Chronic pain, clinically speaking, occurs when you have been suffering from a particular ailment causing pain or discomfort for more than 90 days.

If you’re in chronic pain or have been suffering from a debilitating ailment that hinders your everyday life you may have heard “it’s all in your head” before. If you have you probably know how frustrating and distressing it can be when your integrity in effect is being questioned. You even start to doubt yourself and often ask yourself, “am I just imagining it?”

The truth is often somewhere in the middle. Feelings of anxiety and heightened emotion certainly will not help you in overcoming your chronic pain ailments. However, that does not mean that there is nothing there to be concerned about.

We are gaining more understanding now how your physical state can affect your emotional state of mind. Not being able to find a solution for and treating chronic pain issues can be very distressing. I myself know first-hand how true that statement is. Please feel free to read my story to learn more.

There are many forms of therapy out there to tackle various issues of chronic pain but they all seem to overlook the fundamental issue, in particular the one that is within your skull. No, we’re not referring to the brain/mind but rather an unusual bone called the sphenoid.

Your head is made up of several different shaped and sized bones that come together to form the skull. The weird butterfly looking one in the picture is called the sphenoid.

Your skull is there to primarily protect the brain, which it does very well. Mechanisms are in place to help it absorb the punishment life throws at it. Whether it is a bump, scrape or fall it can handle it within reason of course.

Unfortunately, these traumatic incidences (bumps, falls, scrapes) cause the bones in the skull to move around. The majority of the time most of them can be returned back to the correct position by the body. However, the sphenoid cannot self-correct. It needs to be corrected by outside intervention.

When the sphenoid is out of place it causes excessive tension and torque on various nerves, muscles tend to spasm to try and pull things back in place and it is this combination of tension and spasms you feel as pain. Left unchecked these can potentially develop into chronic pain.

It doesn’t just end in your head however. Remember, the head is connected to the rest of the body, meaning any issues there will trickle down to the rest of the body. Misalignments with the sphenoid may cause you to start tilting or dropping your head, resulting in excessive tension in your neck and back and lastly in the legs and feet. In other words, it is a negative domino effect. The misalignment(s) may only be fractions of millimetres but it is enough to cause crookedness in your frame.

The way to correct this is through a method called ‘Endo-Nasal Cranial Correction’ (ECC). The process involves inserting a small balloon up through the nasal cavities to manipulate the position of the sphenoid so we can get it back to neutral.

How we differ from other health practitioners in using this technique is that we target only the cavities or conchas that NEED doing. This makes our use of the technique more precise and effective. Others use a more scatter gun approach and do all six cavities. This could be uncomfortable and even mechanically adverse. Dizziness, nausea and blurry vision are some of the adverse symptoms.

ECC treatment completes the ABC™ protocol. Without it you will not get the most complete and effective recovery. Speak to your certified ABC™ Practitioner for more information or please see videos below, courtesy of KenHub and our friend and colleague, Dr. Jeff Aberle.