Every second Tuesday (morning) will be available for NEW PATIENTS booking in for a first, second, third or fourth visit.
Every other Tuesday (afternoon) will be available for "OVERFLOW" appointments.
The Chinese Pillow seems to have been in use in
China for at least 400 years. In about 1970 a patient showed me an antiques catalogue whichincluded a picture of a pair of pillows made of jade dating from the Ming dynasty shaped like buddhas resting on all fours and priced at about $4000 each.
The Picture below shows how you can make your own Chinese pillow:
Cutting the carpet into small piece
Rolling the carpet
Resting on the Chinese Pillow
Apparently some people don't leave home without a pillow.
In a conversation with a widely traveled lecturer from the University of Wollongong in about 1995,I learned that members of some of the Turkana tribes of the Northern Kenyan desert near Lake Turkana "wear" a wooden neck support on their wristsand it is "almost their only clothing and luggage".
The online encyclopaedia Encarta says that "Wooden headrests, used instead of a pillow to support the head and neck during sleep, have been animportant household item in much of Africa".
"They vary in construction and comfort.
Some 'pillows' are curved branches embedded in soil.Compared to stone 'beds' nomadic people have constructedelsewhere around the lake, the wood pillows are goosedown. The stone version consists of a wall to break the wind and a headrest to snuggle up to.On a five-star scale,the wood pillow gets a minus five, the rocks a minus ten".
For thousands of our patients over the past 37 years, however, the Chinese Pillow rates a plus ten.
Below are the Selection of some of the Chinese pillows:
A Healthy neck is smoothly curved - Not straight
A Chinese pillow is meant to support the natural curve (lordosis) of the neck as shown
in the picture below:
(Attribute to "The Chiropractic Report")
From David Chapman-Smith, writing in the international newsletter "The Chiropractic Report" www.chiropracticreport.com:Here is good new research on this from McAviney, Schulz et al. at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia,[one of four Australasian universities teaching chiropractic]and I note:
Sagittal cervical alignment was retrospectively assessed from 277 x-ray films randomly selected from theMacquarie UniversityChiropractic Outpatients Clinic.
{The sagittal plane or lateral, or side view, cervical X-ray is one of thethree planes assessed on all our new patients here}
Patients with a lordosis of 20 degrees or less had "more than double the chance of cervicogenic symptoms" comparedwith those with a lordosis greater than 20 degrees.
[190/2/2 and 187/ Abstract]
{Generally, a gentle forward curve is good,and straightening or over-curving is bad.The measurements used in this study are a useful method of assessing relatively normal neck curves}
Patients with a kyphotic or straight cervical spine (i.e., a lordosis of 0% or less) were 18 times more likely to have a cervical complaint than those with some lordosis.
This was "of high statistical and clinical significance" because those with straight or kyphotic cervical spines represented 25% of the total sample and only 4% were without cervicogenic symptoms.
[191/2/3 and 190/2/2]
{The Chinese pillow is a main self-help tool in relieving those symptoms}This study found a statistically significant association between cervical pain and lordosis of under 20 degrees and the research team suggests that a lordosis in the range of 31 degrees to 40 degrees should be seen as normal and should be a clinical goal for chiropractic treatment. [187/ Abstract]
{The state of your neck (cervical) curve is always discussed at the report-of-findings visit. If you are a patient here, do you remember the findings of your curve?
If not, you might like to ask to see it again}
There was an indication that a cervical lordosis above 40 degrees was also linked to symptoms, but larger sample sizes were needed for any firm conclusion.
