Dr. Sasha B Transcript

All right, so my name is Dr. Sasha Blaskovitch. Patients generally refer to me as Dr. B as my last name is hard to say. The way I got into this realm of medicine, I’m by profession, a chiropractor, which gave me the basis of biomechanics, neurology, orthopedics, pathology, physiology, anatomy, which allowed me a platform to go out and research and learn more about something that wasn’t available in my curriculum, as far as it relates to the problem that I sustained about 28 years ago, and so what I sustained 20 years ago was an injury playing football.

And I got wrapped up by a linebacker as the playing of the quarterback, and it wasn’t a hard hit, but he wrapped my arms up, so I couldn’t brace myself for the impact going backwards. And my helmet and head hit the hit the ground, which they’ve done multiple times before, but whatever reason that time well, the factors were against me. And so I ended up sustaining, by hitting the back of my head on the ground, what was diagnosed on the field there as a concussion. And that, you know, the recovery was, as usual, rest and darkness and, and just time. And so within about three or four weeks, I was back on the field. And, you know, no real noticeable changes until about five, six months later, I started having blurry vision where I could no longer see the the whiteboard or the projector screen at the front of the lecture hall University. From where I was sitting, and I needed to go get glasses, and then slowly after that, I started developing, you know, regular neck pain. And then the headaches came and some of those headaches were very debilitating, to the point where they put me out of commission for a couple of days. Forgetfulness, irritability, difficulty multitasking, which I didn’t have before that– full, constant fullness in my, in my ears, like I was up in a plane, and I needed to constantly equilibrate my, my inner passageways. And then, and then that progressed, and it came and went and came and went, and I had already decided to go into chiropractic.

And thankfully, you know, I proceeded with that, and it was in chiropractic that I started learning a little bit more about the anatomy and the neck and the head. And obviously, you know, the diagnosis of concussion was what I went with for the longest time. And there was always something interesting that I would always try to portray to physicians or therapists when I would, when I would convey my, my concerns, if they were interested as to, you know, what was wrong with me, because I would, you know, pretty much shut down when I’d have in those episodes of those headaches and the neck pain, that I would always tell them when I’d be laying on my side, if I always told them something felt like it wasn’t connected anymore. And so I’d say when I’m laying in bed on my side, and I just initiate lifting my head, I would feel this slosh or this slide or this slip, and then when I rest my head back down, it would all kind of slip back. And so I had this notion that something was not connected, or something that was disconnected as a result of that impact. But I didn’t know much more about that. And then I went into, you know, chiropractic finished chiropractic, still under the presumption that I had a concussion, and I was living with a permanent post concussive symptoms, only to realize about 12 years into being a chiropractor, that something called motion X ray existed, and I thought to myself, “Wow, that seems very logical.” Motion X-ray. Doing actual movements and then watching what’s happening inside the person’s body part while they’re moving. And there’s there’s got to be normal tolerances and norms that one would expect, doing that type of analysis, because we obviously are all taught, you know, range of motion testing with but externally viewing them or using a goniometer, or some kind of a measuring device to look at how much range of motion a person has. And that was then taught to me as this is a, you know, credible way of determining someone’s either good or bad health or good or bad range of motion. And to me that, you know, I often noted that I generally had a really good range of motion, but when I was very symptomatic, I didn’t have a good range of motion. And so having a good range of motion wasn’t really a to me a credible marker of spinal health as far as my neck was concerned. But anyways, I discovered that motion X-ray existed and I thought “Wow, that’s pretty neat.”

And so I actually took a week off at the time I was working in the Netherlands, and I took a week off and went to the States and had myself scanned with this motion X-ray, and as the practitioner was explaining this to me, it came became clearly evident to me that I had an unstable upper neck because I, you know, even though I didn’t have much experience or knowledge or or know what normal abnormal was I said to myself, and I said to him like, “Well, that shouldn’t be happening, should it?” He said, “Absolutely not.”

