It was a particularly nasty cold & flu season this year, but that doesn’t mean Dr. Bagley & Dr. Schurger won’t see you when you’re feeling bad. Heck! You might even benefit from getting checked and adjusted in that situation! Dr. Bagley & Dr. Schurger discuss getting in to see them when you’re under the weather. Dr. Bagley mentions that COVID tends to pick on people who are ill. But as Dr. Schurger says, “Keeping people in alignment, healthy, and getting them in when they are sick helps mitigate Long COVID from lingering.” Tune in to this episode with the Blonde and the Bald!
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Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Cold And Flu Season: See Dr. Bagley And Dr. Schurger When Feeling Under The Weather
Is white technically blonde? If you got a bunch of white and grays, it’s platinum blonde.
The gray is in.
The young lady who runs the reception at the accounting firm had platinum blonde hair for the years that she’s been working there then she went back to her natural more brunette color and I do a double take every time I see her.
I know hair is very important to you. For women, there’s a lot of effort that goes into the hair. We put a lot of who we are into our hair, which is so interesting. That’s why a lot of times when women lose their hair with either alopecia or cancer treatments and things like that, it’s such a profoundly personal thing. Do you feel like that was for you when you lost your hair with the alopecia?
It was a big deal because I’d had a ponytail for the better part of a decade. It’s 2009 when the hair fell out. I would’ve had a ponytail since my freshman year in college in ‘92. It was a big transition. I’ve had alopecia. I had the ponytail cut off a couple of times over the years but nothing to that extreme. It’s very daunting. It’s slowly coming back so I have to shave. That’s the good and bad news. I have to do something to still look this good.
The thing about it is you have a great-shaped bald head. It’s a fabulous head.
My brother Dave is number 3 of 6 children. Theresa is four. She is the only girl. All the rest of us are boys. Dave was the first to go bald and he shaved it. He’s got a good noggin. My brother Vince, who’s number two and I’m the oldest, has not embraced getting rid of all of it.
Is he coming over?
He’s not that bad but he does try to keep the sides and everything. He embraced it and gets rid of it. My youngest brother Jim is nice and shaggy. Lucky him.
You had a lot of patience with colds and coughs coming in.
It’s that same cold and cough we were talking about that I had back several episodes ago that lingered for a month. Everyone is passing around. Our immune systems have either forgotten what a rhinovirus looks like.
A lot of people were staying away from each other for a long time.
The other side of it is we’ve got a slightly different virus that we haven’t seen in a while. I go for the argument that COVID was so aggressive that our bodies forgot what a rhinovirus is or what a cold virus is. All of a sudden, everyone is like, “Did I normally feel like this?” You probably did. You had better immunity to it. It’s been going around.
COVID was so aggressive that our bodies forgot what a rhinovirus or cold virus is. Click To TweetA whole family comes in. One came out of the car and came in and then the other one came in. I was like, “Where’s the daughter?” “She’s got a cold and pink eye. We don’t want to bring her in.” I was like, “I’m happy to see her. I will wash my hands and she can rest in the car if she wants to but this is when we want to see her.” Years past, they may have brought her in. When a doctor wants to see their kid or an adult when they’re sick, I do.
Do I want you to cough directly on my face or rub pink eye in my eye? I prefer not to do that. I’m not trying to get sick but as a chiropractor, I want to take care of sick people. One of the most important times to get checked is when you are sick. I want to bring that back because, for a very long time, we were told to stay away if we’ve got a cold or COVID. I’m not going to put a sick child next to an elderly person or something like that.
We’re going to keep the sick people away. Sometimes I’ll even come in on days off. It’s like, “I’d feel miserable. I don’t want to give it to you.” I’m like, “Don’t worry about giving it to me.” Do you know how many people regularly tell me I’m the healthiest person they know? I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I know I should be the healthiest person they know. On the other side of it, how many people aren’t healthy and should be healthier?
This is one of the best ways to do it because people are calling in and saying, “I don’t want to get you sick.” I’m like, “I’m not worried about it.” Over the past many years, outside of maybe COVID, I’m still not convinced I got COVID from another patient who didn’t realize they had it. I think I got it out in the wild.
I was going shopping and happened to walk across it. A couple of days later, all of a sudden, it hit. If you combine that with stress levels and everything else, that can certainly be overwhelming. If you can shy you needing to be next to the toilet the entire time, I recommend everyone to get on in when they’re sick if they can make the drive safely and get to the office. I’ll come in on the off days, check them and make sure everything’s good.
