Focus is defined as the concentration or energy put toward something.  Today, I want to talk about focus.  Doesn't it often times seem like something very easy to lose?  Be it at work, at home, or in your hobbies, keeping your focus can be a bit of an issue.  I'll give you a for instance.  At the end of December, I bestowed up my wife the opportunity for us to a do a 90 day home fitness program called P90X.  It's all the rage these days and she'd been wanting to try it.  For a solid month, we were able to sustain our focus toward the program, coming home every day and doing a 60-90 minute workout.  Last week, though, we got lazy and lost our focus.  In fact, the only thing we were focused on was postponing the program for a week. 
 
It was that lapse in dedication that got me thinking about focus.  I wonder how long many of us are able to stay focused on something positive like fitness...or eating better...or getting our heads on straight.  It seems so easy do those things, but we often end up focusing on less healthy habits instead.  I have a husband and wife couple that are patients in the office and they often talk of wanting to lose weight.  However, when presented with the opportunity to do so, they (admittedly) always find something else to do.  Recently, they told me this horrible story that they heard on the news.  Come to find out that they watch the news religiously every day for at least 2 hours.  I told them that if they spent half the time exercising (maybe just going for a walk) that they usually spend watching all of the horror stories in the world, then they'd be FOCUSING their time a lot more wisely.  We'll see if it fell on deaf ears...
 
The average attention span for an American is anywhere from 10-20 minutes for any given task.  There's a lot of positive things you can do in that relatively short time span.  And that's really the point that I'm trying to get at today.  Frankly, I think most of us focus our time on the wrong things.  Just as I told that couple, if we spend just half that time on more positive things that add to our lives and make us better, healthier people, then we're doing ourselves a favor.  How this relates to Upper Cervical is very simple (you know there'll always be a tie-in).  The frontal lobe of the brain's cerebral cortex (the front part of the brain) controls your ability to focus on a task.  Within that front part of the brain, there are millions of little interconnections.  Those interconnections communicate with each electrically, but in order to do so those electrical signals must be directed in some way.  They are given that direction by the brainstem, which acts like a router to sort out those signals to their destination.  Since the brainstem rests in a delicate area of the body (the junction between the head and neck), it can be affected by trauma and begin to malfunction.  If the brainstem is working abnormally, then the signals it routes will be transmitted abnormally...your focus will be affected accordingly. 
 
On a closing note, I watched the Super Bowl last Sunday and thought the following commercial was the best of the lot...if you didn't see it, it's worth FOCUSING a minute of your time...
 
 
Thinking good things for you, as always,
 
Dr. Chad