Unlocking the Secrets of Upper Cervical Chiropractic

Hi everybody, I'm Dr. Sanda Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way.

Welcome everyone to another episode on the Holistic Dentistry Podcast. I'm super excited today to talk about cervical chiropractic. And a lot of you might not be familiar with this because I wasn't. Actually recently found out about this because of my own personal challenges. And a lot of the things that I've learned in my career is things that I personally had a challenge with or a patient of mine had a challenge with and we came up with a solution. And with me today, I have Dr. Jarden Webb from Upper Cervical Chiropractic.

Yeah. Hi.

And welcome. So nice to have you here.

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Dr. Sanda Moldovanova.

Yes. And you, you just went to chiropractic school, basically.

Yeah.

And how did you decide to just focus on the upper cervical? And maybe let's just step it back and say, what exactly is upper cervical chiropractic?

So upper cervical chiropractic is a specialty within chiropractic where we focus specifically on the top 2 bones in the neck, C1 and C2. We see this as being like the root cause of dysfunction throughout the body, and the things happening further down the spine are compensation to this issue. And I kind of decided to get into it throughout chiropractic school because I was constantly getting adjusted and I might feel better like for a day or two after an adjustment, but revert back to how I felt before. And I was noticing—

What was your issue? Like when you were getting adjusted, like which part of your body was constantly out of alignment?

It was mainly low back pain, a lot of low back pain, mid back pain, which is very common in students because we're always hunched over studying in terrible posture, right? Yeah, I struggled with a lot of that. And during chiropractic school, like, of course it's nice, like, we're in chiropractic school. So every time we feel like the slightest ounce of discomfort, somebody can jump on and be like, oh, your mid back is stiff. Let me, let me adjust that real quick.

And yeah, that's why going to school.

Yeah. So that would help me for like a day or two, but then all of a sudden my back is stiff again and then somebody else would adjust it again. It seemed like everything constantly was the same. It wasn't actually getting better. I learned about upper cervical.

Jarden is like, a lot of dentists have this issue. And we actually have a lot of dentists and hygienists that are listening to this conversation, probably saying, lower back is always tight. And I have the same issue. Constantly my lower back gets adjusted, but I have to go to the chiropractor over and over again.

Right?

Yeah. A lot of people I'm sure can relate to what you are going through.

Definitely. Yeah. And upper cervical kind of has a different approach to this problem. We see this as being—

C1, C2. What are the names of those? C1, C2? They have names. Yeah.

So C1 is also called Atlas. It's named after the Greek mythology figure, the dude who holds up the world on his shoulders because Atlas holds up your world, which is your brain. And then C2 is called—

Yeah. That's an important part.

Yeah. C2 is called axis because Atlas rotates on an axis.

Interesting. Okay. And that's C1, Atlas. So what's C2? Is that called something? Does that have a name as well?

Yeah. C2 is called Axis because they sound very similar, like Atlas and Axis.

Okay. Very good. And do you find that most people experience like a misalignment in C1, C2? Oh yeah.

Honestly, most people do have a misalignment there. These joints are different. They're unique to the rest of the spine because they don't lock. So our joints lower in our spine, in our low back and mid back, lock to prevent excessive motion and injury. Up here, they do not lock. And that's because we need to be able to move our head in all sorts of directions. Our special senses are up here. We need to be able to turn around and make sure we're not being chased by a bear. So it makes sense. But because they are so movable, they're the most prone to injury. So any sort of jolt to the body, it doesn't even need to be the head and neck, can cause a misalignment up in that area.

So, okay. So let's say they do get misaligned. Don't they, like when we sleep, restore themselves automatically?

Not always. They can't. Your body can only adapt so much. So yeah, we don't typically see it be able to restore itself. It often needs to be adjusted.

Okay. And you know, neck, like, so what is the philosophy with the upper cervical chiropractic? Like, uh, If you adjust C1, C2, does the rest of the body just fall into place or your hip just aligns itself or what happens?