And so what was happening was my top neck bone, my atlas, was sliding sideways, off of partially off of the second neck bone in both directions. And he then. he proceeded to explain to me what that meant. And then that sent me on on a pathway of “Wow, I gotta learn more about this.” And I did. And there’s a lot of information out there. And so the last roughly 20 years, I’ve been basically devoting my practice life to learning more about that and dealing with patients like that. And so ultimately, what I came to the epiphany of was that I didn’t, per se specifically sustained a concussion by the definition of the concussion, that there’s more to what I have. And that more that I have is actually permanent ligament damage in my upper neck, and the upper to neck bones, they’re the most mobile bones normally in the whole entire spine, because the heads got to rotate and swivel and do all these things. And so when that already great amount of range of motion becomes even greater, there’s something that happens, and that’s something is that you basically end up having that C1 or that atlas slip sideways or rotate too much, relative to C2, and what’s being protected in that zone is the lower part of the brainstem. And that lower part of the brainstem is a basically a funnel for all bodily activity. So, everything that originates in the brain funnels through the brainstem goes to the body, all the information coming back from the body has got to funnel through that brainstem and go to the brain. And so not to mention, as far as–in addition to that information, there’s also fluid drainage or fluid dynamics that occur in that area that if the atlas and the axis are not properly positioned or sliding too far there, A) irritating the brainstem physically on a recurrent but mild and low grade level, which if anybody knows neurology, even just touching your funny bone or hitting it, you know, softly, you’ll get that referral down to your pinky. And so you know that neurology is being irritated. When that happens in the central nervous system, you have a gamut of things that can happen that are all related to that part of the brainstem.

And so one of the most important nerves that that branches off that part of the brainstem is the vagus nerve. And if a person were to just you know, Google, what does the vagus nerve do? Or: what does the vagus nerve responsible for? A lot of the patients or people out there that have been diagnosed with, you know, both concussion or a gamut of other things such as dysautonomia, myalgic, encephalomyelitis, pots, chronic fatigue syndrome, they can basically attest to the symptoms that they’ve been experiencing, and have been labeled with those diagnoses are in often in many cases, vagus related, so the vagus nerve could be explained to show why they’re having those symptoms. And so I had this epiphany.

And so from there on, I started trying to figure out, you know, how do I mitigate this because even though chiropractic adjustments and other therapies that I had seemed to give me some temporary relief, it was never lasting. And oftentimes, they actually flared me up after an initial while, this actually feels better. And then within, you know, half hour, I would actually get flared up again. And it turns out that you know, doing stretches, doing adjustments, doing any kind of traction to that region, even though it may feel okay during the actual activity is on a lower level or a deeper level, providing the opportunity for that instability to further aggravate the brainstem with mechanical contact. And so any neurology that gets irritated, it has a refractory period where it’s irritated for a while until it finally settles down. And the central nervous is slower than the peripheral nervous system, in that it takes longer for that refractory period to go away. That’s why getting a bump on your spinal cord is way worse than getting a bump on your funny bone nerve. Because it’ll have a longer refractory period, and it’ll influence many systems in the body.

And so what I figured out is that the best treatment for me– and this was by dumb chance that I figured this out– because I was in Europe at the time practicing, and I was having what I thought was one of the worst headaches of my life, where I just wanted to push so hard on the spot in my neck that felt like it was somehow connected to my headache. But I wanted to literally push so hard that I broke my neck so that it would all go away. And in doing so I pushed hard enough that I got to probably the fifth or the sixth layer of muscles, which are the actual core stabilizers that are involuntary in this type of problem that by pushing so hard and so deep, and for so long, trying to actually hurt myself so that might create other pain so that the initial pain would get better, I had the first time in my, in my life since I’ve had this problem where I literally within a half hour of doing that felt my symptoms lifting away. And it was a euphoric moment because I was in denial. I was like, “Is this possible?” And sure enough, within 45 minutes after doing that, my headache was completely gone. I had energy back, I had clarity back, I could multitask. I wanted to change the world. It was it was amazing. I felt like this is what I should feel like all the time.