It’s the same thing when my family is sick. What do we do? We check to see if they need an adjustment and do some supplements. My husband had a man cold. I don’t know if you know what a man cold is but it’s a very serious affliction. Hopefully, he doesn’t read this because he’s going to be mad at me for making fun of him. I am going to make fun of him.
At one point, he walks around and is all hunched over. I’m not going to say he didn’t feel bad. He had a cold but he takes it to an extreme. At one point, he sat down in bed and goes, “I think I’m going blind in my right eye.” He said that out loud. I said, “Really? That’s terrible. Can you blink a couple of times for me?” He blinked. He goes, “That’s better.” He had junk in his eye and he is going blind in his right eye.
I might not let him live that one down.
I’ve told the story a couple of times. He doesn’t know I’m telling this story but I’m telling it. It’s funny. He did not go blind. I know everyone was concerned. He did not have to be hospitalized. We didn’t have to do any of those things. He took his supplements. We made sure he was well-adjusted. One of the things I did that I’ve not done ever before was I started taking a little bit more of my supplements. I have a thing called Virucide and a couple of extra ones. I would take NAC, quercetin, zinc and vitamin C.
I’d read a study about COVID, not that he didn’t have COVID but COVID is a cold. Cold viruses a lot of times work similarly. One of the studies I had read during this whole COVID thing was giving mega doses of vitamin D. The body responded to it and it saw better outcomes for people. I did. Not that I recommend it. Talk to your doctor about what you’re going to do with yourself but I took 50,000 vitamin D in 1 day. A lot of times, people take that once a week anyway to get there or three times a week.
I take 30,000 almost every day.
That’s you getting tested and knowing what your levels are because you also don’t want to have too much vitamin D. You want the right amount and you’ve got to figure that out with your doctor. One day, I take an omega dose. I didn’t get this cold. I had a little sniffle one day. Who knows if I already had immunity to it, was well adjusted or all of the things that I was doing? I had come off of a three-day fast, which we know builds up the immune system afterward. I can tell you that I didn’t get it. I will probably do that in the future because I do think it may have helped. Take it for what it is and talk to your doctor about it.
These are good pieces of advice as far as creating a foundation of how to be healthier, especially since we’re always going to have cold and flu season. That is never going away. COVID-19 is going to be part of our viral going forward but it’s probably never going to be as nasty.
Almost everyone has gotten it at this point.
The story that sticks out in my brain and this is why it’s so important to make sure your head is on straight is that you’re working with a good Blair chiropractor, upper cervical chiropractor or even some of these regular chiropractors who have done wonderful work as well in this area. There was a story that was told to us by Dr. Thom Forest about Dr. Weldon Muncy. Let me back up. Let’s talk about who Dr. Weldon Muncy is.
Dr. Muncy was Dr. Blair’s right-hand man. Dr. Blair developed the Blair technique that we practiced. His health was declining. He had bad asthma. He’d be able to see some patients but throughout the day to work and develop the technique, especially in the last years, he was working with Dr. Muncy. They would be up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning or sometimes they’d be calling each other back and forth between Texas and California. Dr. Muncy was helping him develop some of these ideas that we now use.
Back up 20 or 30 years before Dr. Muncy was in practice, he was in Davenport, Iowa. I might be missing the actual virus. I’m going to call it scarlet fever but it was a very high fever that both of his children had to the point where they didn’t know what to do. Dr. B.J. Palmer was the Founder of Upper Cervical and the developer of chiropractic. Dr. Bud Crowder was B.J.’s doctor. Dr. Crowder would end up staying overnight as Dr. Muncy’s children were going through this. He would check them every couple of hours to make sure they were holding their adjustment. If their adjustment would go out, he would adjust them and get them back into proper working order.
For some reason, the story was 48 hours to get them clear and holding. The fevers broke and they were fine. That was one of those experiences where you had sick children and a healthy doctor working together. The healthy doctor did not get sick and more importantly, the sick children lived to thrive. Dr. Muncy was then convinced of the power of this upper cervical work and how beneficial it was.
It gets into understanding what the human body can heal from given the ability not to have interference. When you have your head on straight, you do not have interference, your body can deal and function with what’s going on. Does that always feel good? No. Sometimes you have a fever that has to run its course because it’s trying to kill off the bug and the virus that has infected your system. We might talk about my food poisoning story some other time but it falls into this same situation. Understanding that sometimes the best time to get checked is when you are not feeling well.
Calling and talking to your doctor like, “Are you comfortable with it?” There may be some doctors that are not. Everyone has their story and lives their life. Dr. Sugar and I both are the doctors that will say, “As long as you don’t poop or puke on me, come in.”
