SHORT answer: Does changing oil and fluids in your vehicle and filling the tank up with gas negate the necessity of regular alignments?

When we talk about health, we often leave out several key components. Proper balance, healthy spinal motion and a resulting healthy nervous system are all integral to health. Very often, the missing piece of the puzzle in the picture of health is a healthy spine and nervous system. During exercise, it is important to have your spine moving properly and your body to be balanced.

Imagine hitting a large pothole in the road (you don’t have to imagine very hard here in Jamaica). The tyre may not be affected immediately, however, if you keep driving with this imbalance, eventually the tyre will wear out, along with all its attached components; or, the weakened area will give and you could experience a dangerous blowout. Your spine works in the same way. If your spine is not balanced, the physical impacts of exercise will actually wear it out faster.

Likewise, if you are taking the time and energy to eat well, you want your body storing and using those nutrients at optimum levels. Eating well and exercising do not replace the need for chiropractic care, but are enhanced and complimented by chiropractic care. In fact, many of the professional and world-class athletes get adjusted regularly. They use chiropractic not merely for aches and pains and healing injuries, but to get that extra edge and to push their bodies and performance even further. If you have 100 per cent life energy flowing through your body, healthy eating and exercise will only push you in a more positive direction. An object in motion tends to stay in motion, and you reap what you sow.

Long Answer: First, you must understand why chiropractic care is so important.

In essence, the focus of chiropractic care is to reduce “subluxations” (more correctly, the Vertebral Subluxation Complex). Subluxations cause nervous system interference. More specifically, the brain/body connection has been negatively affected by these malpositions that commonly compress the nerves and cause interference, resulting in symptoms and even disease.

Medical doctors claim these subluxations do not exist, however, anyone and everyone who has ever experienced a successful chiropractic adjustment know with absolute certainty that the bones do get stuck and are in fact moved by the adjustments. It is also immediately apparent of the improved postural balance, etc, post-adjustment. Too bad most practitioners do not know this because they have not experienced an adjustment.

But, I digress: Physiology shows us how the brain controls every single organ, cell and tissue in your body. It does this by means of life energy, often called the chi in some cultures. The flow of life energy in your body is decreased by subluxations. This is the energy that controls and coordinates every single function of your body. The chiropractor calls this “innate” and is cognisant that it comes from the Creator. You can see why it is incredibly important in terms of health. So how do you lose this connection?

The process (the subluxation) is an adaptive state in response to stress. Stresses to our spine and nervous system come in three major forms: physical, emotional and chemical. Most often it is a result of many of life’s little incidents and accidents, but can also be attributed to a major traumatic event or events.

PHYSICAL STRESS

This includes injuries from slips, falls, car accidents, trauma, and micro-traumas, which include poor posture, computers, couches, driving, etc. Birth would fall under this category of physical stress. The head is usually the first thing to present in a typical childbirth. Doctors can pull up to 30 lbs of pressure with bare hands and 60-120 lbs of pressure using tools such as forceps and vacuum extraction. A Caesarean section actually causes more torque and tension to the cervical spine (neck) than vaginal birth. And that is just the beginning.

Toddlers then learn to walk, falling an average of 38 times per day. The forces encountered would be enough to break an adult’s hips. Then they play sports, fall off their bikes and swing sets, scrape knees, etc. You can certainly see why it would be important to ensure the proper functioning of an infant’s spine. The average five-year-old has already experienced as many as 2,000 falls. Many symptomatic problems we experience as adults start in infancy, and could have been managed and even prevented with regular chiropractic care.

EMOTIONAL STRESS

Imagine you are a passenger in a car during a torrential downpour on the highway. The roads are slick and you can’t see more than a car length in front of you. After a few hours of this tense driving situation, how does your body feel? Stressed? Tight neck, possible headache, possible nausea, tight shoulder blades, low back aches — a large list of physical symptoms, yet nothing physical has actually happened.