And then obviously that went back to sort of my regular baseline and then the next time I had the same kind of headache, not even remembering what I did the first time I just again, through sheer anger wanted to, you know, push so hard on my neck, that I would you know, hurt something else to make my original pain go away and I had the same thing happened to me. And then I thought, “This is interesting.” And I started trying that out on patients.

I’m saying saying to them, “I’m going to do this, I’m gonna press here, and I’m going to hold on a push real hard, it’s going to recreate your symptoms into your head. And, but I think that by doing so the baseline symptoms that you came in with will subside somewhat.” And so the first few patients that I’ve tried that on, you know, one of them I recall was a lady that I had daily headaches for 20 years after an automobile collision, that nothing that she would do would help. So she was heavily medicated. And so I said, you know, what, what have you got to lose, let me try this on you. And sure enough, I did that as hard as I could. And I was literally shaking while I was doing it. She was you know, she had faith in what I was telling her. So she let me do it. And she called me that afternoon said: “For the first time in 20 years, I absolutely have no headache, enjoying, you know, playing with my kids. And I’m able to multitask at home.” And so then she came back, we did it again. And so I tried teaching her how to do that herself. And she she was able to embrace doing that herself. And she’s still fine today.

And that’s the thing that I actually discovered for myself is I started doing that to myself. And the whole reason that that happens is the physiology of this problem is that the instability, which is a result of permanent ligament tears, or stretches and ligaments are fibrous connective tissue that doesn’t have the ability to recoil and heal. So when you stretch ligaments, the remains stretched or torn, and they never really patch back up by shortening. If they patch back up, it’s scarring in that elongated position. So that equates to having excessive motion to the components that those ligaments attached to or used to use to attach to. And because that’s a compromise. Now, the muscles that are in that same region that are the deep core muscles, the fifth and the sixth layers, they have the ability to involuntarily sense themselves being stretched. And once they sense themselves being stretched, they involuntarily contract just like any reflex that we would do on a patient. It’s a stretch reflex. And so these muscles in areas of unstable joints undergo that stretch phenomenon repeatedly because the joint is unstable and their their natural responses to contract. So when they’ve undergone, you know, stretch, contract, stretch contract repeatedly and involuntarily, they don’t choose to do that, they start to shorten down, they start to increase their resting tone or tension. And so when they do that, then we get a rigid muscle that shows to the outer world and the therapist as a restricted range of motion. But the true restriction is not actually in the joints, the true restriction is the fact that the muscle is gone from being responsive and pliable, to being rigid. And when it’s in that rigid state, it either needs a lot of time to get out of that rigid state, or it needs something to expedite removal of lactic acid and forcing the fibers to let go.

And so what I’ve discovered is that sheer mechanical sustained pressure on those spots accomplishes that. And so by pressing on those muscles, it forces the fibres to slowly give out or give way I should say, but at the same time it through a longer period of time of at least 20 seconds squeezes the lactic acid out of that muscle tissue and into the interstitial interstitial spaces around the muscle fibers where the lymphatics are waiting to scavenge and pick up whatever garbage is there. So, if you give the lymphatics the time, because they’re slow, they will pick up that lactic acid and remove it so that when you release pressure off of that muscle, because it’s a sponge, basically, it’ll soak up whatever’s coming into it. And that’s fresh blood with oxygen and nutrients. And so then you regenerate or you reset that, you know, trigger point as it is, or that piece of muscle tissue so that it becomes functional. And then as you go along the path of that muscle and pick away at all the different trigger points, you actually accomplish what would be deemed as stretch or elongation of the muscle without actually having pulled it in two directions.