Yeah, so I'll explain real quick. So if you have a misalignment up here in the upper neck, your body's going to kind of tilt the weight of the head away from it because our heads are heavy. It's like a 10-pound bowling ball. So we're going to tilt. If you walk around people watching, you'll see a lot of people have like a head tilt. And that's an indication that something is going on up here. And when our head tilts, our eyes are no longer level with the horizon. We can't really walk around like that. So we do something like this where one shoulder is higher than the other and we get some neck pain, shoulder pain. We still don't feel level. It feels like we're falling over to the left. So our body's going to try to push us to the right. Then we get that mid-back pain, scoliosis, that curvature in the mid-back is even likely due to this scenario. And then we still don't feel quite level. So we're going to raise one hip and we get some low back pain, hip pain, knee pain, and foot pain. One leg will even look shorter than the other, not because you're born with a short leg, but because of all the muscles compensating, all because the head's not on straight.

Yeah, I mean, I see that a lot. Like if you actually walk behind people, right? Like one shoulder's higher than the other.

Oh yeah, the postural differences. Most people are walking around like that. It's very rare to see somebody who walks around with like perfect posture. Yeah.

So how did you come about to learn about upper cervical chiropractic? Was it in school? Is that something that is being taught?

Yeah, it is. At my school, I went to a school called Life Chiropractic College West. And in the beginning, like courses, we had a history course and they kind of went through different chiropractic techniques and upper cervical was introduced at this time. And they kind of explained that this is a technique. They only focus on the top 2 bones in the neck. And originally I was like, that doesn't make sense. Why would you do that? Then they start to explain a little bit more about the philosophy and how like everything else is a compensation for that. And I was like, okay, it's starting to make a little more sense, but I don't think that's for me. I'm not going to do it. But later in school, about halfway through, there's an introductory class in actually doing the technique where you learn in detail what it is and how it works. And that's where I was like, okay, this makes sense and I'm definitely going to do it.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

But within the upper cervical, from what I understand, there's different methodologies, right? Blair is just one of them. You practice Blair upper cervical, but I understand there's others.

Yeah. Yeah. So there is several others. I want to say there's around 12. There might be more or less than that, but that sounds about right to me. But they kind of, they have the same philosophy, the same kind of way of looking at things. They may differ a bit in their analysis, how they come up with what the problem is, and also the adjustment itself. So you might see videos, like there's a popular one, it's called Atlas Orthogonal, and that has like a big machine that has like something that almost looks like a needle that pokes right here behind the ear. So that's an example of that. And they kind of differ. The Blair technique kind of focuses on asymmetries. We see a lot of asymmetries within the body. Like no two people look exactly the same on the inside. So we take a look, we actually do 3D imaging. So we do CBCT, which is dental imaging, and we're able to see the specifics of the individual and how they misalign. And we adjust based off of that where other techniques may kind of go for perfect symmetry, 90-degree angles. We see it's not always like that.

Right, because a lot of us are born asymmetrical. Like, even if you look at the, you know, like half the face and the other half of the face, we're not symmetrical. So it makes sense that sometimes the vertebrae are not symmetrical themselves.

Yeah, it definitely does make sense. Yeah, I'll show you real quick too. Like my atlas, here's a model right here, but my atlas from like here to here is just missing. It's not there. If somebody— yeah, so if somebody tries to adjust me like normal, like I may not react.

Interesting. Is that a common thing not to have like a— like to actually have a missing piece of the atlas, like a missing part of the bone?

It's not super common, but it's not super uncommon either. So it can happen. Like you could be born with it, it could be congenital, or it could be trauma like really early when your growth plate is still open. But either way, like the cartilage kind of forms around it and kind of stabilizes it. So it doesn't affect me.

Oh, okay. Well, that's good. You know, the body always has a way. It's amazing to kind of adapt to the situation.

Definitely. We call that like innate intelligence. So when you fall and break a bone, it's not the cast that gets you better. It's your body, right?

Of course. Yeah. We all have that innate intelligence. So true. One of the things I really liked in, you know, working with you and your clinic is that you take CT scans, because at our office, as you know, we take CT scans pretty much. It's our standard of care for every patient that comes in.

Yeah.

But, you know, as dentists, we are not really trained to look and analyze the vertebra at all. So even now, since I started working with you, I've actually been looking and I'm seeing the spacing is different from one side to another.

Definitely.

Yeah.

You can see it's like, oh, this person is misaligned.

