Everyone knows to brush their teeth to avoid decay and to eat healthy foods for better health and energy. But when it comes to the spine a lot of people are surprised to hear that it also needs proper care and hygiene.
The spine protects one of the most important and crucial systems that makes your body work – your spinal cord. Your whole body works because it receives information from the brain through your spinal cord which happens to be protected by your spine.
As long as there is normal flow of vital energy from your brain down the spinal cord and through the nerves to the rest of your body, you are functioning as you were designed to and you are healthy. It is like an electric system where electrical impulses are generated in the brain and propelled along a complex system of nerves that connect the brain to the organs, tissues, glands and cells of the body.
However, bones of the spine (the vertebrae) can be a source of nerve interference when they do not move properly and end up out of alignment. This interferes with your ability to adapt to your environment and leaves the body in an unhealthy state. The result is similar to putting a kink in a water hose; the water still flows through the hose, but not at full strength.
That is when chiropractic can help with its specific art of adjusting the spine.
Adjusting as adjusting your spine
Adjusting is done as a very precise impulse that your chiropractor uses with his/her hands to restore proper motion to a vertebra or a peripheral joint. It is specific, in its force, speed and direction in order to help your whole spine recuperate its own balance.
Freeing as freeing up your nervous system
Research has identified the actual changes that occur in the body, nervous system and brain during chiropractic spinal adjustments. The study was conducted by an award-winning Auckland researcher named Dr Heidi Haavik-Taylor. She demonstrated that muscle control can be changed by stimulating the nervous system through chiropractic adjustments.(*)
“The process of a spinal adjustment is like rebooting a computer. The signals that these adjustments send to the brain, via the nervous system, reset muscle behaviour patterns,” as quoted by Dr Haavik-Taylor. “By stimulating the nervous system we can improve the function of the whole body. This is something that chiropractors and their patients have known for years and now we have some scientific evidence to prove it.”
Healing is your part
We are all born with this amazing self ability to heal our bodies. We do our own healing from inside our body. For it to work properly, it is important to remove interference and let this healing take place. We each heal at our own rhythm and many factors influence this recovery such as eating healthy foods and exercising to keep fit.
Chiropractic is recommended for everyone whether symptoms are present or not. It is not just a way of keeping the pain away but to keep the body working at its best. Many athletes at the Olympic games are receiving chiropractic care to keep their body tuned up to achieve the best performance.
Better health, more energy, vitality are some of the side effects of getting your spine adjusted by your chiropractor. It sets your vertebrae back into motion, freeing up the energy that travels through your nerves. That is how your body heals itself and allows you to feel great again and enjoy your life to the fullest.
*Haavik-Taylor H and Murphy B. (2007). World Federation of Chiropractic’s Ninth Biennial Congress Award Winning Paper (3rd Prize): Altered sensorimotor integration with cervical spine manipulation. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, in press
By Sandra Genest-Boudreau | Christophe O. Alves
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Sandra Genest-Boudreau is French-Canadian, who graduated from the Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in 1990 before coming to the Algarve in 2002. She is passionate about adjusting all her patients, particularly children. Christophe Alves graduated from the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic (AECC) UK, and has a special interest in Sport Chiropractic. Algarve Quiroprática clinic: EN125 in Pêra | 282 312 853 | 969 397 375
