Right from the start I want to clear up the headline of this article. Chiropractic doesn’t have curative powers because the curative powers lie within the body. The great gift of chiropractic is its ability to release those curative powers. But that’s getting ahead.
To understand chiropractic we must first explore the capacity of the human body to heal and express health. Even the National Institute of Health states that the human body has tremendous self-healing capacity and regeneration after injuries and pathogen invasions. They do however miss the mark so let’s take aim.
The framework I want to discuss lies within the Vitalistic Philosophy of health. Here are the basic tenets that we will build on:
- The human body is intelligent. If this isn’t evident hopefully it will become so soon.
- The human body is self-aware. Another way of saying this is that the body is self-monitoring. It is continually monitoring thousands upon thousands of reactions and processes in the body. This includes heart rate, respiratory rate, blood oxygen, blood glucose, hormones, neurotransmitters, enzymes, hormones, etc.
- The human body is self-regulating. It is continually taking all the information it gathers and makes second by second adjustments to maintain balance or homeostasis.
- The human body is self-healing. All healing comes from within the body. The human body is in a continual state of repair and healing. From cuts and scrapes, fractures, infections the body heals itself.
Here’s a related post I made: Chiropractic Restores Balance to the Nervous System.
I know that is a bit different from the perspective of medicine but the two perspectives are not exclusive of one another. Medicine’s approach is a bit more invasive and manipulative.
Let’s build on those 4 attributes of the body. What system in the body performs, oversees, or coordinates all those functions. Hopefully your answer is the nervous system. The role of the central nervous system is to control and coordinate all body functions.
What Happens with Chronic Illness and Disease?
The term chronic is applied to any condition that persists for three to six months or longer. At this point we can say that the body has failed to perform its job of regulation and healing.
We might want to ask why? On the one hand we often never know. But, one way to view it is that something must be interfering with the brain and nervous system’s ability to monitor, regulate and heal.
Some form of interference is interrupting the communication pathways between the brain and the body.
What Does Chiropractic Do?
Many people think of chiropractors as back doctors and while that is understandable given that we tend to work on the spine, it is at the same time very inaccurate. Chiropractors are brain and nervous system doctors. The spine is both the easiest access to the nervous system and the location of the most accessible interference to the system.
From the top of the neck to the tip of the tailbone there are a total of 28 bones in the spine and pelvis. The spine houses the extremely delicate and important brainstem and spinal cord. Between every two bones nerves exit and travel to every tissue and organ in the body.
If a spinal bone loses its ability to move properly or gets stuck, it puts tension and pressure on the nerves and affects whatever tissue that nerve goes to. This misalignment is called a subluxation. This might cause pain but often does not. But, it does cause an alteration of function of the tissue that nerve goes to.
These subluxations are the primary cause of interference between the brain and the body. Initially they cause some distortion of function that might not even be perceived. Over time they eventually cause symptoms and will progress into illness and potentially eventually a disease.
3 Advantages Explaining the Power of Chiropractic
Most people fail to utilize chiropractic to its fullest. They present seeking relief from some ailment and often stop chiropractic care once they get relief. Here are the advantages of chiropractic.
1. Restoring balance to your structure. Your skeletal system is like any other structure. If it is out of balance there is added wear and tear to the joints, muscles, and added tension to the nerves. The wear and tear to the joints results in degenerative arthritis that is a significant cause of disability.
Restoring and maintaining structural balance means that your body is working as efficiently as possible with the constant stress of gravity. If your pelvis, shoulders, and head are level with the horizon the stress to your body has been minimized. This reduces the wear and tear on your joints and minimizes pressure, tension, and interference on your nervous system.
2. Restoring and maintaining spinal and pelvic joint mobility. Joints have one purpose and that is to allow movement. When joints lose their mobility it causes a cascade of reactions in the body. Restricted joints bear greater stress that causes joint breakdown and the development of scar tissue. Joints that lose some mobility put added stress on other joints. All of this results in an accelerated wearing of the joints resulting in nervous system tension and degenerative arthritis.
3. Removing Nervous System tension, irritation, and interference. This is truly the gift of chiropractic. It is the nervous system that monitors, regulates, and heals. Any adverse tension or irritation of the nervous system interferes with its ability to do this. The result is a disturbance in the body’s ability to maintain balance and express health.
The power of chiropractic is not in what it does to a person but rather in what it releases or allows the body to do. The human body is wired to express vibrant health and vitality. If we can remove any impediments to the nervous system being able to monitor, regulate, and heal then the body is better able to navigate the stresses of life.
When you remove nervous system tension the body experiences a state of ease that is conducive to maintaining balance. We live in a soup of stress and there is nothing more powerful than chiropractic at helping the body both release that stress and become more resilient.
The real benefits of chiropractic are realized not from simply clearing tension from the nervous system but in living in this state ongoing. Symptoms are a very poor indicator of health and well-being. Keeping the nervous system clear allows the body the opportunity to function at its best.
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