September 2018… I sit in a lecture theatre, surrounded by 50 or so American chiropractors. I’m almost five thousand miles from home. The facility is state of the art and eight days and seventy hours of intense study are about to begin…

I’m here to begin formal training in the most researched form of Chiropractic care, Chiropractic BioPhysics (CBP). CBP is based on the premise that the closer the body is to ideal alignment from the front and from the side, the better it is for health. A vertical position of the spine from the front and three main curves a lordosis (backward bend) in the neck, a kyphosis (gentle forward curve) in the ribcage and another lordosis in the low back.

I do my best to follow the opinions of practitioners and combine this with the latest spinal studies. Unfortunately certain sectors still deny that posture has any link to musculoskeletal pain. Interestingly this opinion seems to flip flop. Nevertheless, constant sitting /smart phone usage and bad posture in general does cause parts of the spine to stretch, compress and contort, this will leads to extra pressure on certain muscles, certain discs and over time, certain bones too. Another promising albeit early research even suggests a link between posture and longevity.

An interesting study done recently made headline around the world, “teenagers growing horns due to phone usage.” Whilst this did make me chuckle and was quickly dismissed by the main stream media, as a chiropractor with a keen interest in the mechanics of the neck, this makes sense, the body is responding to unnatural stresses placed on it, older generations are not developing the same changes and smartphone have only been available for ten years. Whereas I would’ve played Snake on my old Nokia 3210 and sent the odd SMS, now teens and even adults can easily spend hours on their various apps.

As my week in America goes on, the days fly by. One of the foremost and prestigious researchers that I’ve followed for years Dr Deed Harrison presents numerous cases of how spinal alignment can affect an individual’s health. How the technique and interventions have been refined over years. I’m reintroduced to a more scientific form of spinal x-ray analysis and rehabilitative techniques to the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine. It’s reassuring too in that the research is so up to date and how it really is possible to change a person’s spinal structure, when using the correct methods.

Outside the lecture theatre is a 17,000 square foot working chiropractic clinic, which allows me to see this all in action and shows me what I can change in my own practice to help serve patients better.

July 2019… It’s almost been a year since attending this course, since that time I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with many patients with a huge variety of structural differences and symptoms. Things such as road traffic collisions and children with text neck to sacroiliac joint disorders and post partum pelvic instability. The great thing is that whilst I am still able to offer pain relief care, for those seeking a longer term and researched method of changing spinal physiology, I am able to help people with this too.