Intro - Lil Wayne
“All units were in a single line. Unit 3 had slowly approached a column of vehicles stopped at a red light. Unit 1 slammed into Unit 2 four times, repeatedly. It was the fourth hit when Unit 2 lost the ability to control her stopped vehicle and proceeded to slam into Unit 3. Unit 1 suggests that he was preoccupied with vegetables rolling from his car seat to floor; therefore, he repeatedly hit Unit 2 four times when trying to collect the contents off the floor.”
We as Americans - Eminem
Fulfilling my legal requirements, aware of the Class C Misdemeanor, a $500 fine, and possibly a 30-day sentence receivable if the motorist report was not truthfully filled out and returned within a 10-day period, I referred to myself as Unit 3 and completed the motorist report a few hours post-crash to the best of my ability. As my left hip was aching and my lower back was increasing in discomfort, I stiffened my upper lip and accompanied the above narrative with a diagram to further illustrate the way I perceived the incident.
So Appalled (feat. Jay Z, Pusha T, Prynce Cy Hi, Swizz Beats & The RZA) - Kanye West
Despite the ramifications of not providing the truth, and nothing but the truth, I refrained from unfolding the exact moment where I steeled my entire body and prepared for the blow.
Bully - Eminem
I neglected to add that seven months later I’d still be able to close my eyes and envision the dreadful moment when I happened to look in my rearview mirror, only to find a car progressively getting closer to mine. I can still see the driver: a woman in her mid 50s, white knuckling the steering wheel; her head, chest, and shoulders forcefully motioning forward each time she is hit from behind; elbows slackening in their doggedness to stay locked; the seat belt and her sheer grip safeguarding her ability to maintain a semi-seated position. After the fourth hit, I can see her removing her hands from the steering wheel, frantically waving her hands in the air, losing composure as she no longer can sustain control.
Criminal - Eminem
I left out the part where I felt as if I was in a horror movie—where a perceived evil was relentless in providing harm and sheer terror to the oblivious and innocent.
Like Toy Soldiers - Eminem
I abandoned the very details that would embody the disgust I felt inside due to the fact that I was incapable of fully gauging the severity of the injuries I had endured.
Quitter - Eminem
Clearly, I found it unnecessary to share the misery I felt, void in exercising my privilege to train that evening.
I Need a Doctor (feat. Skyler Grey) - Dr. Dre & Eminem
The next day, I set out to mail the report to the Illinois Department of Transportation and began the search for a chiropractor. Up to this point I had great experience with chiropractic care, and since the majority of my pain was now located within my lower back, I felt this was the best starting place.
Say Goodbye Hollywood - Eminem
After conversing with a few colleagues, I made a list of a few referred prospects nearby with convenient hours. However, upon walking into the first choice I had pinpointed on paper, I became absorbed in its layout, read the verbiage posted on the walls, and (amongst other annoyances) listened to the receptionist’s babble on ridiculous subjects. Just as the character Renalda in Nothing But Trouble sensed funky karma and had to flee her current situation, I too intuitively knew it was time to go. Before having the opportunity to sit down with the doctor, I pretended as though I had to take an emergency phone call and got out of there, all swift-like.
Welcome to Detroit (feat. Trick-Trick) - Eminem
I sat in the parking lot for a few minutes replaying what had just happened. I was unaware that I contained such dramatic acting ability. Quickly regaining presence, and with the prospective doctor list now in hand, I took hold of my pen and crossed out the first choice without hesitation. I then started my car and proceeded to drive to choice number two. However, after traveling for perhaps a mile, a chiropractor I had recently exchanged business cards with, although not on the list, came to mind. In the 60-minute meeting held a few months prior between myself and three others, I couldn’t help but remember his message, demeanor, professionalism, and sense of why. So, without further ado, I pulled over, located his contact information, and made a phone call. To my surprise, he answered the phone, and with little explanation on my part, I was urged to come in, taking the next available appointment—the amount of time it would take me to get from point A to point B.
Jesus Walks (feat. Jay-Z) - Kanye west
In contrast to what I felt just minutes beforehand, upon walking into Dr. Bryan Laneville’s office, I sensed calmness, assurance, and concern. I quickly came to understand that I would not be receiving a twist, crack, or pop to ease my current worry and discomfort. Instead, I’d undergo a few x-rays and screens and, based on the feedback received, would then undergo a gentle manipulation to the upper neck. His specialty, NUCCA, an upper cervical chiropractic technique, was something I never knew existed. A bit biased since I was so used to the traditional chiropractic care I received and benefited from for years, I still felt compelled to listen. However, I slowly accepted the surge of new information, remained at the office, and continued on with treatment.
