Physiology
Chiropractic, the world's third largest area of healthcare, is based on the scientific fact that your nervous system controls the function of every cell, tissue, organ and system of your body. Your nervous system consists of your brain, spinal cord and billions of nerves. Because of their importance, the brain is protected by the skull and the spinal cord and nerves roots are protected by the twenty four moveable vertebra of the spine. Traumas along with the wear and tear associated with many everyday activities can cause a break down in the protective ability of the vertebra.
First, The Basics Of How The Nervous System Functions
The nervous system consists of two major branches; the central nervous system (CNS), which includes the brain and spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system (PNS), which includes all the nerves that exit from the spinal cord and travel throughout the body. Chiropractic's purpose is to promote and enhance the function of the PNS by reducing and preventing vertebral pressure on the spinal nerves. The function of these nerves can be adversely affected by the slightest amount of pressure or spinal dysfunction.
There are two components that make up the peripheral nervous system; the sensory or afferent division, and the motor or efferent division. The afferent sensory division is composed of the nerve fibers that relay information impulses to the brain from sensory receptors located in all the different parts of the body. The efferent motor division is responsible for carrying impulses from the brain to the body organs, muscles and glands. In response, these efferent nerve impulses activate muscles and glands eliciting an active motor response.
In summary, the efferent motor pathways allow the brain to tell the body what to do and the afferent or sensory pathways provide input from the body to the brain, allowing the brain to be constantly informed of the events going on both inside and outside the body. These two divisions of the PNS work concurrently. A perfect example of this simultaneous dual working relationship between the afferent and efferent divisions of the PNS is when you accidentally touch a hot stove. The afferent sensory nerves in your skin shoot a message of pain to your brain and then your brain sends efferent motor signals back, telling the muscles in your hand to pull away. Luckily, this neurological relay race takes a lot less time than it just took to read about it.
Second, Chiropractic's Role In Proper Nervous System Function
Vertebral subluxation can result in pain, but quite often it does not. If left uncorrected over a period of time, it can disrupt your nervous system's normal function of relaying vital nerve impulses to essential body parts. To further your understanding of chiropractic and its relationship with nervous system function, a simple analogy is often helpful. If you have a dimmer switch installed in your dining room and the dimmer switch is set all the way up, the lights burn very brightly. The more you turn the switch down, the less bright the light becomes. The switch essentially reduces the amount of electricity the light will receive. If the switch is turned down low enough, it can make a high watt light bulb act like a low watt light bulb.
The light is a metaphor or analogy for how our body expresses health. A light bulb does not care about its potential; it just shines according to what it receives. The human body is no different in this regard. When a vertebra is subluxated, it affects nerve flow much in the same manner as the dimmer switch.
A Subluxated Vertebra,
affects the nerve flow, much the same as a dimmer switch.
affects the nerve flow, much the same as a dimmer switch.
When you have dysfunctional spinal vertebra, they reduce and interrupt nerve impulses, causing a reduced level of function. Chiropractic's purpose is to turn up the dimmer switch of nervous system function by reducing the effects of subluxation. Understanding fundamental principles of the body through this simple analogy and putting them into practice can change and brighten up your life.
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