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How Treating Your back May Help Your Insides!
While chiropractic treatment is getting more recognition for helping joint and muscle problems, many people still reject the idea that manipulation might help problems outside the spine.
Of course, the idea of spinal manipulation improving the health of the whole body, including the internal organs, is nothing new to the chiropractic or osteopathic professions. We have seen patients recover from all sorts of conditions when the spine is corrected; it has become second nature to us.
The spine is such an integral, key structure in the body. In fact, it is one of the first recognizable structures in the developing embryo, and the nerves that branch out from it help the embryo develop properly. This core structure also controls and coordinates all the bodily functions in the adult, including digestion, breathing, heart rate, even hormone balance.
From a wellness viewpoint, it makes perfect sense that correcting problems in the spine can have body-wide effects. If there is an alignment problem in the area of the spine that supplies nerve flow to the stomach, the nerves can become irritated and will not send proper messages to the organ. This is sometimes called “spillover.” If the stomach is not getting its proper nerve supply, that could interfere with its function, lower its resistance, and make it more susceptible to problems like ulcers. If a chiropractor realigns the spine, it stands to reason that the nerve flow would be normalized. Better nerve flow to the stomach could then improve its healing capacity, helping it to recover.
Chiropractors often make the point that our treatments are not specific for any diseases, other than spinal problems. But many conditions resolve when the spine is treated.
A frequent example of this type of healing can be seen with migraine patients. My patients are typically told that there is no way chiropractic care can help migraine, because this type of headache occurs entirely within the skull. However, this is an oversimplified view of the condition. Migraines are due to overexpansion of the blood vessels in the brain. However, those blood vessels have a nerve supply that controls their size, and some of this nerve supply comes from the neck. Correcting problems in the joints and muscles of the neck can normalize nerve flow to the blood vessels, which explains the results we get with these cases.
So what does the research say about chiropractic’s effects on internal problems? A study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics surveyed over 5,600 patients who had completed a course of chiropractic care. The patients were asked if they noticed improvement in their health outside of the spine. The study showed that up to 27 percent of the patients indicated they had noticed such improvement, in areas such as easier breathing, better circulation and improved digestion.
I was taught that side effects are common in medicine. In fact, Eli Lilly, who founded Lilly Drug Company, is known for saying, “There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect.” An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that side effects of prescription drugs are the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.
But with wellness treatment, it is normal for a different type of “side effect” to appear; namely, health problems that the patient was not even being treated for will improve. Treat someone for back pain, and their heartburn improves? Or treat neck pain, and headaches resolve? Now those are the types of side effects I can handle.
While chiropractic treatment is getting more recognition for helping joint and muscle problems, many people still reject the idea that manipulation might help problems outside the spine.
The spine is such an integral, key structure in the body. In fact, it is one of the first recognizable structures in the developing embryo, and the nerves that branch out from it help the embryo develop properly. This core structure also controls and coordinates all the bodily functions in the adult, including digestion, breathing, heart rate, even hormone balance.
From a wellness viewpoint, it makes perfect sense that correcting problems in the spine can have body-wide effects. If there is an alignment problem in the area of the spine that supplies nerve flow to the stomach, the nerves can become irritated and will not send proper messages to the organ. This is sometimes called “spillover.” If the stomach is not getting its proper nerve supply, that could interfere with its function, lower its resistance, and make it more susceptible to problems like ulcers. If a chiropractor realigns the spine, it stands to reason that the nerve flow would be normalized. Better nerve flow to the stomach could then improve its healing capacity, helping it to recover.
A frequent example of this type of healing can be seen with migraine patients. My patients are typically told that there is no way chiropractic care can help migraine, because this type of headache occurs entirely within the skull. However, this is an oversimplified view of the condition. Migraines are due to overexpansion of the blood vessels in the brain. However, those blood vessels have a nerve supply that controls their size, and some of this nerve supply comes from the neck. Correcting problems in the joints and muscles of the neck can normalize nerve flow to the blood vessels, which explains the results we get with these cases.
I was taught that side effects are common in medicine. In fact, Eli Lilly, who founded Lilly Drug Company, is known for saying, “There is no such thing as a drug without a side effect.” An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that side effects of prescription drugs are the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.
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