The Science Behind Chiropractic

Imagine fighting for a purpose so powerful that nothing could stop you?

Imagine you held the key to most magnificent healing power, but you were not allowed to use it?

Imagine that this healing power allowed people to express life to the fullest potential, but if it was practiced they would be jailed?

So, when I heard that and read that one thought came to mind, that if people were willing to risk jail for this course, that means that they believed 100% that this healing power was worth more than the extraordinary consequences they faced.

Chiropractic History and Evolution of a New Profession

You see, this is what the Chiropractic in the early 1900s they had to go through. They were literally jailed for practicing medicine without a license, even though they were actually not practicing medicine at all. They were actually doing something completely different and they weren’t even in the same paradigm as allopathy. What they were doing is that they were adjusting the spine to create health and function. They were not manipulating the spine for pain relief. Because a lot of people think that chiropractic is about pain relief, and it was never invented for that purpose. It was invented for the purpose of creating health, for creating function. Look at this picture.

When these chiropractors were jailed you had literally their entire patient population come and surround their jail cell and literally protest. These signs would say, “We want our doctor back,” and they were basically would not leave until they got released from jail. The medical community literally wanted to put a stop to chiropractic, but it was never allopathic. They always say it was practicing medicine without a license. In fact, it was so much more and so much different.

You can manipulate the spine to relieve pain, but you can never call that chiropractic because that was never the promise. It was always to adjust the spine to create health and function. That’s always what it was and always what it will be. So, to understand chiropractic, what we first have to do is we have to understand the basic stress response of the body. And, this is important.

So, imagine you are in contact with a stressor, imagine that you are just walking in the forest, you are hanging out, you are just strolling along, along the park with your significant other. It’s a nice romantic evening then all of a sudden boom! A tiger jumps out. What are you going to do? Are you going to go and try to pet the tiger? Are you going to go and hang out and play with it? Of course not. What you are going to do is RUN! Your body is going to release a mass amount of stress hormones instantly. It’s going to detect that stimulus as threatening, and you are going to release a ton of stress hormones.

Now, those stress hormones include things like epinephrine, norepinephrine or you might have heard of adrenaline, or noradrenaline and cortisol. So, when you increase these stress hormones what does that can do to the heart? Well, it’s going to increase the cardiac output. It’s going to increase your heart rate, blood pressure, vessel constriction.

Here is the garden hose analogy. If you have no nozzle on the hose, and what if you put your thumb over it. That’s how the water shoots out a lot faster. What exactly what your heart does pushing blood out to the blood vessels. It increasing that cardiac output so it can change and it can move those stress hormones to every single place in the body so it gets to every single spot fast. Because you need to escape from the tiger NOW. You don’t have time to waste.

So, then what’s going to happen? What you are going to do is you are going to up-regulate body breakdown. All your catabolic activities and you are thinking why you are going to break down the body? Well, think about this. Your body needs all the energy stored now to get to escape from this tiger. So, why would your body waste on building up things, on healing, growth, and repair, why would your body do that? No, it wants to release your energy stores in the bloodstream so you have available energy now to escape that tiger. Because again this stress response is only made for an acute situation. It’s not made for a long-term, it’s made for survival in the acute situation. So, if it’s going to increase body breakdown, then it’s going to decrease all your anabolic activities. It’s going to decrease healing, growth, and repair. Because again healing, growth and repair are very metabolically expensive. So, if we are trying to devote all our energy to escaping this tiger, we do not want to be storing energy. We just can’t do it.

Now, you are going to decrease your immune system. Your cell-mediated immunity. And, again the reason is that it’s very metabolically expensive for your immune system to work. Think about it when you have had the flu or the cold. One thing you’ll notice is that you are completely wiped out. Because your immune is hard at work. It’s using all the energy, so we feel fatigued and tired as a result. So, that’s why our immune system gets downregulated in acute stressors. That’s normal.

You are going to decrease factual learning and memory. When I’m running from a tiger the last thing I need to do is learn a history lesson, the last thing I want to do is learn the French language, you just don’t need to that, because all your energy is dedicated to escaping and survival. And, this is also why when you are under chronic stress they see things like your brain cells actually shrink, especially in an area called your hippocampus. Those brain cells actually shrink and they decrease in number. What’s amazing is when you get rid of the stress response and you add movement, you are actually going to increase those cell. What about those people who are anticipating a future stressful event? Say that we have an exam next week. Some people know the material very well, but they view this test as such a scary thing that they end up failing the test anyway. Due to the fact they are anticipating that test as a future stressful event, the body is going to release stress hormones and they are not going to be able to think and have a good memory. So, that’s why people fail tests sometimes even though they know the material. That’s also why some people who don’t know the material can just study online and not be stressed out at all and do well on the test. So, it’s not fair, is it?

