Spinal & Postural Correction

Pettibon Systems rehabilitation and Disc decompression Therapy Technology

1. The Anatomy of a Healthy Spine and Good Posture

The human spine is an amazing biomechanical masterpiece. It enables us to have movement for fitness and health. How? Our soft tissues (muscles, discs, and ligaments) hold our hard tissues (vertebrae) in their optimal position relative to gravity.

Muscles provide strength. Discs absorb shock, letting the spine twist and bend. Ligaments connect and secure the vertebrae. Vertebrae protect the spinal cord and support the body's weight.

What does good posture look like? From the front, your head, shoulders, hips, and knees are all level. From a side view, we can easily draw a straight line, vertical line from the center mass of your head (that point is one inch in front of your ear), through your shoulder, hip, and knee. You'll also see three natural curves.

When your spine is in proper position and moving the way it's designed to, there's a forward curve in the neck (cervical curve), a backward curve in the upper back (thoracic curve), and a curve in the lower back (lumbar curve).

2. What Goes Wrong

National healthcare statistics claim that 65 million of us suffer from back pain. It's the number two reason for doctor visits after colds and other respiratory infections. What's happening?

First consider this fact: sitting increases spinal stress by 35% compared to standing and 50% compared to lying down. Now think about the lives that we lead: sitting for too many hours in a car commuting, working at a computer, watching TV, or playing video games. Being overweight. Picking up heavy objects incorrectly. Wearing high-heeled or platform shoes. Carrying heavy backpacks. Not exercising regularly. Smoking. Worrying about home, work, and world issues. They all affect our spine.

There is, of course, another obvious and common reason for back pain; physical injury. Regardless of whether our problems are the result of a sports injury in our youth, an accident, or the daily wear and tear of life, when our spines are misaligned and unbalanced (“Subluxated”), our posture loses its natural curves and our front-to-back posture becomes twisted. Muscles spasm, ligaments get stretched and torn, subluxations occur, discs can bulge or herniated (the outer ring weakens and tears, causing the gel-like inner portion to bulge outward, which puts pressure on nearby nerves resulting in pain and dysfunction). When subluxated, we are no longer strong enough to fight the effects of gravity. Our posture compensates and our overall health is compromised.

3. Science Put Into Practice

The Pettibon Weighting System TM

How does The Pettibon System re-align your spine so that it can function optimally in its upright position relative to gravity? With the patented Pettibon Weighting System.

The Pettibon Weighting System consists of specially designed head, shoulder, and hip weights that you wear daily for up to 20 minutes. The amount of weights and their placement depend upon the spinal misalignment that needs to be corrected.

The nervous system always wants us to hold our heads upright and through the “Righting Reflex” the nervous system continually compensates the body parts for optimal head position. Wearing the weights alter the body's centers of mass, causing the righting reflexes to balance the body relative to the weights, the nervous system causes some involved spinal muscles to relax and others to contract, thereby correcting and training the spine and posture relative to gravity. Additionally, the weights force the involved muscles to do isometric exercises. This is needed to restore their strength, endurance, and balance so that the spine is held in alignment after optimum strength has been gained.

Why Isometric Exercises?

Two kinds of muscle fibers make up the musculoskeletal system. One is fast-twitch muscle fiber. The other is slow-twitch muscle fiber. Muscles have both types of fibers but usually one fiber type dominates a muscle group. Our postural muscles have mostly slow-twitch fiber.

In the gym, when we're 'pumping iron' and doing aerobic exercises, we're affecting fast-twitch muscle fiber or phasic muscles. What's happening to our postural muscles? Not much. So exercises to strengthen phasic muscles don't improve posture.

When phasic muscles fatigue and/or when they're injured they go flaccid and collapse. Postural muscles when they're injured or fatigued, on the other hand spasm. And the spasm patterns are usually symmetrical. That's why poor posture distorts our appearance because our spine is no longer balanced from back to front, or side to side.

Isometric exercises, which involve pushing against a force that moves very slowly or doesn't move at all, help eliminate postural muscle spasms as well as rehabilitate their balance, strength, and endurance.

4. Key Components of The Pettibon System

Seated x-rays for diagnosis, testing, assessing progress, and proof of treatment effectiveness

Conventional chiropractic x-ray procedures don't consider spinal soft tissue and spinal muscle and ligament injuries. The Pettibon System X-Ray Procedures do.

That's why you'll be seated when x-rays are taken. As we stated earlier, sitting increases spinal stress by 35% compared to standing and 50% compared to lying down. So in the seated position, weak or injured muscles and ligaments won't be able to hold the vertebrae together, erect, and aligned with gravity.

The misalignments are clearly visible and we can identify, measure, and calculate the amount of muscle and ligament injury and impairment. We'll then compare x-rays of your spine with x-rays of a "normal" spine.

Additionally, The Pettibon System's testing and x-ray procedures enable us to:
• Determine if your spine will respond and correct under care.
• Prescribe appropriate treatment plans and assess progress.
• Prove that our clinical care corrected your spine and posture.

You're going to be actively participating in your rehabilitation care - both at the clinic and at home!

When you come to the clinic, you won't sit passively waiting to be seen. You'll begin your visit by taking some in-house supplementation designed for soft tissue repair and natural ant-inflammation, begin doing warm-up exercises and stretching your muscles, ligaments, and discs using the Wobble Chair TM and the Repetitive Cervical Traction TM.

With the Pettibon System, strengthening postural muscles and building endurance is an ongoing process. To accomplish the goal, you'll use the rehabilitation equipment in the clinic and twice daily at home as well as specific posture training sessions that will be taught to you.

Home rehabilitation care is critical to your correction. Be forewarned: Your compliance is mandatory! You'll get training and instructional aids and lots of enthusiastic encouragement and support from our staff and your fellow patients.

6. Three Distinct Phases of Care

Phase I - Acute ("Crisis") Care

Acute care lasts from 1 visit to 21 days. For this phase of care, we focus on pain relief, helping your body relax and getting your spine in balance. You're going to receive training on your home care equipment and procedures once feeling better.

Phase II - Rehabilitation and Correction

The goal of this phase of care is for you to achieve permanent spine correction. This requires a minimum of three rehabilitation sessions per week in the clinic for at least 6 weeks. You'll be introduced to the routine of a clinic visit: supplementation, performing warm-up exercises and stretching, begin using our decompression/traction table, receiving functional and neurologically corrective adjustments, and wearing your weights.

You'll also continue doing your home care exercises two times a day. You stay in rehabilitation until your correction goals are achieved, which could be up to 90 days, while others may take longer, especially if they have torn spinal ligaments.

Phase III - Strengthen & Stabilizing Care

Here's where we make sure you maintain and enhance your spine and posture correction, muscle strength, and endurance. Once a week for a year, you'll come to the clinic to do a full workout and receive a brief functional, neurological, and postural exam. If the exam indicates the need, you'll get an adjustment and then wear your prescribed Pettibon System Weights.

7. “Wellness Care”: A Healthy Spine for LIfe!

What happens after you've corrected your spine and posture? Like brushing your teeth, you'll make the home care exercises a part of your regular health regimen (doing a light version of the rehab protocols 3 times a week) and get adjusted about once to twice a month. Schedule yearly check-ups and see us for emergencies or other changes that affect the health of your spine.