When Conventional Medicine Fails to Resolve Post‑Concussion Headaches

by Dr. Gerald H. Smith

Conventional medicine has made great advances in their evaluation of post-concussion traumas. Unfortunately, they lag behind in one major aspect in their realm of treatment, that is, the structural component of post-concussion trauma. In 1983, I had the good fortune of meeting a chiropractor from Ireland. Dr. Cleo Bludworth who was one of those rare geniuses who never received the proper accolades he deserved. Dr. Bludworth shared with me an ingenious clinical discovery he made; the subtle motion of the base of the skull that unfortunately gets reversed when the body gets traumatized. Why is this so significant? Because when the dural membrane system within the skull gets tensioned, it triggers off the sensory nerves of the 5th cranial or trigeminal nerve. This is the reason for constant headaches that post-concussion victims suffer and conventional medicine has no idea that this imbalance even exists.

Case in point. In 1995 Andrew Adams was sitting on the front row of a college hockey game. Three players collided and the 65 pound pane of glass came out and hit Andy in the head. It literally took Andy 4.5 months before he could get back to work. Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic, University of Pennsylvania, and many top tier neurologist were consulted with no positive resolution.

I met Andy for the first time in 2017 at a local meeting. We were introduced by one of Andy’s friends. After he told me how he was traumatized, I asked him if I could palpate his head. After determining the reversed motion of his skull, I told Andy I could fix him. He looked at me with a jaundiced eye and he told me “no you can’t.” An acquaintance of Andy’s was in a severe automobile accident in 2005 and suffered low back pain every day. After Andy heard that I reversed her twelve year back pain in one visit, he sheepishly came in for a cranial manipulation appointment. In one treatment, I corrected Andy’s reversed motion and he walked out without a headache for the first time in twenty-one years and nine months and his headaches never returned. Unfortunately, even the most prestigious universities, top medical centers in the world, and top tier neurologist are not privy to this information. The great Sir William Osler (one of the founders of Johns Hopkins) was once quoted, “you can only see what you were trained to see.” One of Dr. Smith’s most notable quotations is, “Most people would rather be killed by a notorious doctor, than be healed by a quack.”