Chiropractic Treatment: A Key To Living Healthy To 100

Chiropractic treatment is a key component to living healthy to 100.  It is the only treatment for removing any impaired, asymmetric, or irritated areas along the spine for maintaining healthy energy flow.

Since I mentioned living to 100, here’s a quote from a famous comedian who lived to 100:

If I knew I was going to live this long I would’ve taken better care of myself! – George Burns on his 100th birthday.

Many of you reading this have parents who are in their 70′s or 80′s who feel this way.  Many of our parents are on multiple medications.  We see them degenerating fast, tired and fatigued, limited by various aches and pains, with no energy.  We say, “at least they are healthy”, meaning, they don’t have any disease crisis.

But the baby boomers among us tend to be mindful that we are likely to live into our 80′s, 90′s and even past 100.  We want to do everything possible to maintain the highest physical and mental capacities.  A recent article in the San Jose Mercury News (October 20, 2009) attests to the fact that our generation, the baby boomers, see the writing on the wall that our quality of life in our later years is dependent on how we regularly take care of ourselves each day.

We shouldn’t think that the common symptoms associated with aging are inevitable.  Our health is influenced by the cumulative choices we make daily regarding:

• what, when and how we eat
• when and how regularly we exercise and rest
• our attitudes
• how our nervous system functions unimpaired by minor energy-flow restrictions

I expect that most of you, are familiar with the first three, even though you may not consistently apply the healthy principles for them.  I’ll discuss the last one.

Unimpaired Nervous System Function

According to Gray’s Anatomy textbook, “The nervous system controls and coordinates all organs and structures of the human body.”   Thus, the nervous system influences all bodily functions.

The nervous system has two branches: the cerebrospinal nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. The first primarily regulates the functions we can intentionally control. It consists of the brain and spinal cord and all the nerves exiting from the spinal nerves. It sends and receives messages to the muscles, joints and the parts we can intentionally control. The other branch primarily regulates functions that we don’t have to think about, such as insulin being released from the pancreas, our heart pumping at the proper rate for our activity, etc. It consists of nerves that send and receive messages from the internal organs and to and from the spinal cord.

Anatomically speaking, both major branches of the nervous system are very intimately connected to the spinal bones, also called the vertebrae.  Due to this extremely intimate connection, any hindrance to smooth motion of the vertebrae will impair the function of the nervous system.  It’s important to mention that both branches of the nervous system will be impaired with any hindered motion or irritation of the spine.  Like an electrical circuit shorting out, hindrances in smooth motion of the spine can disrupt nervous system communication from the spine to the organs or tissues the nerves are connected to.

For example, if the particular nerve impairment from the spine sends and receives messages to your biceps muscles, then the strength of your biceps will be weaker.  If the nerve impairment from the spine sends and receives messages to the thyroid, your thyroid function will be hindered, which may result in contributing to too little thyroid hormones secreted.  The bottom line is where ever there is an area of hindered or irritated spinal motion, these tissues or organs will have impaired energy flow from the nervous system.  Chiropractors call this the vertebral subluxation complex or vertebral subluxations.

How Do Vertebral Subluxations Occur?

Vertebral subluxations occur in the course of life.  Here are some examples:

• turns and twists into extreme positions, or trip and fall during kids’ normal play
• mothers carrying their squirming babies while holding a cell phone with their ear against their shoulder
• weekend warriors in an impromptu basketball game
• sedentary office workers working on their weekend home improvement project
• professional athletes moving, turning, twisting, running and jumping
• in normal vaginal birth, the infant moves through the birth canal with compression, turning and twisting of the neck and spine
• over-working executive who does not get enough sleep or exercise, sits at his desk many hours a day, often in bad posture

Who has vertebral subluxations?  Essentially everyone!

Do Vertebral Subluxations Cause Pain?

Sometimes.  Many people who have vertebral subluxations feel no pain.  Pain from vertebral subluxation often only occurs when the impaired or hindered vertebral motion has been occurring for a long time or has repetitively occurred. Or pain may occur with a sudden wrong movement.  Nevertheless, whatever tissue or organ is associated with the vertebral segment that is subluxated will have impaired function.  The impairment of function will often eventually result in some sort of pain or level of dysfunction in whatever tissue or organ the irritated nerves are associated with however.

Chiropractic Treatment for Correcting Vertebral Subluxations

Chiropractors are the only doctors with extensive training to correct vertebral subluxations.  We do so by various manual techniques, some of which I have discussed in further detail in previous articles and on my website.  By correcting any asymmetric, impaired, or irritated motion of the spinal column and associated joints, the nervous system can express the best communication possible to and from the spine to all the organs and tissues of the body.  Therefore, to live as healthy a life as possible, everyone should receive occasional spinal adjustments from a chiropractic doctor.  Therefore, your chiropractor is an invaluable partner towards helping you maintain the greatest expression of nerve energy flow to and from all the organs and tissues of your body.

What About Medical Treatment Options?

Unfortunately, mainstream medicine still has not recognized what millions of people attest to:  chiropractic is the safest, and the most effective way of preventing and treating pain associated with the spine.  At the current North American Spine Society annual meeting held in San Francisco, CA this week, almost all of the presentations still focus on surgical and other invasive treatments for spine related disorders.   This still occurs even though since 1994, the Agency of Health Care Policy and Research¹ of the U.S. Department of Health found in an extensive research review that:

• conservative treatment such as spinal manipulation should be pursued in most before cases considering surgical intervention
• prescription drugs such as oral steroids, antidepressant medications and colchicine are not recommended for acute low back problems
• the risk of serious complications from lumbar spinal manipulation is rare
• there is currently no evidence supporting the use of trigger point, ligamentous and facet injections as treatment for acute back problems
• the panel found no evidence of benefit from the application of physical agents and modalities such as ice, heat, massage, traction, ultrasound, cutaneous laser treatment, trans-cutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (T.E.N.S.) and biofeedback techniques

Safety of Chiropractic Treatments

Chiropractic is widely recognized as one of the safest drug-free, non-invasive therapies available for the treatment of back pain, neck pain ², joint pain of the arms or legs, headaches, and other neuromusculoskeletal complaints.

One of the most telling evidences of the safety of chiropractic treatments compared to medical treatments for spine associated and other disorders is the malpractice insurance rates of practitioners.  The insurance company’s base their costs on statistics of risks associated with the particular treatment.  My malpractice insurance rates are far lower than the rate of medical doctors.

Chiropractic treatment is even safer, and far more effective, than using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s) commonly used for treatment of neck or back pain.  Research shows that approximately one-third of all hospitalizations and deaths related to gastrointestinal bleeding can be attributed to the use of aspirin or NSAID painkillers like ibuprofen³, which are commonly prescribed for spine associated pain.

Living Healthy to 100

Chiropractic treatment using spinal adjustments (aka, spinal manipulation) is a safe and effective method for assisting your body towards maintaining unimpaired nerve flow to and from all the organs and structures of the body, as well as pain relief.  It is beneficial in helping you maintain an active and healthy life as long as possible.  This is a necessary key component of maintaining your health, to the greatest vitality and fullest extent possible from birth and even into your old age!

Copyright © 2009; Douglas Husbands, DC, CCN. All rights reserved.

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