You are going to increase the sensitivity of your sensory organs. So, basically, all your senses are going to be stimulated under an acute stress response. And, again that’s going to increase your chances of survival. The more senses I have the more I can hear, see, feel, the more chances I’m going to be able to survive. Now, think about this. If this becomes chronic, what happens? If your senses are very stimulated you are going to become very easily distracted. That sounds just like ADHD to me. These kids are under so much stress that their senses are so stimulated that they can’t concentrate on one thing. So, then what do people do? Give them drugs.

You are going to increase cholesterol and clotting factors in the blood. Cholesterol is vital for wound healing, for mood regulation, for any body repair you need. So, you think you might need that when you are running from a tiger? I think so. How about the clotting factors in the blood? You think you might have a wound if you are running from a tiger? Heck yes. So, your body is already preparing you for this acute situation.

You are also going to increase blood sugar and fatty acids. We don’t want to be storing fats and storing sugar. We want to be releasing it into the bloodstream so that energy is available now. We need to devote all energy to escape and survive.

Now, this tiger analogy is just a form of a stressor. What a stress for a stressor is: is any time you eat, move and think in ways that are not genetically congruent for health. Common stressors are:

• Any time we eat a horrible meal chronically
• Any time we just have a chronically bad diet
• Any time we think chronically bad thoughts
• Any time we are under tons of emotional stress trying to meet deadlines at work
• Any time we are chronically not moving enough

That’s all the stressor that all puts us in this response here.

So, this response is absolutely intelligent, and it can save your life in the acute situation. That’s why our bodies equipped with this. However, it’s only made for acute situations. But what we are doing now is that we are applying this stressful response or physiology to something that was designed for just a temporary situation. We are now extending that for days, months or even years. We are chronically stressed out. If you are trying to meet one deadline at work and another comes up, you will be stressed. When one stressor ends and another stressor comes in, we are stressed again. So, it never stops in today’s society. In fact, if we didn’t have this physiological response of stress increasing cholesterol, increasing heart rate, blood glucose, and more, we literally would die. We wouldn’t be able to adapt to any stressor in our life and we would die.

What happens when an acute stress response turns chronic? Well, the same physiological response is going to happen. However, that physiological response is going to be now chronic and almost permanent. So, again, if we are chronically stressed out you are going to have a decrease in healing, growth, repair, memory, brain function, organ function, and immune system function. Does that not sound like a lot of people today?

I mean, today alone I had 10 people say, “I feel like I’m in a brain fight, I can’t think of anything. My blood pressure is high, my doc doesn’t know to do,” and, I’m like, “You are stressed. Come down, take a breath.” You are going to increase your blood glucose, fatty acids, cholesterol, and insulin. So, that’s again contributing to diabetes and the other chronic illnesses.

Now, when you increase insulin chronically in the bloodstream that down regulates your production of human growth hormone. Human growth hormone is your longevity hormone or your anti-aging hormone. It’s your healing-growth-repair hormone. It’s what makes us look good and feel good. Also when you have a lot of insulin in your body you cannot produce and utilize magnesium. Magnesium is the most deficient mineral in the US today. It’s not surprising that magnesium is the most deficient because we are all chronically stressed and we all can’t utilize the magnesium that we have in our body. Magnesium has to do with muscle relaxation. That includes skeletal and smooth muscle. So, it relaxes your arteries, it relaxes your heart, and it relaxes your skeletal muscle. It’s very good for muscle fatigue. If we cannot relax our blood vessels and we cannot relax our heart then that means our blood vessels are going to be chronically constricted. Our heart is going to be chronically pumping blood into these constricted arteries working overtime just to try to meet up with the demands of the body. It’s not sustainable. And, that’s why you’ll notice people who are stressed just keep getting sicker, and sicker, and sicker. What they got to do is stop just focusing on the increased cholesterol and the increased blood pressure they get as a result. They need to find out what caused that. They need to look at that chronic stressor in detail. Is it not moving at all? Is it not exercising? Is it eating horribly? They should confront that chronic stressor and remove it from their life. We want to identify the cause and remove it.

