Chiropractic Treatment Benefits You Even If You Don’t Have Pain!

As a Chiropractor, I understand that most people will come see us at our Texarkana Clinic because of some type of injury or pain.

Pain is really a big motivator.

It’s meant to be so that we are driven to stop activities that are potentially causing further damage and drive us to try to help it.

Chiropractors are excellent at helping so many different painful conditions, so much so that most of the public associates Chiropractic with pain relief for neck pain, back pain, headaches, and injuries like from a car crash.

The truth is though that our bodies are pretty good at covering up most problems by not giving us significant symptoms until often late in a disease process.

This is as true for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, autoimmune diseases, etc as it is for the neurological / musculoskeletal problems that are so common.

It’s true that a sudden injury like a fall, an accident, or a sports trauma may cause immediate symptoms.

It’s also true that chronic repetitive tasks can damage various body parts over time causing substantial damage without many symptoms until later in the process.

Our body’s function as a whole, not just a collection of independent parts.

Changes in something as simple as joint movement can cause many changes that occur both locally and even throughout our bodies.

We see significant changes in the nervous system with loss of function of a single joint, especially in the spine.

This is why historically Chiropractors have looked closely at the spine and spinal function to improve it thereby restoring normal nervous system activity from the area.

Over the last several years this idea has really been shown to be very important.

We’ve seen studies that link spinal health to neurological function shown in study after study.

Here are just a few examples of Spinal Health, Chiropractic, and Functional Neurology that we’ve covered on our blog…

• The Chiropractic Adjustment Causes Changes In The Brain’s SensoriMotor Activation demonstrated in recent research in the Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology that shows  Chiropractic Adjustments change how the Brain is activated and how it functions through SensoriMotor Integration.
• Chiropractic Improves Balance, Coordination, and Movement. A 2016 study entitles, Effectiveness of Chiropractic Care to Improve Sensorimotor Function Associated with Falls Risk in Older People: A Randomized Controlled Trial – demonstrated that people under Chiropractic Care had 1. a reduced risk of falls, 2. improved reaction times, 3.a better sense of joint position (where they are in space), 4. and a better quality of life.
• Related to pain and the brain… A 2004 study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that Chronic Back Pain Associated With Significant Losses Of Brain Mass. The authors found “Patients with chronic back pain showed 5-11% less neocortical gray matter volume than control subjects. The magnitude of this decrease is equivalent to the gray matter volume lost in 10-20 years of normal aging. The decreased volume was related to pain duration, indicating a 1.3 cm3 loss of gray matter for every year of chronic pain.” Obviously there is more to pain than is generally recognized.
  
• A 2016 study in the Journal of Neural Plasticity found that Chiropractic Adjustments have a Profound Effect on the Brain. The authors find Implications for Chiropractic Changing Learning, Memory, Pain, Movement and More.

These are just a few articles that demonstrate there is a lot more to spinal function and neurology than is commonly realized by the public and most health care practitioners.

We can’t just ignore these studies because it doesn’t necessarily fit with a mainstream idea about health and disease.

These studies are a few examples, early indicators that there is much more going on than is commonly believed.

Slowly the health paradigm is shifting and improving with different ideas.

The problem is that it takes decades to start to change opinion and even longer to implement it into a clinical practice.

In the meantime, people are suffering because of this slow adoption of the new ideas.

Far too often, we think we’re healthy as many underlying processes are occurring in our body that we may not feel for years or even decades.

Clearly our health is influenced by everything we do or do not do.

It’s also evident that ignoring a problem is not the best way to deal with it and very well may lead to a major health catastrophe.

Returning to the original idea of this blog post though… problems are occuring in your body before you realize they are there.

This is why you should get checked out by a good Chiropractor just like you should see other health practitioners ranging from dentists to optometrists to medical doctors.

No other profession replaces the evaluation and treatment methods of a Chiropractor.

If you live in the Texarkana area and would like to see Dr. Hagebusch at our Texarkana Clinic, Contact Us.

We’re here to help!