Labelle Chiropractic Clinic

March 16, 2007 — A special chiropractic adjustment can significantly lower
high blood pressure, a placebo-controlled study
suggests.

“This procedure has the effect of not one, but two blood-pressure
medications given in combination,” study leader George Bakris, MD, tells
WebMD. “And it seems to be adverse-event free. We saw no side effects and
no problems,” adds Bakris, director of the University of Chicago hypertension center.

Eight weeks after undergoing the procedure, 25 patients with early-stage
high blood pressure had significantly lower blood pressure than 25 similar
patients who underwent a sham chiropractic adjustment. Because patients can’t
feel the technique, they were unable to tell which group they were in.

X-rays showed that the procedure realigned the Atlas vertebra — the
doughnut-like bone at the very top of the spine — with the spine in the
treated patients, but not in the sham-treated patients.

Compared to the sham-treated patients, those who got the real procedure saw
an average 14 mm Hg greater drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number in
a blood pressure count), and an average 8 mm Hg greater drop in diastolic blood
pressure (the bottom blood pressure number).

None of the patients took blood pressure medicine during the eight-week
study.

“When the statistician brought me the data, I actually didn’t believe
it. It was way too good to be true,” Bakris says. “The statistician
said, ‘I don’t even believe it.’ But we checked for everything, and there it
was.”

Bakris and colleagues report their findings in the advance online issue of
the Journal of Human Hypertension.

Atlas Adjustment and Hypertension

The procedure calls for adjustment of the C-1 vertebra. It’s called the
Atlas vertebra because it holds up the head, just as the titan Atlas holds up
the world in Greek mythology.

Marshall Dickholtz Sr., DC, of the Chiropractic Health Center, in Chicago,
is the 84-year-old chiropractor who performed all the procedures in the study.
He calls the Atlas vertebra “the fuse box to the body.”

“At the base of the brain are two centers that control all the muscles
of the body. If you pinch the base of the brain — if the Atlas gets locked in
a position as little as a half a millimeter out of line — it doesn’t cause any
pain but it upsets these centers,” Dickholtz tells WebMD.

The subtle adjustment is practiced by the very small subgroup of
chiropractors certified in National Upper Cervical Chiropractic (NUCCA)
techniques. The procedure employs precise measurements to determine a patient’s
Atlas vertebra alignment. If realignment is deemed necessary, the chiropractor
uses his or her hands to gently manipulate the vertebra.

“We are not doctors. We are spinal engineers,” Dickholtz says.
“We use mathematics, geometry, and physics to learn how to slide everything
back into place.”

What does this have to do with high blood pressure
pressure?

Bakris notes that some researchers have suggested that injury to the Atlas
vertebra can affect blood flow in the arteries at the base of the skull.
Dickholtz thinks the misaligned Atlas triggers release of signals that make the
arteries contract. Whether the procedure actually fixes such injuries is
unknown, Bakris says.

Bakris began the study after a fellow doctor told him that something strange
was happening in his family practice. The doctor had been sending some of his
patients to a chiropractor. Some of these patients had high blood pressure.

Yet after seeing the chiropractor, the patients’ blood pressure had
normalized — and a few of them were able to stop taking their blood pressure
medications.

So Bakris, then at Rush University, designed the pilot study with 50
patients. He’s now organizing a much bigger clinical trial.

“Is it going to be for everybody with high blood pressure? No,”
Bakris says. “We clearly need to identify those who can benefit. It is
pretty clear that some kind of head or neck trauma early in life is related to
this. This is really a work in progress. It is certainly in the early stages of
research.”

Dickholtz has been teaching, practicing, and studying the NUCCA technique
for 50 years. He says high blood pressure is far from the only thing an Atlas
misalignment causes.

“On the other hand, if people have high blood pressure, there is a
tremendous possibility they need an Atlas adjustment,” he says.

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