Now, it’s not pathology. Having high cholesterol and having high blood pressure is not pathology. It’s your body reacting in its most intelligent way possible to adapt to that stressful environment. So, even though allopathy might label all those things as a disease, it’s absolutely not a disease. It’s completely 100% intelligent. It’s just your body can only hold up for so long. Because it has to do that in a chronic stressful environment.

Now, these changes that happen when you are under stress is no different than your blood vessels being raised in number when you are at a high altitude. It’s the exact same thing. If your body senses a different environment such as a higher altitude, your body is going to make more blood cells. It makes sense. If your body senses that stressful environment, your body is going to have a stress response. So, you can’t think one response is intelligent and one is not.

Where does chiropractic fit into all this?

Does it have anything to do with the above? Of course, the answer is yes. Now, this is what the latest research says.

Proper motion and alignment of the spine is a genetic requirement for health.

So, that means that a lack of proper motion and alignment in the spine represents a stressor. So, if we are chronically out of alignment or if we are chronically having degenerating joints, we are going to be in the chronic stress response causing all that we’ve just discussed.

Here's an example. Your spinal joints aren’t moving properly. You are out of alignment. Your discs begin to shrink. You start to degenerate. This will send stress signals to the brain. It’s called a nociceptive signal (also known as stress signals). These degenerative joints send stress signals to the brain. Then your brains react to that by releasing stress hormones causing the entire sequence that we just illustrated; increasing cholesterol, blood pressure, and it’s going to increase your body break down. It’s going to decrease body healing, growth, and repair. You are going to have lower memory. You are going to have all of that just from a degenerative joint. In fact, most people don't just have one; Most people have several in their x-rays.

When you have a body that is out of alignment, it doesn't necessarily correlate with pain. It is completely independent of pain. Health is not how you feel. In fact, the top two causes of death in today’s world are cancer and heart attacks and heart disease. What do you feel when you have heart disease? Well, the number one symptom is a heart attack. Because your heart is literally getting sicker and sicker for years and years, you don’t feel your heart getting sick and tell us then you have a heart attack. So, if you wait to feel heart disease you are screwed.

People with cancer. The number two cause of death. People have stage four cancer all the time and don’t know it. They randomly just go for a preventative checkup and they find out they have cancer already. They don’t feel the process happening in their body. We don’t have a sensation for that. So, health is absolutely not how you feel. That’s why sometimes when people come in for a wellness checkup we take an x-ray and find like 6 degenerative joints. They are surprised, “Oh, I didn’t feel any pain there,” but their body still going through that stress response. Their body is still very sick and unhealthy. I’m sure you have seen very unhealthy people out there who don’t feel pain. Even though they don’t feel any pain you can just look at them and conclude they're not healthy. Because it’s not how you feel. Even if you look in the dictionary, health is all about function. It does not have anything to do with the absence of symptoms or disease.

We adjust the spine. We restore the proper motion and proper alignment of the spine. That’s going to restore motion alignment. It’s going to decrease your blood pressure. It’s going to decrease blood markers like your blood glucose, cholesterol. It’s going to decrease body breakdown. So, that means that we are actually going to start our anabolic activities. Having healing, growth, and repair. All those beneficial things. We are going to increase brain function. we are going to increase overall health because we are going to basically be blocking this stress response from happening. That’s also why when we exercise we always feel way more alert. So, the more energy we expend the more energized we feel. That’s why when you sit down and do nothing all day you feel like your brain is in a big fog, you feel lethargic, and you just have no energy. How does that make sense? If you are conserving your energy all day, don’t you think that you’ll be more energized because you have all this energy built up? No, because, movements stimulate the brain. Chiropractic changes brain function because you are adding healthful motion in the spinal joints. This relates to exercises. Movement is life, literally. And, that’s also why again when you are not moving, you are feeling sluggish. Instead of releasing all healthy signals of the brain counteracting the stress response, you are going to be releasing those stress signals to the brain initiating the stress response. That's what we can’t have. That’s why it’s always about the corrective exercises because you have to get healthy. And, we know when we get you moving at all, you are going to be getting healthy.

To create health you have to do just one thing; you have to decrease the chronic stressors in your life. You can do that by in two ways. You either reduce the stressors flat out or you improve your capabilities to adapt to those stressors. So, drugs and medications do neither. In fact, they make you worse. Chiropractic if done right, can do both. So, that’s why as Chiropractors we study physiology and not pathology. Allopathic medicine defines a lot of these changes as pathology even though they are absolutely intelligent. We have to know the physiology of the body so that we can help patients.

