There have been plenty of studies showing the efficacy of chiropractic for recovery from injury and reduction of pain. It has been well accepted as recommended medical treatment for musculoskeletal pain, especially back pain, of course. Any time I am treating a patient I document what pain or lack of function we are addressing with treatment that day.
There is nothing controversial about treatment for these purposes. This is what I address on a day-to-day basis and do so with specific measurable outcomes involving decreased pain and/or increased function for the patient.
However, there are other important, hard to quantify, and difficult to measure medical needs that are likely fulfilled with a chiropractic adjustment. The primary one of these that I want to share some thoughts on is the need to reduce the physical effects of stress from the body. This is not a completely new idea, nor is it specific to chiropractic alone. However, the chiropractic adjustment addresses this problem in a unique, direct, and highly effective way.
“The Stress of Life”
I had never considered the idea that reducing stress on the body was such an important component of health until several years ago when I read “The Stress of Life”, a book by the famous endocrinologist Hans Selye, M.D. In it he demonstrates through descriptions of his observational experiments that general stress can boost one’s immune responses, but excesses of stress can essentially cause overload and be the cause of disease processes. “…nonspecific treatments have clearly shown that general stress can cure certain diseases; yet we also know that so often a latent disease tendency is transformed into a manifest malady by too much stress and strain” (Selye, 1976) .
It makes sense that an overload of one irritant can break down defenses in the body and allow an antigen or invader that otherwise would have been shunned away to propagate so that sickness or disease then ensues. An “irritant” might constitute, for instance, an inflammatory diet, certain drugs (both prescription and recreational), catecholamine hormones from emotional stress, or the presence of other chemicals one might come into contact with.
But what if restricted, immobilized tissues of the body actually create stress and might in-and-of themselves constitute an irritant? Well, this subject clearly needs more exploration and study, but I propose that this is actually the case.
People will typically go to the chiropractor because of pain.
They are having back pain, hip pain, neck pain, etc. and want it relieved. This needs no explanation here. However, underlying one’s pain are a nervous system response to a stimulus called nocioception. Nocioceptive signals to the nervous system are signals that are present when one is experiencing pain. However, it has been demonstrated that even when one does not feel pain, these signals can still be present.
In other words, when there is a critical mass of nocioceptive signals to a given area of the body, one then experiences pain (to be accurate, pain is one possible response to nocioceptive overload but may not be the only response). Like the straw that breaks the camel’s back, an overload of stresses that could include poor posture, past injuries, poor diet, or emotional stressors can be the initiating factor in the pain we feel.
So how is it possible that a chiropractic adjustment (or maybe Active Release Technique® treatments) could reduce stress on the body? We have to remember that it is not just increased movement (which would cause wear-and-tear, such as two surfaces of a joint grinding against each other causing osteoarthritis) that constitutes a type of stress, but also a lack of movement that can be a stressor.
Joints or regions of soft tissue that are “stuck” or in some way not moving enough can experience hypoxia (lack of blood flow), or possibly inflammation. And it can’t be overlooked that an area that does not move properly, in turn, does not send proper sensory input to the brain. The brain constantly responds to sensory input from every region of the body and if there is a lack of movement, it will inevitably lead to a faulty movement patterns and potentially chronic pain based on the response of the brain itself.
An adjustment creates proper movement at a spinal segment and therefor can help improve blood flow, reduce inflammation, and normalize signals sent to the brain. To what magnitude a single adjustment versus multiple adjustments creates this effect is an area that needs more research and that we will hopefully know more about in the next decade.
In my clinic, I officially treat people for pain and improvement of function, but I like to think of what we do, both chiropractic adjusting and Active Release Technique® soft tissue therapy, as a stress reduction on the body that may help a patient’s body deal more efficiently with the stresses encountered in life.
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