Yeah, because when we take dental CT scans, we can actually see part of the vertebra. And depends on the field of view, you know, we can have a smaller field of view if we want to conserve, let's say, you know, X-ray radiation. But a lot of my patients, you know, that have— they come in for TMJ issues, I actually prefer to take a larger field of view so I can visualize the TMJ here, the joint. But also now, as I've learned, is I can visualize the C1-C2 area. So to see if there's actually a misalignment there. And sure enough, I think for every TMJ patient that I looked at, there's a misalignment in the C1-C2 area.

Yeah, that would make sense. There's a very close relationship between the jaw and C1-C2 specifically, because when we have that head tilt, it kind of changes the way that the jaw tracks when it opens and closes. That's going to put uneven wear and tear on that TMJ joint itself.

Exactly. And what happens is, unfortunately, most dentists— let's make you a night guard, you have TMJ issues, let's make you a night guard— but without actual aligning the spine and aligning the head. And this is something that I actually learned from a traditional chiropractor. Align first the cranial bones, but he doesn't just work with C1-C2. Align everything and then you fit the night guard, which makes absolute sense.

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, because if the guard is fitted to you when you're not aligned, then it's not— it can only do so much for you, you know.

And what's worse, for some people, actually, it makes them feel even worse.

Yeah. That would make sense. Yeah.

So do you— so I love that you take CT scans when people come in. Do you ever find, find it necessary to take CT scans later on during the treatment, or it's just the one time when they first come in?

Typically, it's the one time when— the first time when they come in. But obviously, if they're in some sort of big trauma, like a car accident or something like that, we will do a rescan to see if their alignment has change it in any way.

So let's say some, like, people are misaligned in C1-C2. What kind of problems can be caused by misalignment in the cervical spine?

Yeah, so actually a lot of problems. Yeah, TMJ, like, there's a common misconception that because we're only treating the upper neck, oh, you treat neck pain. But it's not always like that because there's a big neurological significance. Of the upper neck because C1 and C2 surround the brainstem actually. And that's very neurologically significant because that's where our autonomic nervous system lives. So all the things our body does that we don't have to think about, like breathing, heart rate, digestion, sleep, mood, so much more, is all controlled right in that area. Then also all the nerves that go to our head, eyes, ears, even the ones that go to our low back, feet, and toes. Travel through those locations to get to its destination. So we see a lot of dysfunction throughout the body. Like, we tend to see a lot of migraine patients, headache patients, because we're altering blood flow to the brain if we have a misalignment up there. We also see a lot of, like, trigeminal neuralgia, occipital neuralgia, nerve pain, like, traveling down the arms, fullness in the ear, tinnitus, ringing in the ear. Like all sorts of issues, brain fog, fatigue, long COVID. That's a big one these days. A lot of people are struggling with long COVID symptoms and we often see that. Yeah.

Do you see by aligning C1, C2 that they're able to recover faster or maybe—

Oh, definitely. Yeah. Because if you're misaligned, you're going to be stressing the nervous system. Your body wants to heal naturally. It wants to do well. So if we remove that interference, then the body can do what it needs to do.

Mm-hmm. You also mentioned tinnitus, which actually I have quite a few patients that suffer from that, especially people that are grinding and clenching, but some people just develop tinnitus in one ear versus the other. So what have you seen good results in aligning C1, C2 and getting rid of tinnitus?

We have, we have seen good results with tinnitus, but it is a trickier one. We say some of the time it's only like it will improve. Some of the time it doesn't get much better. And that's because there's a couple things that go into it. We can have nerve irritation, and nerve irritation is something that we work on. So when we put you back to alignment, we're going to remove the irritation on the nerve. And a lot of the times that takes care of the tinnitus. But there could be a structural issue in the ear and other things going on that if you're in alignment, sure, might help. But if you have structural damage to the ear, then it might not as well. Makes sense.

