Your Brain, Body, and Spine.

How Spinal Changes Can Cause Coordination, Balance, Movement, SensoriMotor Integration, Performance, and Other Issues… Plus What To Do About It!

This short video talks about the importance of the spine in helping your brain function properly.

The discussion is important for everyone ranging from kid’s health to adults wanting to feel better and perform better at home, work, and as an athlete.

Going waayyy back to elementary school, we were taught there are 5 senses that tell the brain what is going on in our bodies and the environment.

These 5 senses were smell, sight, sound, taste, and touch.

They were a little short on info here, but hey we were 10 so I guess that’s excusable.

Most of the sensory information coming into the brain is from muscles, tendons, joints, and inner ears that have massive amounts of special receptors that relay information about where our various body parts are in space.

Collectively this essentially unconscious sense is called proprioception.

A little clinical aside here, the PTs and OTs talk a lot about treating developmental delays and sensorimotor processing in kids.

This is a complex area that requires very significant knowledge of the brain, body, and nervous system.

It’s important to properly examine the person to identify the problem area, then use various physical and other treatments to intervene, and evaluate changes.

Random movements and sensory stimulation are very unlikely to improve function.

All areas have to be evaluated plus some lifestyle issues that can drive inflammatory changes.

One area that is particularly important is that of proprioception.

This has long been the domain of chiropractic because chiropractors learned that changing this can have far reaching effects on health and function.

Proprioception is a primary driver of brain activity.

Problems with joints and muscles as mentioned in the video create abnormal information upon which your brain relies upon to maintain and direct all activity in the body ranging from moving through the environment to blood flow, organ function, and thought processes.

Spinal dysfunction in particular can have greater impact on brain function because of the greater density of these little receptors that are throughout the spine with the greatest amount in the neck.

This is one reason why it’s very important that the spine is functioning properly.

Chiropractors commonly restore this function and people often experience resolution of pain, stiffness, muscle spasms, etc…

But more importantly the improvement of communication to the brain from the spine which allows better activity in the brain areas ‘downstream‘ of the spine to better control and coordinate activity.

Chiropractors identify dysfunctional areas so that they can restore appropriate information flow between the body and the brain.