© Zzzdim | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images
Your Love - Nicki Minaj
During the early stages of treatment, I took it easy from training as a cruise period was already scheduled in. He stressed the importance of eliminating any undue stress at the beginning, allowing my body to recover optimally and become accustomed to each adjustment. Aside from doing cardio (bike riding in this case), along with the physical work my job required of me, I “rested” for 14 consecutive days. The initial pain and discomfort found in my hip and lower back moved entirely to my lower back. But as each week passed, my discomfort lessened. Slowly, and as advised by Dr. Bryan, I began to heighten my intensity while training. This decision came forth once I was holding onto an adjustment for roughly seven days.
Titanium (feat. Sia) - David Guetta
As if it were a puzzle, I had to situate my training scheme to fit within my treatment schedule. Through trial and error, I found that I would stay in alignment longer if I made sure I was adjusted on days off or after a training session. I also had to stay clear of any movement(s) that had the potential to place pressure on the C1: shrugs, pull-ups, sleeping on my stomach, etc. As I began to pick up the intensity while training, I remember feeling a sense of power within my mid-back and abdominal muscles. It truly was as though I was lifting weights for the first time. I felt fresh and anew. As much as I wanted to train full throttle at this point in the game, I held back. I told myself that leaving some reps in the tank now would deliver greater rewards in time.
Lights, Camera, Action - Juvenile
Roughly two months into treatment (eight weeks out from Chicago’s Midwest Ironman), we made the decision that I could begin prepping. During week one of prep, Dr. Bryan assured me that not only would his treatment allow for me get back to where I was before the accident, but moving forward it would also allow me to perform and function at a much higher level.
Lift Off (feat. Beyonce’ Knowles) - Jay- Z and Kanye West
Leaning out as planned, and with the show in sight, I began to notice other small changes that others would possibly not take note of—changes I don’t believe Dr. Bryan even expected. To my surprise, my right shoulder, which always was positioned a bit higher than my left, dropped considerably, allowing my stature to appear much more symmetrical. For the first time ever, I also found it comfortable while squatting with a barbell on my back. Up to this point I could never get in the “right” position. Or, I could get in position but I’d be very uncomfortable and feel “off,” accompanied with little to no leg drive. I could never explain this feeling entirely, and I thought I wasn’t destined to be a great squatter. Thankfully, this is the case no more. The form I’ve been perfecting over some 10 years is finally united with an aligned spine, advantageously permitting me to sit deep and accelerate with power out of the hole while having weight on the bar.
Psycho (feat. Eminem) - 50 Cent
Fifteen weeks post-show, and having made the best presence on stage to date, I am training full throttle, focused solely on making gains in strength and size. I now see Dr. Bryan every 12 days. Each office visit routinely begins with a leg check and/or temperature/musculature scan of the upper cervical area. If I’m holding, I do not receive an adjustment. If one leg appears to be longer than the other or if the scan does not represent change, I receive an adjustment. Our eventual goal is for me to be able to hold an adjustment for four weeks at a time, only receiving a maintenance check monthly.
Outro (feat. Bun B, Nas, Shyne & Busta Rhymes) - Lil Wayne
In the quest to learn more, I had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Bryan Laneville to ask questions and receive answers. As I said before and I’ll say again, I have high hopes that you too become curious and seek/utilize an array of alternative medicine methods with the purpose to heed off sickness, preserve and promote health, increase the capacity to do work, maximize performance, and ultimately give you the push to show up day-in and day-out.
Sheena Leedham: Dr. Bryan please introduce yourself to elitefts™!
Dr. Bryan Laneville: Absolutely. I’m Dr. Bryan Laneville. I’m a pediatric and family wellness chiropractor here in Willowbrook, IL. This will be my ninth year of practice. I graduated in 2004. We practice an upper cervical technique, the NUCCA technique. My wife and I opened up this practice a little over five years ago, and we are extremely excited and passionate about serving the Willowbrook community and beyond.