And so by releasing all those trigger points, a you elongate the muscle and restore that quote unquote range of motion, but at the same time, and more importantly, that muscle is restored back into a functional active state so that it can actually control that instability better, until it eventually increases its tone again and locks up. Which then you just repeat the cycle. And so I’ve been repeating the cycle of self treatment for the last 19 years on a daily basis. And it keeps me in a level of, I guess, high, high level of function. Most days, I still get flare ups that I still get headaches, but I’m able to basically revert that quite quickly almost 95% of the time and the other 5% there’s nothing that I do that can help but that’s you and far between where that happens and so it’s been a blessing in disguise to me.

My treatment protocol is basically first off with people who have been diagnosed with concussion or come in with a diagnosis of pots or dysautonomia, or me or CFS, or any gamut of those things, even MS and ALS will come come into my door. First off is to basically assess whatever imaging they already have. So if they have MRIs and CT scans that were, you know, they were told are unremarkable are inconclusive or normal, I will look at those imaging scans to see if there are subtle abnormalities that tend to put me in the direction of maybe there’s instability here. I will then follow that up, if there is that subtle sign of instability, I will follow it up with the conducting a motion extra on these patients myself. And I have the capacity to do that in my Washington State clinic and in my British Columbia Canada clinic. And then, based off of that, I can pinpoint that way, treat them exactly where those muscles would be compensating for this type of instability. And then, assuming it’s successful, and they show a benefit from that I can try to teach them how to do that themselves so that they can carry on on a daily basis in self-mitigation. And most of these patients get diagnosed with vestibular problems. And, I’ve seen at least from my observation, clinical observation is that the vast majority of them don’t get magical results from vestibular therapy, because their actual vestibular system isn’t damaged. And again, if you’d let research what the vagus nerve, and even the ninth nerve before that is responsible for, you can tell why the person might display vestibular type symptoms, even though their just regular systems is not messed up.

And anyways, this epiphany that I had one of my patients said, I shouldn’t, you know, “You should write a book about this.” And I said, “Oh, that’s, that’s a good idea.” And he said, “People need to know about this.” And I said, “I know, it’s on my bucket list.” And he said, “Maybe I can help you write a book.” And so I said, “Sure.” And so basically, he said, “Let me interview you. Let me ask you questions, you answer them off the cuff. And we’ll put that into a book. And we can publish that. And people can learn about this.” And so we did that. Thankfully, it all worked out. And he did a great job. And so we actually named it: Dr. B’s Concussion Breakthrough.

So again, I was diagnosed with a concussion. However, I believe that, you know, the larger percentage of my problem was the upper cervical instability. And I think for people out there that are dealing with post reading a long term post concussive symptoms that aren’t getting, you know, magical results, that is possible that they have an upper neck problem that needs to be assessed. And the best way to do that is with motion X -ay and, and then follow that up with whatever treatment seems to be the best based off of what’s found off of the imaging.

And anyways, as a case example, you know, I’ve even had recently a patient who came to me diagnosed with, unfortunately diagnosed with ALS, so Lou Gehrig’s Disease, came in with basically a walker– young 35 year old father of three. Basically, they gave him a palliative diagnosis, you know, of ALS, and there’s nothing that can be done. He does some research thankfully on his own because his doctors didn’t point him in that direction. We did the motion X-ray looked at all his other imaging found that he actually had ligament damage which is upper cervical ligament damage. I was able to coordinate referral to a neurosurgeon who is an expert in this, the gentleman had neurosurgery to fuse his C1 and C2 and his ALS has miraculously gone. So, the diagnosis was not truly ALS, it was the diagnosis they gave him, but he actually had upper cervical instability irritating his brainstem to the level and to the degree that he got ALS-like symptoms and was labeled with that. And so the course of treatment for that was palliative: “Let’s make sure that you’re comfortable until the inevitable happens.”

And thankfully, the upper cervical instability that we diagnosed led to surgical fusion of C1 and C2 and the brainstem is no longer being irritated and compressed and his ALS symptoms are all gone from the moment he woke up. And that’s just one example and there’s hundreds of examples a year like that that comes through my clinic.

That’s pretty much it. I could talk forever, but that’s kind of a summary.

Thank you so much.