When we first set up Mind & Body Chiropractic, the name was inspired by a real sense of purpose: we would treat the mental side of health and wellbeing as much as the physical. Back then, many people shied away from the idea of needing help mentally – as if it was an admission of being crazy! So there was a stigma attached to admitting you might need help in those areas.

Now, our world has changed dramatically. There is a much wider acceptance that many people suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia – all symptoms of a mental imbalance. We have also come to understand more about how these negative mental and emotional states impact our physical wellbeing.

So now, as a natural extension of our original philosophy, we are introducing the practice of meditation into the clinic. We want to encourage patients to learn these techniques while with us. We also have these amazing massage chairs that we use to help patients relax to gain the maximum benefit from the treatments. It’s a great way to introduce you to the healing potential of simple meditation. Heal the mind, and the body will follow.

Dr Andrew Fell
Chiropractor

At the youngish age of 52, I was happily working full-time hours, my clinic schedule was fully-booked and patients were responding well. I was enjoying a very successful period in my professional life and was on the crest of my career wave.

There was a downside. My busy clinic made it seem like there was never enough time to do the other important things outside of the practice. I justified that I could live with that as it was only for the short term (this year) and the greater good was being served. Little did I know, the adverse health effects of this unfortunate balancing act could be catastrophic.

The previous eighteen months had been busy challenging and very stressful. While maintaining my daily practice as a chiropractor, our team had opened a beautiful new clinic at Surfers Paradise. Chiropractor Dr Alex had settled in nicely at the Surfers clinic. In October 2016 we then moved our Worongary Clinic to Mudgeeraba. This was a necessary business decision that required another six months of planning, focus and effort. When I added the ‘normal’ stresses and strains of keeping up with a young family, trying to stay fit and balancing the cheque book, every moment of every day seemed to be accounted for. There was little time to think and there was no time for me.

All of this activity distracted me from what should have been of paramount importance; I didn’t notice my body was screaming out loudly… Physician Heal Thyself.

Six weeks before I was hospitalised, I was stricken by a severe infection that left me coughing and very unwell. I felt chest tightness, breathless, feverish and fatigued. I blamed this on the flu and waited for my body to improve. I waited and waited, but something was wrong this time. I wasn’t getting better. In fact, my symptoms were worsening day by day.

I kept my family and work commitments up as best I could, but my health continued to decline. My job finally ground to a halt at 6 pm on 8^th Augusts 2017. As the last patient left, I stood drained, weak and gasped for air. I had hardly slept in a week and was feeling worryingly unwell. Like nothing, I had experienced before. I was glad that I had booked an appointment with my doctor first thing in the morning. He would soon get me over this persistent ‘chest infection’ or whatever it was.

The cheery disposition of my doctor didn’t last very long. A chest examination and ECG quickly revealed my heart was madly over pumping and my pulse and blood pressure were sky high. An hour later I was admitted to Robina Hospital Emergency Department and soon was transferred by ambulance to Gold Coast University Hospital. A raft of blood tests, echocardiogram, angiogram and ultrasound, revealed my heart was working crazily fast and hard but only producing about 12% of its typical pumping requirement. The cardiologist diagnosed Heart Failure caused by dilated cardiomyopathy – a serious life threatening illness likely caused by a virus some weeks ago when my immune system was over stressed and overwhelmed.

My downward health spiral played-out like a horror movie in my mind. I had become a victim of the self-neglect that I counsel my patients to avoid every single day. How easy it is to think about the goal and forget the journey. To ignore advice, even when it is coming from concerned family and friends that can see things going wrong. How dumb to not pay attention to your most precious asset, your own body! I spent the rest of my hospital time in deep contemplation hoping my heart would begin to heal, getting my priorities in order again and rededicating myself to live again by the axiom Physician Heal Thyself.

It has been 2 weeks since being discharged from the hospital, and I am feeling a little better each day. My health regimen consists of heart medication, continual medical monitoring, low-salt diet, prescribed exercise, adequate rest, deeper sleep, daily stress management and an excellent chiropractor. It may take some time to return to work, but I will be back at Mind & Body Chiropractic as soon as possible with a better attitude and a sustainable, sensible balancing act between my work life as a chiropractor and my personal life as a husband, dad and grandfather.

Finally, thank you so much for the very kind well wishes, get well cards and messages of encouragement and hope. Thank you, thank you, thank you! They are so very appreciated. I look forward to seeing you all back at the clinic in the soonest possible time.

Dr Andrew Fell
Chiropractor
Mind & Body Chiropractic

Standard stress management is a reactive process to the problem. When the ancient stress (fight or flight) response  kicks in, the body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. It can take over 12 hours to clear the body of these chemicals. Once the stress response has happened, people have various ways of recovering such as jogging, watching TV, meditating or self-medicating. These have varied levels of success.

We instead have the latest cutting edge computer technology to help you tackle stress and its effects. It’s called Heartmath and it brings a very affordable, new approach to managing and preventing stress. HeartMath gives us the means to measure your heart rate variability. So it’s a scientific way to identify stress levels. Your HeartMath Coach, will teach you a range of stress management techniques to pre-empt or turn off the stress response, it’s a simple, effective way to beat stress before it gets to you.

HeartMath works by identifying the stressor in the moment and not allowing the body to go into the stressed state. It works like a magic shield that protects you from the stressful events we all face. Essentially, it’s a way to stop the stress before it starts. HeartMath is safe, non-confronting and fun to learn.

The Initial Consultation to evaluate your stress levels, stress triggers and learn the first powerful HeartMath technique is free. So you have nothing to lose except the serious damage caused by relentless stress!!!!