Sheena Leedham: Why NUCCA?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: That’s an excellent question. Why NUCCA? NUCCA is one of dozens of chiropractic techniques, and all chiropractic techniques are designed to get the body healthier from the inside out without drugs or surgery. They mostly focus on the nervous system and spine which houses it. The more pressure you can get off of it the better. It will allow the person to function better, feel better, and adapt to stressors better. NUCCA is a vehicle. It’s one of the specialized techniques within the chiropractic profession. There are less than 1,000 [professionals] on the planet that do it. I chose NUCCA for many different reasons. One, personally as a patient, it’s given me the most relief and function of anything I’ve tried. That sold me on it.
Backing up: I had low back pain, mid back pain, headaches, migraines, eczema skin condition, acid reflux...just kind of chronically off and on throughout my life. But the low back especially was at its highest when I graduated chiropractic school, and I was trying several things to relieve it. Shortly after I graduated, I met a NUCCA chiropractor who explained what NUCCA is [and] how it works. So I tried it and eight weeks later I never felt better in my life. It was not just helping with my lower back, but again with acid reflux. I have been under NUCCA for nine years now, and it has helped me with skin conditions, energy, mental acuity, and memory. I haven’t looked back. It’s very precise. It’s gentle. There is no twisting, popping, or cracking. Myself and a lot of our patients like the features of it. The adjustments can hold for chunks of time so you don’t have to live at your chiropractor’s office. You can still benefit and the body can still go out of alignment due to life’s stressors, but you don’t have to necessarily come twice a week for the rest of your life. We are looking for stability and pressure of your top neck bone, which is called the atlas, and it’s extremely important that we address it from the top-down because the brain controls everything. What we like to say around here is, "if you don’t pass go, you don’t collect your $200." If you have irritation on your brain stem right at the top of your neck, it can literally affect anything below that point. NUCCA is a great technique to address the entire spinal column—the entire body really—by going to the most important spinal bone in the body, which is your atlas, and getting pressure off that area right underneath your brain.
Sheena Leedham: How do you differentiate between NUCCA and traditional chiropractic care?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: There is confusion with it because we do touch the atlas only, and we make contact with that one bone only. A lot of people think it’s a neck technique—that it’s good for neck pain or headaches and migraines, or something going on with the head, and that we are specialists of that area. The neat thing with NUCCA is, yes, we do contact that bone, but it’s all about math and physics. We contact that bone and use leverage to move the entire spine. It’s like a telephone pool that’s bent off to the side, and basically we want to straighten it out. So if your spine is like a telephone pool, we push it from the top and back to that central position to re-adjust the entire column. So even though we are touching one bone, it really is a full-spine technique without having to manually move every single one of those.
So, we are really looking to get the spine underneath the skull as perfectly as we can—primarily to get pressure off the nervous system and the brain stem. But secondarily, it’s great for the spine. It’s less wear and tear on the joints, the muscles, the disks, and the tissues that support that too. It has an anti-aging effect that way also. We want to keep those joints healthy for as long as possible. That’s the biggest difference—it’s looking to the get the head on straight, literally, to line up the entire spine. We have people that just come in here with lower back pain...that was me, just like myself—that was my primary health challenge when I was first introduced to it. They didn’t have to touch my lower back as with other techniques, but they got my head on straight and because of shifting the whole stack at once, it relieved the pressure all the way down below. Those features, and how it addresses the core as a unit—it provides balance and symmetry. It’s great for people in the bodybuilding industry since symmetry is very important with the musculature, and a great way to do that is to make sure the spine is as symmetrical as your body will let it, and NUCCA is a great way to address that. So those features are what make it very different. It’s a full-spine technique even though it’s gentle and focused contact at the top of the neck.
