Upper Cervical Care

Dr. Matthew Ferris is one of the few upper cervical trained physicians in the state and has been delivering this very specific form of treatment since 2004. This approach has a number of very important advantages. Because of very precise digital imaging and physician trained analysis done in the office of the upper neck region, a very specific correction vector or direction of correction can be determined that is unique to that patient. This patient specific correction vector allows the physician to deliver a very gentle sequence of adjustments to little by little shift the 1st cervical vertebrae in a more correct alignment with the skull and the rest of the neck vertebrae. When receiving the correction, the patient will typically only feel a light pressure of the physicians hand or a gentle pulsed/vibration of a instrument. Many times the impact is immediate, releasing irritation to the spinal cord and surrounding nerves, allowing a more balanced tone of spinal muscles and a variety of different sensations depending on which nerves were being adversely irritated by the misalignment or subluxation complex. Because the 1st cervical bone or “atlas” bone is the closest moveable bone/joint to the brain and brain stem it has the ability to affect nerve activity at the highest level and affect any nerve that exits down farther in the spine. Additionally, a misalignment in the atlas bone will cause spinal joints below to change and compensate as a result.

This is why it is not uncommon for our patients to see improvements in areas beyond just neck pain; commonly, relief is seen from headaches & migraines, dizziness, loss of balance, ringing in the ears, TMJ pain, neck pain, tingling & numbness in the hands, heart palpitations, digestive disorders like constipation or diarrhea, leg pain, cold feet, tingling & numbness in the legs & feet, anxiety, depression, fatigue – and many other conditions that develop as a result of improper nerve activity due to spinal joint dysfunction.