Head Tilt: Is your Head on Straight?

Head Tilt: Is your Head on Straight? by Elmira Family Chiropractic

Have you ever looked in the mirror and noticed your head seems tilted!?

Maybe one ear looks higher than the other, perhaps your glasses don’t sit straight, or maybe one side of your shirt collar rubs more than the other.

We see it time and time again in practice and some people just think it is normal or how God made them…Well neurologically speaking, your head position is directly correlated to the health and function of your upper neck or cervical spine.

Your head should sit square on your shoulders because this is how you perceive the world! If your head is on an angle, everything in your world becomes distorted. A head tilt or torticollis can affect everyone from infants to adults and is one of the most underexposed epidemics of the modern world.

Let’s start from square one.

We know that our brain and nervous system are the master control systems in the body. They control and regulate all function, all systems and all healing. The brain and spinal cord are encased in bone to protect these delicate structures and the spinal vertebrae should move freely to allow the body to adapt to its environment. When, not if, the vertebrae misalign, this can cause interference to the flow of the nerves and lead to compensatory patterns. We call these misalignments subluxations. 

For example, if you sprain an ankle, you limp to take pressure off the painful ankle, but in doing so you might distort your pelvis, low back, right on up to your neck causing your spine to be subluxated in multiple areas.

Now this is amazing!

It may not feel amazing, but your body’s innate intelligence is doing its best to keep you moving following the injury so it causes you to change your weight distribution. Now once the pain goes away you might think everything is ok, but the compensatory effects are likely still present.

Back to the head! If your upper neck misaligns or subluxates, your head often tilts in compensation. Head position in adults, kids and babies is associated with increased tone in the sternocleidomastoideus muscle (SCM). The function of the SCM is to protect the occipito-atlantal-axial (C0-C1-C2) joint and induce rotation and lateral flexion of the head and neck.

So, in simple terms if the first two bones in the neck go out (C1 or C2) then the muscles tighten in response and throws the head out of kilter. Not only does the head and neck go out of alignment but often one shoulder becomes higher than the other, the pelvis distorts and one leg may appear longer than the other. This is a direct result of a neurological insult to the brainstem and spinal cord.

In infants this is often diagnosed as a torticollis or a head tilt. Often these babies had a tricky birth or were born via C-section which caused structural and neurological damage to the upper neck. Usually, parents report they sleep with their head turned the same way, they often have difficulty feeding on one breast and their head is always tipped to one side in the car seat. 

A head tilt is also indicative of a brain delay because the brain controls posture. The brain develops from right to left in childhood and it is common to see a right head tilt in a right brain delay because the right side of the brain controls the tone of the muscles on the same side of the body. This can be common in kids with ADHD and autism (1). 

Often in the correction of an atlas (C1) subluxation, the doctor will adjust the high side of the head. For example, in a right head tilt you will adjust the left atlas. This activates the left cortico-cerebellar loop and increases the activation of the right side of the brain leading to an increase in nerve output to normalize tone on the right side of the body (2). In doing so we remove the interference to the brain communicating with the body, allowing for your nervous system to come back online and rebalance the body. Not only does this improve the tone and function of your muscles, but also your organ systems because it is all controlled by your nervous system. This is why we check your posture and why it is so important you keep your head on straight!

Dr. Thom

  1. Melillo R. Disconnected Kids. New York: Penguin Group; 2009.
  2. Hall, M. ICPA Module: Developmental Neurobiology. 2017 Apr 8-9; Toronto, ON.

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