Chirpractic Care! Everyone needs it!

In the perfect world, everyone would concentrate on living and being the best that they can be. Instead of waiting to get sick, they would strive to stay healthy. In America unfortunately we live in a world that has negative thoughts all around us. I say this because we only do things if we have to. Most people wait to do something good for themselves. Instead we wait until something bad has happened to react. Americans don’t watch what they are eating until they are overweight. They don’t take vitamins to prevent getting sick, they wait until they get sick to take antibiotics. They don’t stop drinking until they have gotten in trouble with the law.

The top reasons why American’s go to the doctor is to have checkups, when they hurt, or are sick. At the check ups doctor’s are making sure we didn’t get a disease, we are growing properly, and we don’t have cancer. If we are hurt or sick we go because we feel horrible, can’t move, can’t breathe, and want something to be fixed.

The top reason American’s go to the chiropractor is because of low back pain. American’s go when they can’t move or endure anymore pain. Most people don’t know that chiropractors do more than fix back pain. They make adjustments you to make sure the bones are in the proper place because when they are not it is called subluxation. Being subluxation free makes you function at 100% and they can start this process right after birth. You can go on a regular basis to stay healthy, function properly, and feel great. If you are asking yourself how or why, keep reading!

The Brain:

There are three parts of the brain: Cerebellum, Cerebrum, and Medulla. The Cerebellum controls balance and fine movements. Cerebrum is split in two hemispheres and controls memory, intelligence, senses, and more. The medulla is the brain stem and controls signals between the brain and spinal cord. If you get into an accident and damage the cerebellum or cerebrum you can live. You may not recover to 100%, but you will be alive. If you damage the medulla (brain stem) you cannot survive and will die. 

The brain stem is the most important part of your brain and it is the only part of you that is fully developed at birth. Now knowing what I told you, I am sure you can understand the importance of keeping the brain stem healthy and functioning at all times.

The brainstem continues down connecting to the spinal cord. The brain and spinal cord together makes up the Central Nervous System (CNS). The spinal cord is the pathway for communication with the brain.

Scenario 1 Imagine you are trying to get from point A to point B in your car. The best and fastest way to do this is to get on the express way and do 70 mph. Now, imagine your spinal cord is the express way and you are hungry so your stomach (point A) is going to send a message to your brain (point B) saying you are hungry. This message is traveling at 70 mph to your brain and in a millisecond your brain knows you are hungry. As you can see in the picture on the right, the path is easy and there are no problems and you are functioning at 100%

Scenario 2 Once again imagine you are trying to get from point A to point B in your car. So you hop on to the first exit and start doing 70 mph until you run into construction so it takes you longer and road rage begins. This is what happens in your body if you vertebrae are out of place. Imagine you are hungry and your stomach is sending your brain a message but it is not getting there fast enough. In the picture on the right, you can see the path is serving and it is more difficult for the message to be sent to the brain.

This is why chiropractic care is so important! These messages are being sent all day, every day. The CNS is a very important part of body. Sometimes the message is your stomach is hungry, sometimes it is to move a body part, and sometimes it is your body telling you there is something wrong. If someone is throwing a base ball at your face, you want your CNS to send a message to duck or catch the ball. If you an infection you want your CNS to send the message to your brain saying something is wrong, that way your brain can send a message back to your body to fight of the infect. You don’t want your body to be slow at sending these messages because when you’re not functioning at 100% and you become weak, tired, sick, and much more can happen.

Now that we have talked about the most important reason to see a chiropractor, let’s talk about the other reasons why you may want to a chiropractor. If you ask most anyone what a chiropractor does they will tell you they fix low back pain. Some people will also say the fix migraines This interpretation is true, but like I explained before they do much more than fix pain. How can the help your pain? Let me explain.

Say you are having low back pain and you friend told you to go see Doctor Scott who is a chiropractor just down the road from you. You make an appointment, you get x rays, and the doctor says your back pain is coming from your body not being balanced. This can be very confusing unless have some back ground on the way the body works like being doctor, massage therapist, physical therapist, nurse, and of course a chiropractor. Doctor Scott will explain to you what is wrong. Some of the time your spine is not bending where it is suppose to so this causes discomfort. Sometimes it is your hips are uneven and it is causing other problems such as your low back pain. Doctor Scott will than do what is called an adjustment and manipulate the vertebrae and hips into the proper place, reliving the stress in your back that is causing you pain.  

From the picture above you can see two sets of hips, the ideal and not ideal. If your hips are uneven, everything else is off balance including your sacrum and vertebrae. This is cause more weight on one side of your body, making that side work harder. Your body will try to even out the work, which can cause discomfort. Also, the muscles that attached to these off balance bones are going to be stretched and/or shortened. So when looking at picture of the Not Ideal Hips above, on the left side of the body the muscles are being shortened and on the right they are being stretched to correspond with the bones. This is going to cause more pain. When a chiropractor fixes the subluxation (the out of place bone) your body is not going to working as hard and muscles are going to go back to where they belong, fixing your low back pain.

Medicine

Some people try to go with other routes, like over the counter medicine. So say if you take an ibuprofen instead of going to chiropractor the ibuprofen is going taking anti inflammatory. Anti inflammatory is a drug that reduces swelling, tenderness, and stiffness. Ibuprofen is usually taken every 4 to 6 hours to control the pain. When researching information on ibuprofen I went to PubMed Health and at the very top it says Warning, people taking drugs like ibuprofen (and aspirin) are more likely to stuffer heart attacks and strokes. Along with a list of other side effects that are listed as well

Doctors often prescribe pain medcines for people, like Vicodin. Which is acetaminophen (Tylenol) and hydrocodone (Narcotics containing codeine and thebian) to relieve moderate to sever pain. The dose is different for every person and the directions are given out by a doctor. Just like ibuprofen, Vicodin comes with a list of side effects, easy to overdose on, and is highly addictive.

In those few hours the medicine is working you may forget about your back pain, but the problem is never fixed. It is just being covered up. The problem with medicine is it only gives your back pain relive for few hours where chiropractic care can fix the issue and relive pain all together.

Another down side to medicine if you are taking the ibuprofen or vicodin to help your back pain but the medicine is treating your whole body. The medicine is not just going to your low back, it is going to your brain, your heart, and other places and effecting the way those places work too. Which is why there are a lot of side effects on any drugs.

The difference between Doctors who study Medicine and Chiropractors who study Chiropractic:
Medicine: The study of disease and what causes a man to die.
Chiropractic: The study of health and what causes a man to live.

I don’t know about you but I want to live my life. I don’t want my life to be about death. When I see a doctor I would much prefer it to be a visit about good things and not bad. I want a doctor who has an interest in my life, not my death. That is why I see a chiropractor.  

Happy Reading and Learning!

SIDE NOTE: Find a chiropractor in your area if you have any questions on pain or how the CNS works and how they can help you. 

Also note, most of the pictures my blog today are made by me and I know I am not an artist but I wanted people to have a visual to look at.