Most of the people that I talk to consider going to the chiropractor for back pain, neck pain and headaches. Considering in 1970 it wasn’t even legal to practice chiropractic, I would say we have come a long way in the public’s eye.
But have we? Is there more to chiropractic than just pain relief?
I’ll never forget the time a mom was coming to see me. She brought her son along for the ride and I happened to notice that he had a severe tic. He would shake his head, sometimes up to 30 times a minute!
I asked Mom about it and she told me she had done everything under the sun, every drug, test, scan, etc. No one could figure out why this was happening and told her that he would have to live with it.
I took a few moments and explained how I thought a chiropractic adjustment might be able to help. She agreed and after an exam, I adjusted him.
Shame on me for being surprised. Immediately his tic went from 20-30 a minute to 4-6. It stayed like this for several days. When it started to come back, Mom brought him back and we once again got the tic down to 4-6 per minute. Mom was thrilled, and I was ecstatic that we had made a real difference in a young man’s life. This was real world evidence that the nerves coming out of the spine influence everything in the body, not just your back or neck pain.
As an aside, Mom ultimately gave up on chiropractic after a couple of weeks because we couldn’t make them go away completely…sometimes you can’t win for trying!
This got me to thinking. How important is it for us to have clear communication between the body and the brain? Can we live a healthy fulfilling life if the nerves coming out of the spine are compromised?
Should we wait until it hurts? Maybe for the low back and neck that is not a terrible indicator, however, what about the organs that don’t feel pain? Should we wait until an organ has problems before we address it?
Could we head off problems by keeping the nerve flow to these areas as optimal as possible?
Will our energy be greater if the nervous system is running at peak performance?
After 16 years I can consistently say yes that we should keep our nerve flow as optimal as possible and we will have greater energy when our nervous system is running at it’s peak. Does this mean that we will be healthier? How can it not!
I think this is the most exciting time in chiropractic. For analytically minded people, like myself, we are just starting to scratch the surface in our scientific understanding of the brain body connection.
I couldn’t be more excited.
