As a SmartInjuryDoctor You Can Dominate the Headache Resolution Space

A lot of doctors want to expand their practices and one of the biggest concerns is new patients.  Doctors in my Smart Injury Doctors program understand just how valuable they are in the market.  They understand that ligament injuries cause some of the most chronic, costly and disabling conditions in the market today.  Spinal ligament injuries are the number one cause of chronic pain and disability in the market today.

Spinal ligament conditions cause low back and neck problems which causes chronic pain.  Cervical conditions cause headaches.  Whenever we are talking about a diagnosis of a condition we are talking about the symptom and then working our way back to the most common physical cause of that condition.   If you have a problem with the engine in your car you better have a mechanic that knows how to find the cause of the mechanical failure and that can fix the problem so that your car will be optimally functioning again.  The human body is the same.  I get so excited for Smart Injury Doctors because not only can they be treating more injury patients but can be treating the chronic pain side of things as well.   Many patients have been to doctors that don’t know anything about spinal ligament injuries, which are causing the pain that they are having.  Those same doctors don’t know how to appropriately diagnose or how to properly treat them. 

Let’s take migraine headaches.  Migraine headaches effect 38 million men, women and children in the US and one billion people worldwide.   Everyone either knows someone who suffers from migraines or who struggles with migraines themselves.  Migraine headache is the sixth most disabling condition and the third most prevalent illness in the world today.  Nearly one in four households in the US include someone with migraine headaches.   So, doctors that are looking for new patients, if you drive by a thousand houses tonight, 250 houses have people in them that suffer from migraine headaches.  A migraine patient will spend 70% more in medial expenses per year, by study, than somebody who doesn’t. 

In America every 10 seconds someone goes to the emergency room complaining of head pain.  Approximately 1.2 million visits are for acute migraine attacks.  Most sufferers experience an attack once or twice a month however, more than four million people have chronic daily migraines with at least 15 migraine days per month.   More than 90% of sufferers are unable to work or function normally during their migraines.  Most migraine attacks are accompanied by visual disturbances, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, numbness in the extremities and extreme sensitivity to sound, light, touch and smell.

Doctors, the most exciting part about this market is that there are so few experts.  There are so few confident doctors that know that you will need a full assessment of at least the first four vertebrae (C1, C2, C3 and C4) nerves.  If there is a ligament injury it will cause excessive motion and would cause instability.  The instability causes a motor sensory, a pain problem associate with that motion unit, which is the most common cause of headaches.   There is not one headache patient in the world that shouldn’t have a doctor that says “Okay, what are these vertebral bodies doing right around these nerves?”  Where does the C1 nerve come out?  It comes out between the occiput and C1.  Where does the C2 nerve come out?  It comes out between C2 and C1.   The C3 nerve comes out between C3 and C2, C4 nerve comes out between C4 and C3.  Those nerves are the most common nerves that cause headaches.  The provider needs to know if there is excessive motion at these motion units which would be causing chronic irritation at that level.  50% of migraine headache patients do not have a diagnosis. 

Patients do not feel confident that the doctors going to be able to do anything for them.  As a matter of fact, a majority of people who suffer from migraines can’t find anybody to help them with the migraine.  The first thing that has to be done for a patient that suffers from migraine headaches is you have to get them to understand that you can diagnose the most common cause of their condition and you can do it easily, inexpensively and effectively.

Chiropractors are looking for misalignment, or mal-motion of the vertebral motion unit, which causes nerve interference which is called spinal instability.  If every chiropractor, physical therapist, medical doctor, orthopedist and neurosurgeon was taught how to assess the severity and location of ligament injuries standardly we wouldn’t have 38 million Americans having chronic migraines.  Standard assessment of ligament injuries would utilize stress radiology and accurate intersegmental motion testing.  The most common treatment that is done for misalignment is a spinal adjustment which maybe done by hand or with an instrument.   Adjustments do a couple of things.   Adjustments reduce inflammation and they improve the mechanoreceptors communication with what is called the neuromuscular control unit.   In a ligament there is little pressure receptors.  Anytime there is a change in pressure the receptors immediately communicate across to the muscle system what needs to happen to stabilize the spine at that milli-instant which causes irritation.  That irritation causes the symptom, which today we are talking about migraine and chronic headaches.

Like I said, there are so many patients out there with symptoms that have been treated by doctors who really don’t know how to get to the cause of the problem.  There are 1.2 million medical doctors in the United States and less than 500 are considered medical specialists.   A majority of those 500 medical specialists just prescribe drugs, which with medication overuse is now considered the most common reason why episodic migraines turn chronic. 

To the patients out there, that doesn’t mean when you have a migraine headache that a drug wouldn’t help bring down that pain.  What you really need though is a doctor that can find the cause of the problem.  That is where Smart Injury Doctors really take over the market.  For those of you that don’t understand ligament injuries, there is a Smart Injury Doctor’s program just go to smartinjurydoctor.com to learn more about it.

For more information on Spinal Ligament Injuries please check us out at www.smartinjurydoctor.com or check out our SmartInjuryDoctors® Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Stitcher.

For information on spinal ligament testing by board certified medical radiologists go to www.thespinalkinetics.com