Before You Have Spinal Surgery

Hi I'm Dr. Sten Ekberg with Wellness For Life where we do nutritionally and

neurologically based chiropractic and healthcare. And I just ran into someone

who was bedridden after a medical event he went in for some routine surgery and

he had back pain for many years they've been on steroids for six years which had

made his skeleton very fragile so when they went to turn him they fractured his

L4 low back vertebra and then when they said that they had to go in

and fix it they figured oh let's just fuse the whole spine while we're at it

since it's so unstable and then he ended up with a c-diff infection and three

months in hospital on intravenous antibiotics and so on. But what I wanted

to address other than that sad story is that before we go and have spinal

procedures and spinal fusion we want to ask ourselves what is the function of

the spine because most people think it's just a bony column there to provide a

little mobility and protect the spinal cord but the physiology of the spine is

incredibly complex and one of the main functions of the spine is to feed the

brain because the movement of joints provide signals for the brain so just

like you exercise a muscle the muscle gets stronger if you break your arm and

you don't move the arm at all for a couple of months then the arm atrophies and

there's virtually no muscle left well the same thing happens to the brain when

we don't get the proper signals to the brain the brain atrophies it is less

capable of managing homeostasis and all the vital functions of the body when the

frontal lobe goes down we lose a digestion we lose concentration we get

depressed etc etc so when you fuse the whole spine

you are robbing the brain of vital nutrients in the form of information so

again we as a society it's time that we start understanding the holistic nature

of the body that you can't treat it as parts you need to understand how all the

different parts work and interact in a holistic manner that's the only way that

we're going to be able to have health instead of just doing little symptomatic

interventions so that's all for today it occurred to me I wanted to share that

story so that's it for now thank you very much