with the job of restoring Adrenal Gland Health, migraine sufferers can expect to be free of lost days and of relying on medications for covering up severe head pain.
This is important to be checked, and if present, corrected on every patient I see, whether their problem is with pain, headache, knees, spine, disc pathologies, digestion, eyes, ears or thyroid gland. It needs to be checked on everyone!
The dramatic change in leg power wows most every patient that has this needed correction made. It is like Magic…just in this case it is real.
Back and Spinal pain cases, and of course, Neck and Headache sufferers always need to have this area checked. Anyone who wants complete nerve health and freedom from the effects of Stress on their health needs this checked out.
I have come to expect nerve health, and Stress-combatting Health miracles from this adjustment. If I’ve sent this to you as part of your Report of Exam Results, know that this nerve-debilitating problem was found on you in your exam. If you haven’t been checked for this nerve issue, best you do!