What Is Forward Head Posture?

I want to talk about forward head posture. That’s why chiropractors are all about cervical neck curves. As that head goes forward, you are adding many pounds of weight on your spine. Every inch your head is forward you double the pressure on the disc within the spinal joints. So, that’s why it’s so important to do your neck curve exercise to reach a satisfactory neck curve probably through adjustments. There are many studies on the importance of your neck curve.

"Loss of cervical curve stretches the spinal cord 5 to 7 cm and produces pathological tension, putting the body in a state of disease." - Alfred Breig MD

Imagine having a 7cm pull on your brain center, your spinal cord, or your lifeline, for your entire life. Do you think you are going to be healthy? Heck, no.

"The loss of cervical lordosis reduces the patient's lung capacity by up to 30% - Davis, 1996

I want you to jut your head forward right now. Now, try to take a deep breath. Is it hard? Now, imagine doing that for your entire life? If you get 30% less oxygen than the average person do you think you are going to live a full life? Heck, no.

A loss of curve causes a weak immune system, organ disease, muscle tension and increase sensitivity to pain. Again, if our head is forward, these muscles are going to be tight trying to pull your head back upright. So, what does everyone want to do? They want to get massages because their muscles are tight. So, if my head is forward and I massage my neck and shoulder muscles is that going to allow my head to go more forward or backward? More forward is the answer. It's because I’m relaxing these muscles which are trying to pull my head up, allowing my head to go more forward making my problem a whole lot worse even though someone feels better temporarily. It makes it more unhealthy even though the person feels better temporarily because health is not just a simple fix. It is a process. You have to actually work for it.

Forward head carriage or a loss of curve blocks normal neck motion, and it dramatically reduces the number of endorphins produced. So, that means that healthy alignment and movement of the neck causes healthy endorphin release. Endorphin is basically our pain relievers. So, that means if you don’t have healthy motion or if your head is forward you are not going to be making endorphins. That means that they are going to have pain to a stimulus that’s not painful. They are going to have pain for everything. That’s exactly what fibromyalgia is. That’s why it’s so important to restore the neck curve and 100% of the time it will get better. With almost every single person with fibromyalgia, when you take a neck x-ray they either have a loss of curve or a complete reverse curve. So, you have to address the neck curve. But they say, “Well, my pain is right here, and here, and here.” It doesn’t matter, because they can’t produce endorphins. So, every stimulus they are experiencing is falsely causing a painful stimulus.

Loss of Cervical Curve Effects:

1. Eye Function
2. Posture
3. Balance
4. Gait
5. TMJ Muscle Tension and Coordinated Movement
6. Dexterity
7. Vertigo and Tinnitus

(Raymond, 1977; Molina and Wyke, 1965; Cailliet and Gross, 1987)

Now I want you to bite down. Now, go back and forth biting up and down and bring your head forward. Do you feel that bottom jaw protrude out? Yes, because your jaw fits in like a puzzle piece, and it fits in very close proximity with your neck curve. So, if your neck is thrown forward, the puzzle pieces don't fit in properly anymore. That’s why dentists hate TMJ patients because they don’t know how to fix it. However, the only way to fix it is to restore the neck curve, because that way that jaw can fit in nicely in it’s groove. You can try all the muscle work and other stuff you want, but you may never fix the problem. It affects your dexterity, your muscle coordination, vertigo, and tinnitus.

This summarizes everything. A loss of your neck curve can increase mortality and can take up the fourteen years off your lifespan. That’s what the research says and this is a conservative estimate. Does this surprise anybody? You are going to have 30% less oxygen your entire life because it diminishes respiratory capacity by 30%. You are affecting everything else. You can’t produce endorphin. Of course, it means it’s going to diminish your lifespan by 14 years and that’s the conservative estimate.

You are here as patients to get rid of your pain. You are here to increase your function and to get healthy. Someone that’s experiencing health at 100% do they have pain? No. So, it will go away, but your goal is got to be healthy. Because if all your interest is pain relief, there is a liquor store right around the corner. That’s way cheaper I promise you. However, if your goal is to get healthy for life there is no one else that can do this but us, by real chiropractic. Because chiropractors are actually the only ones that use the physiology of the body.

Conclusion

My main goal was to show you that the chiropractic adjustment is not about pain relief and it never was. Do chiropractors practice that now, and only that? Yes, but it’s not congruent to the name Chiropractic because that’s never what the founders made it as. It’s never what the promise was. It’s always to adjust the spine to create health and function for life.