The exceptions to the puke and poop are babies. Even then, I try to hand them back to their parent before they get to that point.
I had a baby come in. He is such a sweet baby boy. He’s having trouble turning his head. He’s starting to get a flathead on one side. We got him to move in again. We checked and he was starting to have trouble moving. I decided I wanted to refer him out not to a medical doctor but to a doctor that does SOT. There’s a doctor on the street that does SOT, certified in pediatrics. It’s not that I don’t think I can help. It’s that I know that there’s a doctor that’s what they do every day. I don’t feel bad about it. I was like, “This baby can do well. I can do well with this upper cervical and get this baby’s head moving,” but there’s a doctor right down the street that does amazing work with babies every single day. I don’t want this baby to have to wear a helmet.
For those who don’t understand what SOT is, it is Sacro Occipital Technique. It is another chiropractic technique that is different from than cranial sacral technique. That’s a massage technique. There’s a sacral occipital technique that was developed by a doctor named Dr. DeJarnette. I wish I had met him. He sounds amazing. I got to meet one of his students who was always studying with Dr. DeJarnette. He had a deal with all of the textbook companies that every time there was a new medical text, it didn’t matter if it was chiropractic medicine, they automatically sent him one.
He had multiple deep copies of the same book and multiple revisions that he had read. As I understand it, he was doing rounds at most of the major medical hospitals. He was over in Lincoln, Nebraska. That’s how respected Dr. DeJarnette with the SOT work. It is a fantastic technique. There are a lot of benefits. There are bits and pieces that I have incorporated into my practice that are beneficial. Especially for a young child whose head’s starting to be weird, there are some things you can do with the cranial bones to help bring those back into proper alignment. You have a nice round head if you ever lose all your hair. Everything looks pretty.
I’m okay and I know you are too in not knowing everything and being great at every single thing. I am fabulous at adjusting C1, C2 or some of the lower cervical. I’m being super precise. You are super precise and you’re good at some other things on top of that. I’m okay saying, “There’s a lady down the street that is fabulous with how the head is shaped in babies. You go get that.”
Sometimes you need that because that’s that balance. We need more people who understand that sometimes, “This chiropractor’s going to take care of this problem. You have one more thing. You need to go see a neural optometrist. It helps get the eyes coordinated the way they’re supposed to.” We have so many professions. There is much to learn and at the end of the day, there are only so many hours.
There are so many experts. If you have a doctor that is willing to say, “I got a guy or a girl that is better at something because I’m good at this.”
Here’s the worst part. For those of you who think, “Dr. Sugar only has hours Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. He’s got all this extra time,” let me back up to tell you because you’re the same way. Some of it is us finding and meeting new patients as far as marketing on the days that we are not here. Quite honestly, sometimes it’s getting all the paperwork done, cleaning up the place and even having time to decompress. It’s funny because I’ve been talking about buying a new laptop. I’ve picked it out. I’ve said, “That’s the one I’m going to get for about a week and a half.” Have I ordered this laptop? No.
Could you be any more analytical?
I know which one I want. It’s not even a matter of me weighing options and doing research. My problem is having the time to do it. I’m like, “I’ve got some time to do it this afternoon.”
People look at my hours and they’re like, “You don’t work very much.” I’m like, “I do. I just see patients during this time.” That’s when I see patients. A lot of times, I see patients out of that time but I at least try to keep it in those times because otherwise, I would never get any other work done. Those times are my favorite times because I get to do patient work, which is my favorite thing to do.
Those of you who are reading who are either our patients or to be future patients, realize that that time that we’re not here that you need us, call because we deal with emergencies all the time.
A lot of times, people will say, “I wanted to come in Friday but you don’t work Fridays.” I was like, “I was at the office for three hours on Friday. Call or send me an email.”
I had one of those. It’s one of those things. It was a longtime patient. His wife was in a car accident earlier in the week. She’d been under upper cervical care with another great doc who’s in Colorado, Dr. Rick DiGregorio. She’s like, “This is going to hurt.” I’m like, “Yes because it’s all locked up.” She wasn’t getting any sleep and neither was her husband. She comes in and everything’s doing great already. She’s like, “I feel good.”
That’s what’s great about upper cervical patients in general. Whether you’ve been under other upper cervical care or Blair care and you go to another upper cervical doctor, whatever the technique is, honestly, you will have a better ability to hold your adjustment than someone coming off the street who’s never had upper cervical care. Don’t ever be afraid to come back because typically, we don’t have to start over. A lot of people think, “I’m going to have to start overseeing you twice a week for so long and it’s going to be hard.” Typically, you start holding a lot faster.
