At Bedford Hills Family Chiropractic, we use the state-of-the-art technology to better serve our patients. It helps Dr. Stuart Weitzman in many ways and particularly: It allows us to detect areas of nerve disturbance, shows the areas of muscle imbalance, gives a baseline to document and monitor your results and changes in follow-up evaluations, and helps contribute to determine the appropriate Chiropractic Care.
The equipment we use to scan your muscles and nerves is called the Insight Millenium. The Insight Millenium gives a computerized image of stress and tension on the nervous system. Our office uses Surface Electromyography (SEMG) and Thermography Scan in order to get a complete picture of how your nerve system is functioning at this moment in time. The Insight detects the amount of stress your nervous system is under. So it will show how much underlying stress a person has regardless of how you are feeling. The SEMG measures the amount of muscle activity regulated by motor nerves. The Thermography scan measures how the body regulates itself through the nervous system.
The actual scan itself is pain-free and does not utilize needles, electric shock, or heat. The Thermography scan is performed by using a rolling scanner from bottom of your spine to the top. The SEMG is just the gentle placement of leads on the patients back. Both receive and record the information given by the nervous system and interpreted by the computer and Doctor. Dr. Weitzman utilizes this advanced technology to help pinpoint areas of interference and problems in the spine and nervous system. This is an examination that is not required, but used to better serve his patients and get the best results for his patients. The scan is used to do progress exams to measure improvement and exacerbations.
How does the Thermal Scan work?
The Thermal Scan measures temperature differences of your skin from each side of your spine. Your skin is the largest organ of the body and the blood vessels under the skin work as the body's temperature control. If your body temperature is 98.6 degrees, then the left and right sides of your spine should also be the same temperature. When the communication between the Nervous System and the blood vessels is disturbed, it causes the body's thermostat to malfunction producing an imbalanced temperature reading along the spine. These blood vessels are controlled by the same part of the Central Nervous System that runs your organs and glands, known as the autonomic system. This thermal scan provides us with information to show how the part of your nervous system that controls your organs and glands are functioning. The autonomic nerves make up 4/9th of the information traveling in your nerve. If you look below, white colors mean the nerves are functioning normally, green indicates mild interference, blue indicates moderate interference, and red indicates severe irritation of those nerves!
How does the Surface EMG work?
The Surface EMG measures electrical activity in your muscles next to your spine while you are sitting still. Your muscles need to maintain a certain amount of tone to hold your posture. Muscles do not move without getting information from the motor nerves. When a nerve is irritated, a muscle can respond with tightness, weakness, fatigue and spasms. The motor portion of the nerve makes up another 4/9th. This leaves the remaining 1/9th for pain. In the top peer review journal in the profession SPINE there is a paper Pain and the nerve root that shows that nerve root compression can exist without pain!!!! This scan measures the activity of normal muscles and compares it to average. If you look below, white colors mean the nerves are functioning normally, green indicates mild interference, blue indicates moderate interference, and red indicates severe irritation of those nerves!
Muscle Balance and Energy Function Scores (Symmetry)
Muscle Balance is extremely important because the vertebrae in the spine depend on the muscles to move properly. If one or more vertebrae are out of their normal position, it disturbs nerve function. This disturbance creates muscle imbalance caused by an abnormal amount of nerve flow to the muscles on either side of the spine. As a result of this disturbance, the muscles can become weaker or stronger, tighter, or fatigued. This scan is a great baseline for when the person first comes in. It will give the new patient 3 scores: Pattern, Symmetry and Total Energy. Each one demonstrates the importance of normal functioning nerves and balanced muscle control to show how efficiently your body is working. Is your body working too hard and wearing you out? Or is it affecting performance at your job or in your sport? After a series of care, we re-scan the patient to see where they have improved and if they need more care on other areas to get a person functioning at their best.
