Chiropractic care has a different level of impact for each person. For some people, it’s life changing; it loosens the grip of chronic pain, promotes faster healing from injury, keeps you moving well longer and later in life, and transforms posture. For others, it doesn’t appear to do all that much.
It’s a practice that can help people no matter where they are on their health journey because it works both as a preventative and a reactive treatment. For those who feel the life changing impact of chiropractic, it’s working as a reactive treatment. For those fortunate enough not to have a life changing experience with chiropractic--it’s preventative.
Vertebral subluxations--the joint dysfunctions corrected by chiropractic care--are a part of life. They happen to everyone, and they are always detrimental to health. You may not feel their impact on your life, but that doesn’t mean they won’t compound and compile until you do.
It’s easy to discount the impact of something you can’t actually feel, but make no mistake--preventative care is just as important as reactive care, if not more important. In fact, it’s a privilege to have these tools that allow us to actively counteract the degenerative, inflammatory processes that aging and living life create.
Whether or not you feel the impact of chiropractic, the effects of spinal adjustments are profound--and they work throughout your entire body, not just your spine.
The impact chiropractic has on your overall well-being is surprising to many first time patients. Because the spine houses the information highway of the nervous system--the spinal cord--changes here affect every part of the body. For example, adjustments just to the spine can reduce pain in your knee, even though the knee hasn’t been touched.
A 2016 study used EEG to measure brain activity following spinal adjustments and discovered the role of chiropractic care in sensorimotor integration through improved prefrontal cortex functioning.
The prefrontal cortex can be thought of as the conductor of the brain--primarily responsible for executive functioning: integrating and coordinating information from multiple neural systems to achieve goals and solve problems in our ever-changing environments. It’s responsible for processing pain and emotional responses to it, movement control, spatial awareness, and many other jobs.
What does all this mean? Sensorimotor integration is the way your body takes all the information it’s receiving--from your muscles, joints, bones, brain, and environment--to coordinate movement. A single chiropractic session improves sensorimotor integration by an average of 20%.
The impact of spinal adjustments on the prefrontal cortex help explain the results of many previous studies that show improved spatial awareness, sensorimotor functioning, muscle strength, joint-position sense, and pelvic floor muscle control.
Many chiropractic patients also report better focus, improvements in movement and coordination, and feeling better in general.
The benefits of chiropractic are especially impactful for seniors, who are more susceptible to falls and require stability and strength for independent living. For athletes, chiropractic can optimize your game--giving you better balance, spatial awareness, and strength than your competition.
Chiropractic can be the difference between pain and relief, good health and great health, or independence and assisted living. Wherever you are on your health journey, spinal adjustments are one of the keys to moving and thinking well.