Everything moves better. I’m joking that she’s going to hold better than her husband. He sends me a text on Saturday. I’m finishing up lunch and he says, “I’m not broken today for once.” Oftentimes, he doesn’t hold very well. “Can you get my wife in?” I’m like, “Yes.” It was a matter of time and I knew the accident had happened. It’s Saturday afternoon, two hours of work to get her figured out and adjusted. Sure enough, she’s better and they’re going to have a good time. They’re going to be much happier. I have a question and this is purely anecdotal observation. Either with patients who have been with you since before COVID or patients that have come in with it, how much long COVID have you seen as part of your practice? I’m curious in trying to get a sense of what I’m seeing.
Before COVID, we never saw anything like this. I get at least 1 or 2 new patients a month with some symptoms with long COVID or reaction to something we shall not name. There’s a lot of breathing stuff, not necessarily asthma breathing but cranial nerve changes. I don’t know if maybe that word is out that I can help with that and then it’s coming back. One of the things I’ve seen and it’s interesting is the way they describe it as forgetting to breathe.
It’s not necessarily like apnea but they can’t catch their breath. They would talk and then gasp because they hadn’t taken a breath. That has been a couple of people, which I’d never seen before. It’s like, “I don’t have that anymore,” pretty much after getting adjustments. It doesn’t last that long but I’m wondering how many other people are out there with this symptom of that. That’s one of the interesting new things. It seems to correspond with the two things I talk about, the long COVID or the other thing. What about you?
I was thinking about this because there’s this back and forth. There’s something too long COVID. I don’t know what it is. That’s the problem with long COVID. We don’t understand what it is. In general, first, I don’t think I had any patients who had major problems with the virus when it was going around. The other part is I’ve got a couple of cases that were already fatigued.
I feel like COVID or other things pick on people that were already ill.
You had something like chronic fatigue. There’s myalgia or something like that.
Fibromyalgia.
It falls into those categories where you already feel fatigued all the time. I find that those cases are still those cases. It didn’t make them better. It certainly did make them worse for a period of time. It’s hard to tell because it was already bad. It’s like saying, “I’m drowning and now I’m going to drown a little bit more.” You’re coming up for air a little bit. You’re not doing great but you haven’t gotten to that point where you’re underwater all the time.
It was already there. It’s hard to tell the difference as far as anyone else who had COVID. I didn’t see any long COVID cases and I don’t know why that is of my patient population. My general theory is that we have done something of benefit. We’ve talked about the sick for IgA and things like that by keeping people in alignment, keeping them healthy and getting them in when they’re sick. I don’t see a whole lot of that long COVID lingering stuff.
For me, it’s new patients with these symptoms. I didn’t realize it. I don’t have any of the patients that I’ve been seeing for years. Everybody’s had COVID that has any of those symptoms.
The exceptions are anyone who’s in that fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and ME or whatever that thing. My wife, Jeanne, has chronic fatigue ME or at least she feels like she falls into that category. I try to do a lot of stuff. We’ve got the NAC and several other supplements to help get the mitochondrial working.
I’ve got a secret with NAC.
Hold on to that. That category of people still has that problem. We haven’t quite figured out how to get them out of that chronic fatigue state. I don’t have something I could put my finger on but I also don’t have good data.
We don’t have a double-blind placebo-controlled study that says, “If you have been under Blair Upper Cervical care, you have less likely to have long COVID.” There’s something there. It’d be interesting to talk to some other Blair doctors about that.
We’ll reach out and talk to folks like Dr. Hafer and Stenberg and some of the other podcasters and reach out and see what they’ve been observing. This is not something I would’ve normally tracked. Going back and asking the question, I don’t know if I’m going to see a whole lot of it but a thought. What’s your NAC idea?
It has nothing to do with health though. It makes a lot of sense how NAC works. If I drank some alcohol and have taken some NAC, I don’t get a hangover.
The people who do wine testing use NAC regularly. Ever since NAC became a non-drug over-the-counter supplement, they realized that that’s what it is because NAC is used in hospitals if you have aspirin or a lot of other drug overdoses.
It’s a Tylenol overdose. It’s the number one cause of acute kidney or liver toxicity.
Tylenol overdoses are the number one cause of acute kidney. Click To TweetI’ve seen both. I always say kidney first.
It’s acute kidney failure, which is not good. They give NAC intravenously to these people and it saves their lives.
My senator decides he doesn’t like supplements. He wants some of these supplements to be banned.
What a great guy. What a fabulous man. I’m sure he is not owned by the pharmaceutical industry at all.
Not sponsored by Pfizer at all.
