Heart Rate Variability and Chiropractic Care Study

What Is Heart Rate Variability?

A simplified answer is that heart rate variability is a measurement of how well our nervous system responds to stress and demands.

It’s a measure of small fluctuations in the autonomic nervous system

The autonomic nervous system controls all organ function, including heart function.

A healthy nervous system has these small fluctuations between the ‘fight or flight‘ sympathetic system and the ‘rest and digest‘ parasympathetic system.

How Did Chiropractic Care Effect Heart Rate Variability In This Study (Below)?

A 2006 study looked at measures of these small fluctuations in the control of the heart (heart rate variability) and pain levels.

Heart rate variability is a sign of health.

It means we’re better able to adapt to our environments with the organ changes necessary to match what is happening with us at that time.

The study looked at these heart rate changes after 4 weeks of chiropractic adjustments.

The researchers found positive changes occurred in the Heart Rate Variability with chiropractic treatment.

Commentary:

It should be noted that this was a small study in a relatively small Journal, still it does make the case for further investigation on how Chiropractic Care effects this marker of health.

It should also be noted that Chiropractic Care does not treat the heart.

Chiropractic generally looks to improve neuro-musculoskeletal function, often specifically related to using an adjustment of the spine but not exclusively so.

Treatment can cause neurological changes for a variety of reasons including simply the process of movement changes neurology.

If we can change a movement, we will change the nervous system. It must happen this way.

The nerves of the nervous system can be thought of as having 3 parts – motor, sensation, and autonomic / organ type function.

These 3 systems are inter-related. 

Changes in one will cause changes in others.

For example if you’ve ever laid on your arm causing it to ‘go to sleep,’ you’ve undoubtedly noticed that you lose a significant amount of control of the arm until it ‘wakes up.’

This is because we lose ability to know where the arm is in space (sensation) which prevents us from being able to move it in a coordinated manner (motor).

Another simple example, if we want to move our biceps… say we decide to hit the gym and bulk up our arms for summer!

We go to the gym, go to the squat rack and start knocking out some curls much to the consternation of the hardcore muscle types.

In order to lift the 10 lb pink bar (hey, we’re just getting started!), we will need to increase blood flow to the muscle at the same time which is why we get a good pump!

Anyway the motor and autonomic change occur together. They must or we would not be lifting the heavy bar.

We need the increases in blood flow to get supplies into and out of the area.

A Chiropractic adjustment is a special type of movement that can change postural issues, reduce muscle ‘spasm,’ and reduce pain among other things.

Our bodies are very complex and changing an input into our nervous system from our body can have various effects.

In this case, researchers found some evidence of autonomic changes with a course of Chiropractic Care.

J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2006 May;29(4):267-74.
Effect of chiropractic care on heart rate variability and pain in a multisite clinical study.

Zhang J1, Dean D, Nosco D, Strathopulos D, Floros M.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16690380