It’s a natural assumption to think such headaches are the result of being too tense. Recent research suggests that it is not quite as straightforward as that. Frequently, the source of the pain is what we call ‘muscular hyper-tonicity’ or tight muscles. But it is now being recognized that the mechanism causing tension headaches is more complicated.

The human body is an incredibly complex and sophisticated system. This is why the Mind & Body approach is a holistic one that takes into account the big picture as well as the specific details of the condition we’re treating. All too often, the root cause of what we call tension headaches is stress. As our lifestyle becomes more and more hectic and the pressures to compete and succeed build up on us, our basic wellbeing becomes threatened. The relationship between mind and body is complicated and fragile. When it’s out of balance, all sorts of problems can arise, including headaches.

Image courtesy of healthyfoodleader.com

When a patient comes to us with such headaches, we look at a number of elements in the equation. Through examination and conversation, we can arrive at a pretty clear picture of the causes behind the symptoms. With tension headaches, there is often an emotional dimension that has to be addressed with these patients. We often discover they’re not sleeping well, not eating right and leading the typically modern unhealthy lifestyle. This may be compounded by emotional problems at home or stressful situations in the workplace. The good news is that ‘tension’ headaches can be relieved by a holistic treatment that will involve emotional management, stress reduction, improved diet and other lifestyle changes.

Chiropractic is, by definition, a hands-on treatment. So we give more than just good advice. We can do adjustments that will alleviate the pain by reducing the pressure on the muscles and irritation to the nerves in the upper part of the neck.

We are so confident of our abilities to relieve tension headaches, we offer an unconditional money back guarantee. So if anyone out there is needlessly suffering, you can say goodbye to your headaches by saying hello to us. Just contact our Gold Coast clinic and we’ll make an appointment.

This is like chopping the tops off the weeds in your garden instead of digging them out by the roots. You may get temporary relief but those weeds will be back with a vengeance.

The first thing to say about the chiropractic approach is that it is extremely safe. Having seen many patients who suffer from all kinds of headaches, I can readily identify the kind of headache from which you are suffering. Most of them stem from what we call mechanical causes. It may be the nerves and muscles around the neck or around the skull are damaged or under stress. It may be trigger points that suddenly turn on the pain. It may be muscular contractions. A very small percentage – less than 1 % – will indicate a serious condition and you will be referred to the appropriate medical specialist.

In the chiropractic culture, we identify the causes of pain and treat them. This is a very different approach to the symptomatic reaction that has you reaching for the painkillers. By identifying the cause of the problem we can make it go away. The majority of headaches fall into three different categories:

1. Cervicogenic is literally a pain in the neck, a condition that is caused by muscle injuries in the neck,

2. Myofascial headaches stem from contracted knots around the skull and, finally, what we call

3. Tension headaches come from stress and/or misalignment of the neck and the spine

So the first thing we will do is discover the source of the pain and thereby identify the type of headache.

Some of these headaches may be the result of a trauma such as whiplash from a car accident or a sport injury. They may be “repetitive strain injuries” brought on by sitting in front of a computer all day or talking on the phone a lot, resulting in poor posture. A lot of the people we see have been everywhere and tried everything and just haven’t been able to get their headaches sorted.

It is precisely in this area that the chiropractic approach can achieve almost miraculous results. Treatment may include adjustments to normalize the function of your spine, advice on lifestyle and nutritional changes to help prevent further recurrences. So pay us a visit and say goodbye to headaches!

Now, I’d like to focus on another very common and often misunderstood type of headache that is caused by ‘myofascial trigger points.’

Identify and Treatment of Trigger Point Headaches

The reason it’s so important to identify and treat the trigger point headaches is that they contribute to the formation of migraine headaches, ‘tension’ headaches, ‘cervicogenic’ headaches and contribute to a condition called fibromyalgia. Trigger points are knots of contraction, taut bands of fibre that are found in muscles round the head, the neck and the jaw area. They can be felt as little lumps in the muscle tissue that you can identify. When you push on them they are tender to palpation and pressure and this pressure will re-create the headache the patient is presenting.

How a Chiropractor Treats Headaches

The way the treatment works is by sedating the trigger point which involves finding the area and applying pressure to that area. In essence, we are locating the knot and by applying pressure to it, the knot will dissolve. What happens is: you hold the point that re-creates the headache and after 20 to 60 seconds of pressure, the headache will dissipate and, in many cases, it won’t come back.

There can be multiple trigger points so you have to check various different areas to make sure there’s nothing else on the line. The patient might have several different trigger points in different muscles. So we usually start by treating the most severe. Another form of treatment is stretching or massaging the muscle where the trigger point is located.

Where are These Trigger Points Found?

The subtle nature of myofascial trigger points is that they sit quietly in the muscles around the skull, the back of the neck, in the face and the jaw and then suddenly activate themselves. For no good reason, they turn on and off. These are the areas where we can achieve almost miraculous results. People who have suffered from debilitating headaches for years, can walk away pain-free.

This is why it’s so important to identify and treat the ‘myofascial’ condition as the intensity and the frequency of such headaches can rob people of vitality and make a profound impact on the quality of their lives.

Diagnosis and Treatment

After the appropriate physical examination I will be able to diagnose your problem and tell you why you are having these headaches. A treatment program will be recommended or you may be referred for further investigations if deemed necessary.

Management of your headaches may include gentle chiropractic adjustments (no drugs or surgery) to normalise the function of your spine, advice on lifestyle and nutritional changes to help prevent further recurrences and advice on how you can further deal with the problem.

Arrange for a FREE consultation

Arrange for a FREE consultation today and let us help alleviate your headaches that are caused by myofascial trigger points.