We respond to emotional stress by asymmetrically tightening our spinal muscles, releasing many hormones, breathing shallow breaths, increasing blood pressure, increasing cholesterol, decreasing insulin receptors, and a long list of other amazing physical changes. These changes, by the way, are the perfect response to a stressful encounter with a grizzly bear or a tiger. It is called the fight or flight response. In the short term, the physiological changes allow you to protect yourself from an attacker, or better yet, run away. Either way, you can see how emotional stress affects our physical body and being subjected to a constant long-term state of sympathetic response can negatively damage us.

Unfortunately, in society, emotional stress has become a chronic, long-term problem. The grizzly bear is now replaced by traffic, meetings, finances, relationships, negative media, and our very busy lives. We get locked in the fight or flight mode and the physiological changes get labelled as “disease”. Hypertension (high blood pressure), hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), diabetes, obesity, decreased immune function, cancer, etc. These are diseases of lifestyle. All affect spinal integrity, nervous system function, and overall health. It is estimated that 100 years ago in North America, it would take 30 days of living to accumulate the amount of stress now accumulated in one day around the world.

CHEMICAL STRESS

A large part of this is uncontrollable. Atmospheric and environmental toxins in our food, water and air supply, smog. Large consumerism irresponsibility — products that are damaging to our health and the environment. We have a constant stress to our bodies in the form of these chemical stresses. Just like emotional stress, chemical stress will eventually manifest as a physical symptom.

Have you ever sat in a freshly painted room or a garage full of exhaust? Or drank too much alcohol? Your body can often react violently to these chemical stresses. The physical manifestations can be headache, muscle tension, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, etc.

The most devastating chemical stressors to which we expose ourselves is by far the overuse of medication. Medications were never designed for long-term use. All medications have negative side effects (toxic reactions), whether they seem helpful or not. There is no such thing as “do no harm” when introducing poisons into the body. We look for quick fixes and it is killing us. As previously stated as a major example, Canada and the US make up as little as 5.5 per cent of the world’s total population, yet consume 78 per cent of all the world’s pharmaceuticals.

If drugs were the answer to health, then they (US and Canada) should be the healthiest nations in the world. The World Health Organization ranks the top 40 industrialised nations based on an extensive list of health parameters, with number one being the healthiest. Canada and the USA are at the bottom of the list with Canada at 32 and USA at 38.

We have a failing global health system, perfect for first aid management and emergency crisis care, but never designed to make us healthier and stronger throughout our lives. But, also, as stated on previous occasions, the people must realise that true medical care has long since been taken over and hijacked by the imposter drug trade of selling and peddling pills, potions and lotions. And just like with a neighbourhood drug dealer, their whole business crucially depends upon repeat customers. Difference in the life sentence for chiropractic care and the life sentence for drugs is that drugs will take your life eventually, and chiropractic will give your life back to you and help you keep it.

As you can see, the need for chiropractic care has never been greater. Even if you are incredibly healthy, feeling great, active, etc, your everyday life exposes you to continual stresses that have a significant effect on your spine and nervous system. Chiropractors assess the function of your body and do not merely treat the symptoms and poison your body and its systems, but address the underlying causes that trigger the symptoms in the first place – thereby negating the symptoms.

Chiropractic care can help ensure that your body’s life energy is flowing unimpeded, allowing every part of your body to be connected and functioning nearer to 100 per cent. That is what true health and wellness is all about. And, it is there for the taking if you choose it. The “Father” of modern medicine himself once stated, “get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases”. Too bad most doctors completely ignore this wisdom. Fortunately, chiropractors do listen, and assimilate and apply this knowledge. All you have to do is accept it and your healing can begin.

Don’t forget to “Ask Your Chiropractor” every week where your questions may be published and answered in subsequent articles. Address questions to: Dr Chris Davis, the Spinal Mechanic at movethebone@gmail.com; or, Dr Michael Harvey, director, at dr.michael_harvey@yahoo.com or visit www.drharveychiropractic.com