Sheena Leedham: Can you describe a typical office visit?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: Let’s start from the beginning. We’ll begin the process with a consultation as you would with any doctor’s office. We’ll sit down and hear about your health concerns and health goals. We’ll do an evaluation that’s all painless and non-invasive, but we are looking to evaluate the nervous system, even nerves that you don’t feel pain with. We check posture out, and all that information gives me an indication of whether I can help them out or not. If I can, I give them a recommendation—here’s the next step to basically get this misalignment fixed. That’s how we get the process started. We take films of the side, the front, the top—all three dimensions, to figure out how the person is out of alignment. Then, we can calculate using math, physics, and angle to get them back into alignment. It’s a very individualized approach to getting your spine put back. After we have all that information with the films and base-line nerve tests, it’s a matter of maintaining it. We monitor it for as long as the patient wants to benefit from it. We are looking to stabilize the structures with the muscles and ligaments getting tighter. But it’s like your teeth—people go to the dentist to monitor them and they brush them daily. The beautiful thing with this type of chiropractic is that we’ll monitor as long as a person wants to benefit from it, but you don’t have to get an alignment every day, you don’t have to go the chiropractor even once a week. It’s one of those keys of health, but it’s a lot easier to maintain after a period of stabilization, and you get the benefit from better nerve flow which is what keeps your body alive. Those are the regular check-ups. We do, of course, progress exams and follow up to see what’s been changing. One of the things I appreciate as a doctor of this, and what a lot of the patients appreciate as well, is the fact that we are measuring things and looking for changes and not just crossing our fingers and hoping things get better. We use technology called the Insight Substation, which measures nerve flow, and we can see how things are improving and changing over time.
Sheena Leedham: How can strength athletes benefit from NUCCA?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: Strength athletes can benefit from NUCCA chiropractic because the good news is that those nerves control the muscles, too. It’s very simple. If you are looking to get that muscle stronger and you want peak performance out of it, we know how important the stretching is and we know how important nutrition is—you are what you eat; you got to have good food to make the best muscle tissue. One thing that most athletes are missing is optimal nerve flow to that muscle. So a nerve tells the muscle to contract or relax. If a nerve going to the muscle is irritated, it fires more and causes that muscle to spasm or tighten up whether you are aware of it or not. Instead of taking a muscle relaxer or finding other ways to relax the muscle, the best thing to do is to get pressure off the nerve going to the muscle which controls it. So again, we are looking from the inside-out, not the outside-in. We are trying to treat causes and look for causes, not just treat the effects. So a strength athlete can really benefit to make sure they have maximum pressure off the nerves going to all their muscle groups so they can optimize the potential out of that muscle group.
Sheena Leedham: Do you feel that most athletes take advantage of this chiropractic specialty? Why or why not?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: I think they don’t. Not because they choose not to, but because they don’t know about it. When there are less than 1,000 of us on the planet that do this, we are unfortunately a well-kept secret. That’s the main reason why we don’t have as many athletes as I’m sure we would. When they know about the benefits health-wise, performance-wise, and competition-wise that we could help provide, then they’ll be knocking down our doors. But a lot of it is just not knowing it’s out there. We are looking to change that.
Sheena Leedham: How do you suggest someone to locate NUCCA care in his or her area?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: Go to the National NUCCA website: www.nucca.org.
There is a doctor search there. The majority of NUCCA chiropractors, but not all, are listed on it. You can go to different states and locate the closest doctor to you. Or contact someone local and get a referral. Even here in Chicagoland we have several NUCCA doctors, and I’m happy if someone is closer, say two hours north of me, to send them to one of my colleagues.
Sheena Leedham: You beam of positivity and enlightenment. Is there any other message you’d like to leave with our readers?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: One of our tag lines is healthy by choice not by chance. A lot of our health, lack of health, or optimal health is a whole bunch of daily choices we make—whether we eat the donut or apple, whether we go train or sleep in and hit the snooze button, whether we make regular chiropractic adjustment appointments or sluff it off until we feel better. One of my biggest talking points here at the office is that your health is not how you feel, it’s how you feel and function. Most of people’s health problems are silent. Most of the deadliest diseases and conditions in this country are silent. This misalignment of your atlas, your C1 bone, and subluxation for many people is silent. You live your life through the nervous system. You want to be proactive, not reactive. Don’t wait until something hurts to try to fix it. Look at those keys to health. We are very holistic, vitalistic beings. The human body is, it’s an amazing thing. You have to get rest, you have to move your body, you have to eat well. Your positive mental attitude and emotions, the nerve flow and alignment, your spirituality, and what you are thinking all tie into who we are. Those are very important to address constantly and to always try to improve a little bit at a time. At the very least, you are going to optimize your potential. We want to treat causes not just the effects.
Sheena Leedham: How can you be contacted and where do you currently provide services?
Dr. Bryan Laneville: Check out our website: http://www.chicagolandnucca.com/index.asp.
I’d be glad to consult with anyone local or refer anyone out that may be out of the area or state.
