Chiropractic has a long track record of helping people with headaches, neck pain, lower back pain and much more.
But you may not be aware that people under chiropractic care show improvement in many aspects of wellbeing.
In this article, we’ll shed light on the mechanisms behind this, and also some of the things you can do to help yourself.
Why Wellbeing?
Most of our healthcare system is not focused on improving our wellbeing. It is more focused on disease care and management of symptoms.
This can be called ‘crisis care’. While this type of care is important for saving lives and alleviating suffering in the short term, it doesn’t do much to help us be healthier.
Wellbeing is being able to do what you do without restriction, feeling alive and energetic.
If we can focus our attention, time, and health care dollar on improving our wellbeing, we will generally live healthier, happier, more productive and longer lives.
The Master Control System
If you could look after one organ in your body, to improve your wellbeing, what would it be?
Often people respond to this question with, ‘the heart, the lungs…’ etc. But they are forgetting the most important organ in the body – your nervous system.
Your nervous system is your overall control system. It controls, coordinates, and regulates the function of every single cell and organ in the body.
When your nervous system is functioning properly, you have your best chance at wellbeing.
The Spine Protects Your Nervous System
Your spine is like a suit of armour for your nervous system. When it is aligned and moving properly, messages between the brain and body are unimpeded and uninterrupted.
When spinal bones and joints lose their normal alignment and motion, these messages become scrambled (increased, decreased, or varied), resulting in poor communication between the brain and body. Ultimately, this leads to some form of poor health.
When your spine and nervous system are working better, you will have better body position sense, leading to better balance, and therefore less injury.
Good Nervous System Function Equals Good Health
Proper spinal motion influences nervous system function, mainly improving the quality and quantity of input to the brain, creating the right conditions for wellbeing.
Some examples you may not be aware of include:
- better balance of the autonomic nervous system, including a reduced ‘stress response’, leading to improvements in gut function.
- Improved body position sense, leading to improved balance and decreased tendency to injury.
- Reduced irritation and sympathetic nervous system (think fight/flight) activity, promoting better sleep.
Chiropractors are the Experts in Nervous System Care
Chiropractors receive five-years of university education to earn the title, ‘doctor’.
This training helps them to be experts in diagnosis and management of conditions related to the spine, nervous system, and other musculoskeletal disorders.
Chiropractors help to restore proper motion to the spine and therefore improve many aspects of nervous system function, and by extension, wellbeing.
Help Yourself
Anything that improves your spinal motion, or prevents accumulation of damage to your spine, will help improve your wellbeing.
Remember, it’s not just a pile of bones. Spinal motion is integrally related to your nervous system function.
Apart from seeing your chiropractor, here are some basics to get right to help yourself:
- Walk briskly every day. An hour if you can, or a few minutes if that’s the best you can do.
- Get up from your chair regularly. If not using a sit-stand desk, just get up and move around.
- Change your postures regularly. Long periods in any one posture cause load and harm to your spine and nervous system.
- Engage in activity that moves your spine – Yoga, swimming, gym classes, dancing – it’s all good if you are moving for long periods through a varied range of motion.
So now you know more about the link between your spine, your nervous system, and your wellbeing. It’s straight science.
Use it to your advantage to help yourself and seek expert help if you feel you need it.
If you have concerns about aspects of your wellbeing and you’re not sure what to do, please call us on (02) 6257 9400.
If you would like some more information about the spine and nervous system and how it relates to your health, please check out the other articles on our Facebook page or go to our website: www.spinecentre.com.au.
Also, make sure you read the other interesting articles we post on mental health this month.