The purpose of Chiropractic is to adjust the spine, to create HEALTH and FUNCTION. That’s always been the purpose of Chiropractic, and always what it will be. To understand chiropractic, we have to understand the basic stress response of the human body. In everyday life, there are acute stressors, and there are chronic stressors. Acute stressors involve novelty, unpredictability, and threats to the ego. An example would be almost getting into a car accident, battling high density traffic on a major highway, or giving a public speech. In these instances, you feel very aware of everything around you, which is indicative of stress hormones (Cortisol, Adrenaline (Norepinephrine, Epinephrine)) being hard at work. In acute stress responses, there is an increase of cardiac output, to move the stress hormones to every place in the body very rapidly. Your heart rate will increase. Blood pressure increases. Body breakdown is up-regulated. This means that activities inside the body that involve breaking down for energy, will increase. It would be a waste to build-up in a stressed situation, for healing, growth, and repair. So catabolic activities are increased, and anabolic activities are decreased. In stressed situations, your immune system is decreased. It is very metabolically expensive for your immune system to work. There is an increase in cholesterol and clotting factors in the blood, because cholesterol is vital for wound healing, mood regulation. There is an increase in blood sugar, and fatty acids to have energy available.The sensitivity of your sensory organs is increased. All senses will be stimulated under an acute stress response. This increases chances of survival.Factual learning and memory is decreased in a acute stressed situation. All your energy is dictated to survival at this time. Brain cells actually shrink in the Hippocampus, in an acute stress situation. There is always some sort of stress on the body. Anytime you eat, move, and think in a way that is not genetically congruent for health such as chronically eating horribly, chronically having negative/bad thoughts, and chronically not moving enough places your body in a stress response. The above responses are made only for acute situations. However, the stressors never stop in today’s society. They eventually become chronic. This physiological response allows us to adapt to any situation. If we did not have this physiological response, we would die. In a stress response, you increase insulin for the production of energy. When you increase insulin chronically in the bloodstream, that down-regulates the production of Human Growth Hormone(HGH). HGH is a growth hormone for cell production, cell regeneration. It is an anti-aging hormone, the healing, growth, and repair hormone. When insulin is high, you cannot produce and utilize magnesium which keeps blood pressure normal, bones strong, and heart rhythm steady. Magnesium relaxes both skeletal and smooth muscle. If you cannot relax your blood vessels, not relax your heart, this means your blood vessels will be chronically constricted while your heart is chronically pumping blood into constricted arteries while trying to meet the demands of the body. This is not sustainable. Which is why, if you notice that people who are chronically stressed keep getting sicker, and sicker. This is why Chiropractors look at what is causing the chronic stressor, and alleviate the root cause. Not just diagnose the cause of “High Blood Pressure”. High Blood Pressure, and High Cholesterol is not pathology. These are chronic responses to chronic stressors. The role of the Chiropractor is to confront the real issues, and help the patients to remove it from their life. Our spinal nerve roots exit through the vertebrae in the spine, which means the structural integrity of the spine matters. Proper motion and alignment of the spinal synovial joints is a genetic requirement for health and function. Without this, is indicative of a stressor. Chronic misalignment, chronic joint degeneration, etc will lead to being in the CHRONIC stress responses discussed previously. When spinal joints are not moving properly, the disc’s begin to shrink and degenerate that sends stress signals to the brain. These are called nociceptive signals aka pain signals. The brain reacts to this by releasing stress hormones, causes the sequence of events discussed earlier even leading to states of increased blood pressure, cholesterol, and body breakdown while decreasing healing, growth, and repair. This all can happen from just a degenerative joint. Degenerative joints do not always equate to pain. We do not feel our heart getting sick, we do not feel ourselves having cancer until it’s arrived. This is why HEALTH IS NOT HOW YOU FEEL. Your body is still going through the stress response. Health is about function, not the absence of pain. What does the adjustment do? The adjustment restores proper motion, and alignment which decreases blood pressure because there is now less pressure on the joints which will decrease the amount of stress hormones that the brain releases, and decreases cardiac output. The adjustment decreases blood glucose, cholesterol, insulin, and body breakdown. This allows for anabolic activities to build up heal, and restore. Now stress responses can be blocked, and this increases overall health. This is why when we exercise, you feel full of energy, and stress responses are blocked. When you do not exercise or are sedentary, you feel lethargic, and have less energy. Movement stimulates the brain. Chiropractic changes brain function, because you're adding motion to the spinal joints. Pharmaceutical drugs, and medication do not decrease any stress response from the brain. Chiropractic is not here to get rid of pain, chiropractic is here to restore function and deactivate the physiological stress responses that lead to dis-ease. We increase brain function, diminish stress responses, and increase the body’s health capacity, and lifespan. If your goal is to get healthy, there is no other Doctor to see than a Chiropractor.
