Every day more and more people are reevaluating their options when it comes to health care. They are realizing that wellness comes from within and that the best way to avoid illness and discomfort is to be “health conscious” in their daily lifestyles. In order to accomplish this we must first understand what it is we need to do to get and stay well.
The simple answer is that we need to adopt lifestyle behaviors that promote health – as opposed to those that lead to sickness. Because the truth is there is no drug that can fix our poor diet or remove the toxins from the processed food we eat. There is no drug that can undo our sedentary living or poor fitness – the answer is in our lifestyle choices. One major lifestyle choice we can adopt is to receive regular chiropractic adjustments, often called maintenance or wellness chiropractic care.
Understanding the reason for maintenance chiropractic care mandates an understanding of two major well documented concepts: 1) immobilization degeneration; and 2) the neurology of pain processing. A primary component of a subluxation (misalignment in the spine) is loss of normal motion in that area; and there is an immense body of research to support the ensuing degenerative process that will occur with this loss of motion and the logical conclusion of restoring movement to the spine.
You see, chiropractic is important for our health in many of the same ways that exercise is so crucial for our overall health and well-being. It’s all about movement. Movement feeds the brain, when we become misaligned we lose the normal motion of that spinal segment – which leads to degenerated joints and decreases these movement- rich nutrients to the brain (proprioceptive signals).
Immobilization degeneration is supported by over 40 years of research. The literature shows that a joint that has lost a degree of its normal movement will begin degenerating at a rate measurable within one week of onset. Its important to realize that this degenerative process will continue, often painlessly, until significant degeneration has occurred. A big reason why you don’t need to be in pain to be adjusted.
This loss of motion leads to an increase in nociceptors, which are receptors that fire when damage is detected, sending pain signals to the spinal cord and the brain. These impulses account for more systemic autonomic changes which can occur without the perception of pain. This is the same neural mechanism that allows serious disease processes to progress without warning.
What this basically means is that if we allow our body to progress in this direction, we are headed towards a state of alarm and adaptation, and ultimately fatigue, illness and early death. However, if we restore the motion to these spinal segments – through regular chiropractic care – we reduce stress hormone levels in the body and we restore proper brain-body communication, which in turn restores health and function in our body.
What happens when we reduce this stress load on our body? The many well documented improvements of chiropractic patients in areas like immune function, allergies, asthma, anxiety, colic, to name a few – show how far reaching of an effect this has on our body. Regardless of symptoms, the research shows we are much healthier with a properly moving spine than without.