So I actually had a personal experience in, in your clinic that I want to share with everybody listening. I started developing on the left side what felt like trigeminal neuralgia. Basically, I would get these headaches in the afternoon only on the left side of my head, and it would be like this pulsation, and it would go into my eye. I remember like right above my eyebrow here, like I would touch it and be super tender. It was only on the left-hand side. So, um, and then, you know, I came to your clinic and, um, we started aligning things and actually haven't gotten one of those headaches since. So I'm super excited about that because it was really, you know, to have to suffer from trigeminal neuralgia or any kind of migraine for that matter, uh, it's debilitating. Like, you know, obviously I have to be working, treating patients, be at my best. I don't have time to to have a headache, you know?

Yeah.

And I didn't want to go to like a migraine doctor because what do they do? I mean, what's a common treatment for migraine usually?

I mean, medication usually.

Exactly. I'm like, I know, I don't want to go and be prescribed a migraine medication.

That's just going to mask the symptom. It's not actually treating the root cause of what's causing the migraine. Yeah.

Or like I heard there's like nerve blocks that they can do, but again, You're blocking a nerve that's being impinged upon. Is that really a good thing to do?

Yeah, not necessarily.

Exactly. The body's in alignment and the nerves actually have room to function properly, that there's no real reason to block a nerve.

Exactly.

Because the body, yeah, it'll repair itself. So, and you know, another thing that I wanted to share is like, I had different chiropractors work on me over the years. You know, a lot of people have asked me, you know, are the movements sudden? You know, oh my God, I can't stand chiropractor because I feel like they're breaking my neck, you know, with that twisting movement. But like whenever I've been to see you, you've never done that. Like it's always been a different type of adjustment and I actually found it very comfortable. Didn't hear all these cracking noises that you normally do with that head turn type of movement, which everybody hates.

Yeah, ironically, there's some patients that really like that. Some of my classmates in school, we would call them crack addicts because they just love the sound of that crack. But I was never like that personally. But yeah, our adjustments are very gentle. Like there's no snap, crackle, pop. We're not like twisting you in any excessive range of motion or anything. We have the patient, you're laying on your side pretty much like you're sleeping on your side and your head's on a drop headpiece. So pretty much all you notice is the headpiece comes up, we push gently behind the ear and then the headpiece drops and that's pretty much it. Yeah. It feels like a flick. Most people think that nothing happened. They're like, did you even do anything? But then they start seeing the changes and they're like, okay, I guess you definitely did do something.

Yeah, I was certainly having some crazy, like, other symptoms, you know, probably related also to this misalignment. I was having some tingling by my scapula, which actually has diminished quite a bit since then. I was having this heaviness, actually almost like a little nerve pain in my left leg. I mean, Interesting. But it makes sense that if, you know, you get pressure in the spinal cord and the neck area, that other things in that circuit are going to start to malfunction.

Definitely. Yeah. We're all connected, which is something people don't think about too often, but we're all one big cohesive unit. So if something's off, then you're going to feel it. It may not necessarily be where the pain is. Where the problem is.

So, like for me, when I actually had this misalignment in my C1, C2, I could actually feel it because when I turned my head one way versus the other, like it felt different. In one way I could only, so I knew I had a misalignment. But, you know, some people might not feel that. So like, what are some signs that, you know, people at home like listening to this, or maybe they're in their car like thinking, oh my God, am I misaligned? Like, is there some kind of test that they could do or some way to figure out that they are, or they have to come to you?

Yeah, well, like I mentioned, the kind of head tilt, the postural differences are a big indication. So if you're walking around, if you look at old photos of yourself and you notice, hey, my head's always tilting slightly to the right, that's a big indication right there. But also if you're struggling with any of the symptoms that I mentioned, like your nervous system is not reacting like it should, you're not healing like you should, that's also an indication that you are misaligned.

How many of your patients with misalignment actually have anxiety? Because that's a big one out there.

A lot of them do. And actually, I know myself included, now that I'm starting to get adjusted and I'm feeling better, I notice when I have an increase, a spike of anxiety, then I'm out of alignment. So there's a big connection right there.

So isn't that interesting? You know, for all the people in Los Angeles, especially that are on Xanax, right? Because I wonder how many of them would feel better just by getting an adjustment. CrossFit.

So many. Yeah.

Right. I, we don't have really data on this, but it would be because I think it's not something that regular physicians look at. I mean, is that something that's—

No, no, no.

