Quantum Chiropractic found a playful way to highlight the connection between chiropractic care and mental health this holiday season… With the Grinch! The famously cranky Dr. Seuss character stopped by the office at 357 Ridge Road in Queensbury, NY with a bag of onions. He then received first rate treatment and care from Chiropractor Dr. Bruce Steinberg and his wife Jen Steinberg, a certified clinical chiropractic assistant and office manager.
Quantum Chiropractic educates their patients about the link between chiropractic care and mental health. Dr. Bruce (as he is fondly known) and Jen work with their team to answer the question “Why is my body doing this?”
Having the Grinch come into the office was fun and whimsical way to introduce a serious topic. This topic: use of chiropractic care in improving mood and lowering anxiety. Dr. Bruce spends both time and energy to find ways to communicate the importance of chiropractic care and mental health; he finds his vocation closer to a “calling” than a job. When he was 19, he was helped by the same chiropractic care that he now provides for his patients. During a 2018 interview with Dr. Daniel Knowles for The Mile High Podcast, Dr. Bruce said, “I got my first adjustment when I was 19 years old and the story goes way back to a traumatic birth and delivery process, and I was a sick kid, sick all the time. Allergies, tubes in my ears kinda thing and when I received my first adjustment, I remember it was C2. I remember breathing better for the first time and my sinuses cleared out. I knew immediately from my first adjustment what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” Chiropractic care helped Dr. Bruce to the point that he wanted to dedicate his life to the practice of it.
Dr. Bruce is passionate about chiropractic care and caring for his patients. He wants people to be aware that there is a link between chiropractic care and mental health. During a recent interview, Dr. Bruce said, “Most people don’t know that there is a link between chiropractic care and mental health. So public perception is that chiropractic is a treatment for muscular and skeletal pain. Back pain, neck pain, sciatic pain and headaches. What was discovered, is that the nervous system controls and coordinates everything in the human body and this is the connection between brain and body. The whole point of chiropractic care is to remove the roadblocks, or interference as we call it, between the brain and the body via the spine and when that happens people work better.”
More people are turning to chiropractic care for mood support and mental health. Dr. Bruce understands, and teaches the science behind the connection: “When people struggle with things like anxiety, depression and stress in general it creates inflammation in the human body. Inflammation is kinda like goldilocks, you don’t want too much, you don’t want too little. it gotta be just right. If you have too little you can’t fight infections, if you have too much that is what a lot of the diseases over the age of 50 are related to; Depression, cancer, diabetes, stroke, heart disease. The one thing that they all have in common is excessive inflammation.”
Dr. Bruce – when teaching in a classroom setting or educating his patients – talks about the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve – located in the upper neck – is the longest nerve in the autonomic nervous system. When the vagus nerve is stimulated, you feel calmer, more compassionate and clearer; this benefits both your nervous system and mental health.
Our day to day lives can easily shift our nervous system into stress mode… This is an inherent survival mechanism, that due to the hectic nature of the world we live in can be chronically activated. The vagus nerve serves as the anti-inflammatory nerve for the whole body. As we are constantly reacting to our environment, this creates inflammation, and the excessive inflammation is connected to mental health. This nerve starts at the brain, and extends down into the lungs, heart, and intestines. It has a physical effect on swallowing, sweating, digestion, speech, and heart rate; it is also highly integrated into the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system, which is a system of nerves that relaxes your body in response to danger and stress. Quantum Chiropractic uses diagnostic tools, technology and screening questions to work towards lowering patients stress levels and improving their mood.
In 2020, Dr. Bruce set up a case study. Reduction in Anxiety & Dysautonomia in Five Adult Patients Undergoing Chiropractic Care for Vertebral Subluxation: A Case Series & Review of the Literature. Dr. Bruce explains: “We followed five people who were diagnosed not by us, by a medical provider with anxiety and some of them were treated even with pharmaceuticals. What we did was, we ran what are called thermal scans and the technology that we use in this office will show us where the nervous system is actually under stress.” The study utilized the Hamilton anxiety form (Ham-A). This form is one of the first rating scales to measure the severity of anxiety symptoms. This is a 10 question form, and the person ranks themselves according to 10 categories. In the five cases used for the study, the patients anxiety score was lowered substantially after the 12 visits. “
Another tool that is utilized in the office is HRV, which stands for Heart Rate Variability. The research has discovered over the last 2 decades HRV is the # 1 tool to determine how healthy a person is and shows how a person is adapting to stress. Quantum Chiropractic uses their technology, screening questions, and science to change peoples mental health. When people are stuck in a sympathetic dominance, or the fight or flight mode, they are feeling stressed. The chiropractic adjustment removes the road block between the brain and the body and when that happens the nervous system will start to work better. The body, no longer in a state of stress, shifts to a state of ease and the mental health of the patient improves.
“We try to use technology to assist us in determining how well the person is actually working. It’s science. We know how to put science and clinical excellence in one package, and that’s our office.”
Dr. Bruce Steinberg graduated from Amsterdam High School in 1997, started the undergraduate curriculum at Fulton-Montgomery Community College from 1997 to 1999, then completed the undergraduate and Pre-Chiropractic curriculum at SUNY Cortland from 1999 to 2001; he then graduated Palmer College of Chiropractic, after attending from 2003 to 2006. He is certified by both the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners and the NYS Board of Education to practice Chiropractic.
The Quantum Chiropractic team is made up of Dr. Bruce and Jen Steinberg, Dr. Kate Clodgo-Gordon, chiropractic assistant Ashley Lotich, and Nutritionist Sherry Trombley. The practice is currently looking for a new team member to fill a Chiropractic assistant position. For more information, please visit Quantum-chiro.com
