Clinical Corner: Anterior head weighting and Wobble chair proprioceptive training.
December 16th, 2008
As you know (or need to be reminded of) our posture is key to our health and well being. The most common and detrimental postural imbalance is forward head carriage causing (or caused by) a loss in the cervical lordosis or the proper curve in the neck - this is also known as the ARC OF LIFE, remember?! Here in our office we address this through postural adjustments, postural exercises, and traction. Through new research and study, we have decided to add another modality to our protocol - anterior head weighting and wobble chair proprioceptive training.
How does this work?
The nervous system always wants us to hold our heads upright and it has five righting reflexes that continually send the skull and spine positional information. Wearing the weights alters the body’s centers of mass, causing the righting reflexes to send this new sensory information to the nervous system. To balance the body relative to the weights, the nervous system causes some involved spinal muscles to relax and others to contract, thereby correcting 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.
The Five Righting Reflexes
Labyrinthine (inner ear) maintains the head’s orientation in
space (medulla)
Optic (ocular) keeps the head in proper
orientation to its gravitational
environment (occipital cortex)
Neck righting (joints of keeps the body orientated to the
reflex the neck) head (medulla).
Body righting (body surface orientates the body in space
reflex receptors) (medulla).
Body righting reflex #2 keeps the head, oriented to the
body (midbrain).
Head weighting is based on adaptive principals, forcing the body to react in ways that produce a
more optimum posture. The frontal head weight imbalances the skull, which in turn activates the extensor muscles that then cause the front of the skull to rotate upward. The upward rotated
skull causes the optic and labyrinthine righting reflexes as well as the mechanoreceptors and body surface receptors to bring the optic righting reflex in line with the horizon by activating
the cervical flexor muscles.
Patients are fitted with a two, three or four pound anterior head weight. The headband is velcroed securely around the head with the weight over the front of the head. The patient wears this weight while seated on a proprioceptive training chair, The Wobble Chair.™ The chair seat is freely movable on a pivotal axis and allows 20 degrees of pivot off its vertical center, to each point of the compass. The chair allows 360 degrees of rotation. The patient then rocks backward and forward, from side to side and rotates in circular motions while on the chair while looking straight ahead and keeping their head and shoulders relatively still while performing these maneuvers.
Correction of abnormal posture is a major outcome of this protocol, but the Wobble Chair offers another added bonus. Low back pain sufferers can benefit from this also. Many problems in the low back are attributed to degeneration of the discs in our lumbar spine. All of the chemicals and materials of normal spinal discs are present even in pathological and aged spinal discs. But spinal discs don’t have their own blood supply so there has to be another way to pump the nutritious fluids into discs and then squeeze out wastes. While physical activity can create a pumping force, and chiropractic adjusting can definitely mobilize spinal joints, Vert Mooney, M.D., a world-renown researcher and orthopedic surgeon cites “loading and unloading the lumbar discs as the best way to create a pumping force that produces fluid exchange. And that’s exactly what the Wobble Chair does. For a strong, healthy, pain-free back at any age, we prescribe performing loading and unloading exercises with the Wobble Chair twice daily.”
This procedure may also be included on your super bill. If you think your insurance may qualify, stop at the front desk and ask. We can help.