It's not. What about like functional medicine or holistic medicine? Are they even taught to this in any kind of like, let's say naturopathic school or are they taught this or not really?

I don't think so. Yeah. I wouldn't imagine they are.

I mean, I ran across, I have to tell you so many different practitioners of different kinds. And it wasn't until recently that I learned about upper cervical chiropractic method. It was really fascinating for me.

Yeah, not many people know about it. So yeah, it's important that we get the word out there.

So what is the treatment like? So not, not the daily office. Is this like a sequence of treatment or like how often does somebody, let's say they do have a misalignment, how long does it take for you to correct that misalignment? I'm assuming it's not just one visit, one and done.

Yeah. So our end goal is to have the person be able to hold their adjustment and not need us to continue to adjust them. And depending on the person, it can take a different amount of time. We usually in our office see it takes about 3 months for the spine to start to stabilize and hold the adjustment better. So first month we check people like 2 times a week, month after that 1 time a week, then the month after that once every other week. So it kind of tapers down. And we see that around this time, like 14-visit mark, that's when people start to hold their alignment better.

So why would somebody not hold their alignment initially?

Initially, your body's so used to things being a certain way, it's naturally going to want to revert back to its old ways. Like, we're talking years. Most people are misaligned for years and years. Something people don't often think about is the birth process and how traumatic that is on the neck. So babies are pulled out by their head and neck, right? So it's very common for them to be misaligned. And these are the babies that are colicky, they have chronic ear infections, they don't sleep well, they don't poop well, all this. So these misalignments can happen from a very young age.

Do you treat infants that are that small?

Yeah, we do treat. The adjustment definitely looks a lot different. It's just kind of, you kind of press gently in the area, probably like the same pressure you would use to like check an avocado. So very gentle adjustment.

Oh, very nice. Yeah. I think, you know, if all the babies would get adjusted automatically, you know, right after birth, we'd have a whole different world, right? It would look completely different out there.

Oh yeah. Way— it's way easier to fix young kids than treat broken adults.

They probably hold their adjustments a lot better. Oh, they do.

Yeah. 100%. They do.

As I remember for me, when you first adjusted me, the left side of my neck was quite sore. The muscles were so tight. It's like almost they didn't want to be in that position.

Oh yeah, definitely. That's pretty common because we are changing the fulcrum of the head. A lot of soreness can happen because the muscle they're trying to react to, it's new normal and it's not going to be happy in the beginning. So we do see that quite often.

Yeah, but it was very interesting. I think it, yeah, it just took maybe like a week or two, uh, you know, especially after the initial few treatments, um, you know, for my muscles to get in line and like hot compresses and like a hot pack really helped too.

Oh, definitely.

To relax them.

Yeah. So it takes a little time for the body to figure out exactly what's going on because we are changing things up, but you'll get there.

Yeah, so true. What about supplements? Do you use supplements in your practice or do you recommend supplements?

No, we don't really use supplements in our practice, but definitely I know I personally use supplements, so it is a very important key to health for sure.

Okay. Um, any other like words of wisdom that you want to leave people that are listening? I know, you know, you're generously offering, I think, more than 50% off. A cone beam scan and a consultation and exam. Tell us where you're located.

We are located in LA. We're in Koreatown, actually.

So yeah, not far. So if you're in the LA area, definitely highly recommend that you go see Dr. Webb and Dr. Cecilia Park. You both work together over there.

Yeah, we do.

Yeah. Especially if you suffer from any of the symptoms that I mentioned earlier.

Mm-hmm.

So nice to have you with us. I'm super excited that you're practicing first cervical, a type of chiropractic care because it's, it's a gentle— I find it so much gentler of a technique than your regular chiropractic. And I feel like it's such an underdiagnosed issue.

Yes, it definitely is.

Yeah, it'd be so nice to get it out there in the world. And that's the point of this podcast is to let people know about things that are possible that they may not be aware of.

Yeah, well, thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

My pleasure. It was so nice talking to you. And for everyone listening, we're gonna put the information in the show notes below. And if you have a comment, go to my Instagram and send me a message, or you can follow us on YouTube where we post some of our episodes. See you all next time.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram @DrSandaMoldovan. This is Dr. Sanda Moldovan, and remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health, so take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.