We are not sponsored by Pfizer. They’re going to attack us.
Even though I’ve got some supplements back here, I’m certainly not sponsored by them either.
It’s things that we would take ourselves.
I run out of it and I’m like, “I’m taking a bottle off.” I happen to share it with my patients when they’re here. In any case, you think of weird cranial nerve stuff.
There’s something to do with weird cranial nerve stuff and post-COVID or the things that shall not be named, maybe the spike protein. Can I prove any of it at this point? No. I bet there are some studies somewhere that’s talking about cranial nerve involvement of this spike protein or toxicity of some sort. I haven’t seen it yet. Maybe it’s still being worked on or it hasn’t been looked at. I’ve seen stuff with the phrenic nerve and vagus nerve, an increase in migraines, headaches and some other weird neurological things like some Tourettes and stuff that have come up.
It’s anecdotal.
I have no proof. I have no way to say it other than, “If you’ve got some of that stuff going on, at least try.”
It’s not going to hurt. We’ve talked about the vagus nerve a little bit and we might do a deep dive. Let’s talk about the phrenic nerve because it is an interesting one. It turns on your diaphragm. We have a very large muscle that separates between our lungs and our GI. Our stomach and our intestines down are all separated.
There’s a little hole in it. That’s where your stomach tube goes in and your stomach sits underneath it. If you’ve had a big meal, have you ever noticed that it’s hard to take a deep breath? That’s because your stomach is holding your diaphragm up.
That phrenic nerve innervates and turns on and off the diaphragm so that it can move up and down. It creates a vacuum effect to pull oxygen into your lungs. For those of you who remember Christopher Reeve, he is my Superman. He was a genuinely good human being. Back in around 2000 or so, somewhere in that timeframe, the early 2000s, Christopher Reeve had a bad horse accident. He broke his neck but it was low. That saved his life because the nerves that come in and create the phrenic nerve come off the 3rd, 4th and 5th cervical.
The phrenic nerve innervates and turns the diaphragm on and off. It creates a vacuum effect to pull oxygen into your lungs. Click To TweetYou’ve got your atlas axis, which is 1 and 2. 3, 4 and 5 or the next 3 down are the nerves that then go down, whatever the alliteration is to help you remember nerves. 3, 4 and 5 keep you alive because that’s your diaphragm. That’s where that’s coming from. His neck broke much lower. Usually, if someone breaks their neck, it’s up towards 1 or 2 as a result of that biomechanics. He broke his low. This is what kept him alive. He needed some breathing help but not a lot because his phrenic nerve still worked, which was remarkable. We’ve touched on the mood bone a little bit. Sometimes C4 will do the same but C3, we joke about it being the mood bone and it’s never a good mood. It’s always a bad mood.
It’s like, “I’m happy.”
It’s usually the other way around. Sometimes when you get it adjusted, it’s like, “You can take a much deeper breath.”
That makes sense because the phrenic nerve is right there at 3 to 4. They say four is the biggest part of it.
That’s an anatomy text that for some people, it might be more three. For some people, it might be more five. This is why it’s nice to have healthcare that is customized to your body.
Everyone’s unique adjustment is for them and that’s what we do.
I joke about C3 being the mood bone but in reality, it’s probably an anxiety situation. From anxiety, you can’t get a deep breath. You’re not able to breathe normally and your anxiety’s going to naturally ramp up. Depending upon you as a person, you will either lead towards a more depressive state or an angry state, which is a bad mood.
I’m sorry to everyone I have offended with my bad mood.
Sometimes when we do that, I joke with people like, “How have you been mood-wise?” They’re like, “I’ve been okay.” It’s like, “You might need to go apologize to your spouse, husband and friends because this is going to make you feel a whole lot better.” Sure enough, they’re like, “I’m much more relaxed now.”
My short idea is, “I’m sorry for the things I said when my C3 was out or my head wasn’t on straight.”
Do you have anything else going on that we wanted to discuss?
I am excited to talk about the vagus nerve in the next episode.
That’s going to be fun. We don’t appreciate how these cranial nerves affect the body. We also don’t understand how your little nerve that’s coming right off your brainstem here at the back of your neck affects everything down the chain. That’ll be an interesting one for everyone to go over and learn about. Let’s sign off. Where are they going to find you?
They’re going to find me at PrecisionChiropracticStl.com.
I’m @KeystoneChiroSPI in Springfield, Illinois. If you have any questions, feel free to give us a call or send us an email. We are more than happy. Don’t try to call us on the weekend unless you’re already a patient. We will get you in as soon as we can but give us a little bit of time to get you established.
It was so good to talk to you.
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