We had an interesting story come out of Houston this week. According to Fox News, an Upper Cervical chiropractor may have been the key to restoring a patients sense of taste after Covid-19. The patient at the forefront of this case, Mariana, described what had rapidly turned into a no-hope situation after her recovery from the virus. “"I had to follow up and call them and say, ‘even with all the medications that you guys put me on and the CT scan, nothing has helped.’ They told me that there's nothing else they can do, you just have to wait.”
The last thing Mariana expected was to get help from a chiropractor. In fact, she hadn’t made the appointment for her loss of smell in the first place; instead scheduling her appointment because of her lingering low back pain. Mariana described her experience at Dr. Prince’s office as life changing and that she “didn't have to give up a lot of my favorite foods because it didn't taste the same.”
Dr. Prince shared similar sentiments and the fact that Mariana has not been the only case that she had seen for this type of problem. "It's so amazing and we've heard from a lot of other chiropractors in the community that they've been having this response, you know, people getting their taste and their smell back after an adjustment.”
So how could this happen? How is a chiropractic adjustment going to affect your sense of taste? Dr. Prince explains it pretty well here: “When I'm delivering an adjustment to the upper cervical portion of the neck, the first bone in the neck triggers a response to the cranial nerves.”
Essentially, it comes down to what’s going on up top. Your brain controls all of the functions in your body: from breathing, smelling, and tasting to your muscle balance and organ function. It does this by sending messages through pathways called nerves, the most upper ones of which are called the cranial nerves. In order for your body to function and communicate properly, these nerves must be able to send signals effectively without interference… like having a good cell phone reception when talking to your best friend across the country.
The doorway to these nerve pathways is right at the base of your head, passing through this small (but amazing) bone called your Atlas. The Atlas bone is specially designed to allow your head to move on all different planes, as well as to protect those sensitive nerve pathways as they travel away from your brain. Because of its high range of motion, the Atlas bone can be prone to what we call a “misalignment” or “subluxation.” This simply means an abnormal shifting of the bone that puts it “out of place”. When the Atlas bone is misaligned, nerves may become “impinged” or blocked and disrupt communication from your brain to the rest of your body. (Think again about that bad phone connection with your friend). This leads to dysfunction, pain and even sometimes loss of sensation like we see here in the case of Mariana.
Restoring proper alignment of the Atlas bone will then remove the interference and irritation on the nerve pathways and restoring communication between the brain and the rest of the body. We now would expect to see a reversal of the dysfunction, and the remediation of symptoms that are directly related to that nerve interference.
So bottom line: Can we say without a doubt that a precise Upper Cervical adjustment will fix your loss of taste or smell from the Covid-19 virus? No we couldn’t say for sure of course. But if you asked Mariana how it worked for her I’m sure she would be quick to tell you differently. And the bonus: restoring that nervous system communication is the foundation for improved health.
So get your neck checked.
Dr. Dutch
Source:
https://www.fox13news.com/news/chiropractor-helps-patients-get-their-taste-and-smell-back-after-covid-19