Chiropractic: 101
We sometimes forget as doctors, no matter what kind of doctor you are, that “doctor” actually comes from the Latin word for “teacher”. One of my favorite quotes is by Dr. Stephen Duff, DC. He says that “A Doctor of Chiropractic knows that the fool plays, “Doctor”-, while the real doctor within gets sick people well.”
A teacher is meant to invoke thought, and that is one of my main goals as a Doctor of Chiropractic. Chiropractic stemmed from the idea of putting the right to choose back into the hands of the people. If anything, I would like you to gain a sense of empowerment when it comes to your health.
In order to understand Chiropractic, we need to understand a little about how your body works. So let’s talk about the start of a new human being. All human life starts with two “half-cells.” A female egg cell meets together with a male sperm cell to form a new cell, a zygote cell.
Now that new cell gets a little bigger and starts to replicate. As it is doing all this replicating, all the cells are exactly the same. They are all the same until a certain point. At this certain point, they start to change into different cells that will form the very first system of the human body.
The first system to develop, always, every time is the Nerve System. Why is the Nerve System the first to develop? Because it is the master system for the entire body.
The Nerve System regulates and controls the function of every other organ, gland and tissue of your body. It controls all movements we make, the sensations we feel, the regulation of all body organs, and relates us to the outside world.
As a Chiropractor, I focus on a very special area of the Nerve System: The brainstem. The very first organ tissue of the Nerve System that develops is the brainstem. This is where all life starts and where the control center is housed for the trillions of cells humans are estimated to be composed of.
Even before the brain and the spinal cord can develop, the brainstem must be established. Nature saw fit to develop this important area first because it is the connection area between the brain above and the spinal cord below. Without the brainstem, the brain couldn’t connect with the body and the body couldn’t connect with the brain.
Brainstem tissue resides in the lower portion of the skull and within the two top bones of your neck, the Atlas and Axis vertebral bones. The brainstem is the switching station for all nerve tracts in the brain above and the spinal cord below. That is why it can effect any and all other parts of the human body.
Because of the important delicate nature of the brainstem, the hardest substance of the body protects it; bone tissue. Around the brainstem, we have three critical bones that I am concerned with: the occipital bone, which is part of the skull, and the atlas and axis vertebra, which make up the 2 top cervical bones of the spine. We call this area the occipital-atlantoaxial region.
There are an estimated 400 trillion nerve tracts that originate in the brain. Every fiber within the brain has a connecting nerve tract that runs throughout your entire body. The main portal of entry to the rest of the body for the brain is called the foramen magnum and is found on the occipital bone.
All the fibers and nerve tracts from the brain come together as they pass out through the foramen magnum. This is the brainstem. This area of nerve tissue runs all the way down to the second cervical vertebra or the axis bone.
The brainstem and nerve system work best when the base of the skull, atlas and axis bones are all lined up on each other so the opening through which the brainstem passes through is at its greatest. What happens when these bones slip and get locked out of alignment?
The opening gets closed off. When you close off the opening, it can put pressure on the brainstem. This pressure creates a disruption in the flow of nerve information. This is called a vertebral subluxation. A vertebral subluxation creates abnormal sensitivity, perception and behavior of the Nerve System.
What can cause a vertebral subluxation? We can boil it down to this: A vertebral subluxation results from a failure of the body to adapt to some stress or combination of stresses that continuously impact the body on a daily basis. The stresses are an unlimited combination of three general types: physical, chemical and emotional stress.
Any combination of these stresses can weaken the body to the point where they can produce a vertebral subluxation. Physical stress could be the result of a car accident, fall or slip down some stairs or abnormal twisting of the neck during the birthing process. In fact, often our first subluxation occurs from the modern birthing process with its over-exaggeration of physical, chemical and emotional stresses.
Chemical stress can come from the foods we eat that might contain pesticides or bacteria, smog or smoke in the air that we breathe in, or chemically enriched formula milk we give to our infant.
Emotional stress can come from a bad day at work, or a fight with a spouse or child, even from being around a group of people that you feel uncomfortable with, and even from our own negative thoughts.
These daily stresses breakdown the connective tissues that hold the spine together and create a weakness. This weakness allows the spine to breakdown and gets locked in a stressed position. You can still move and get around, but that stress is always there.
When these stresses result in a subluxation or locked abnormal position in the upper cervical spine, it sets off a chain reaction of abnormal function and structural changes.
To compensate for the locked position of the upper cervical spine, compensations arise. For example, let’s say that the atlas bone, the uppermost bone of your neck, slips right of its normal position and puts pressure on your brainstem. To compensate for that abnormal position and to relieve some of the tension in the spine, the head will tilt up on the right.
Now your brain uses your eyes to see the world. The brain senses that your head is tilted up and has to do something about it so it can see the world on a level field. To compensate for the head tilt, it will usually raise the opposite shoulder. Because the shoulder is higher on one side, it now needs to compensate for that by rising up the opposite hip.
What do you think your spine now looks like now? Instead of being all neatly stacked upon each other supporting the load evenly, certain parts of your spine are working unevenly. This uneven support results in muscle imbalances and abnormal movements throughout the rest of the body.
This uneven contortion of the spine progressively puts wear and tear on your spine. The areas that usually break down first are the discs and joints. Long before any structural change is noticed in the spine, functional changes have occurred but are a lot more discreet in their presentation.
A subluxation irritates the brainstem and nerve system and interferes with its potential to function at 100%. If the brainstem is functioning at less than 100%, it causes less energy to reach its end product: that end product can be the heart, kidneys, lung or a muscle of the back.
We now have a depleted nerve supply. For an organ or gland to work, it must have full electrical potential or what we call in Chiropractic, a mental impulse. A subluxation cuts down on that mental impulse. Supply cannot meet demand.
Some possible presentations of this depleted function could be irritability, trouble sleeping, nausea, neurological deficits, indigestion, decreased concentration or muscle imbalance. Unfortunately, most of the time, a vertebral subluxation doesn’t show any noticeable symptoms, just depleted function or chemical imbalance.
The goal of Chiropractic is not to treat any specific symptom, sickness or disease. The goal is to help restore healthy function. Without healthy function, you can’t have a complete expression of well-being. And all we want is for you to be well.
- Jarek Esarco, DC, CACCP
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