One of the earliest cases that shaped how I think about cranial adjusting.
In my first year of practice, a man in his mid-30s came to see me. He looked much older than his age. For 10 years, he had been dealing with chronic pain throughout his entire body, an inability to sleep more than a few hours at a time, ongoing fatigue, and headaches.
The history traced back to a car accident a decade earlier: he had been driving at high speed, slid on ice, hit a tree, and then struck a house. He fractured his skull in multiple places. His symptoms began at that point and never resolved.
What I found
On examination, I found cranial bones that appeared locked and were not moving the way I’d expect. Given the history of a documented skull fracture, this seemed like a reasonable place to focus.
What I did
I spent about five minutes adjusting the cranial bones I’d identified as restricted, then had him return about a week later.
What changed
When he came back, the change was striking. He reported that after leaving my office, he had been too exhausted to make the drive home and had stopped at a friend’s house nearby to rest. According to his account, he slept for roughly three to four days straight. When he woke, he reported that his chronic pain, fatigue and other longstanding symptoms were gone. At follow-up a week later, he was sleeping normally and said he felt well. I didn’t see him again after that visit.
This is one patient’s account of an unusually dramatic response. I don’t fully understand why it happened the way it did or how typical it is, and it isn’t evidence that cranial adjusting will produce anything like this for someone else — most cases I see involve a more gradual course. I’m including it because it’s one of the cases that shaped how seriously I take a history of head trauma when I’m evaluating a patient.
Related reading
Read about cranial adjusting after head or facial injury, or see more real patient cases.