Subluxation

Subluxation is a misalignment of your spine which interferes with your nerves (even the spinal cord itself) either by pressing on them directly or irritating them. Subluxation is one of the most commonly overlooked causes of lost heath, of disease and of shortened life. The problem is that your spinal cord has no pain or pressure receptors so it is simply not possible to feel when you have subluxation squeezing the life out of your body by pressing on the cord.

It is the specialty of the chiropractor to correct subluxations of the spine, cranium, pelvis and other joints of the body.

“Ow! I’ve got a pinched spinal cord!”

How would you know that you have subluxation? Have you ever heard someone say, “Ow! I’ve got a pinched spinal cord!”? No one says it because you can’t feel it directly. This makes it hard for people to know when they have subluxation or not. What about if a nerve gets pinched? Some nerves go to your skin and muscles where you are used to feeling things. When they get pinched, it will often hurt (sometimes excruciatingly) or give pins and needles or fall asleep (go numb). But some nerves go to your deep organs. What if you get a pinch on nerve that goes to your heart or your kidney? Does anyone say, “Oh! My kidney’s fallen asleep!” How about, “I’ve got pins and needles in my heart!” Of course this does not happen.

So what do you think you might notice if you have a subluxation (or two, or more) pressing on your spinal cord? That depends on what level in your spine and what part of the cord or nerves is affected.

First you need to remember that your brain is the master controller of all of the parts of your body. There are nerves that travel to every part of your body – your toes, your heart, your liver, your immune system – to regulate their function and to keep them all fully coordinated in their function. Then there are nerves that travel back from every part of your body to your brain so that your brain knows exactly what all the parts are doing and how well they are carrying out their respective duties. In that way your brain can make adjustments to keep all the parts in optimal coordination. It might do this by direct nerve control, or by changing your behaviour. For example, if sensors report to your brain that you are too hot, messages will go out to your skin to make you sweat, to your blood vessels to carry more blood to the skin and less to the deep organs, and to your centres of higher function so you will go and open a window or take off your jumper.

The function of every part of your body is coordinated in this way.

So, I ask again: What do you think you might notice if you have a subluxation (or two, or more) pressing on your spinal cord?

What if the nerve goes to your heart?

Let’s say the pressure is on a nerve that carries messages to your heart. Some of those will influence the rate of beating, some the healing process, some the degree of inflammation in that tissue. While you will not feel it directly, your heart will function less efficiently and out of balance with the requirements of your body. Even worse is if the nerves that take the messages back from your heart get interfered with. How does your brain even know there is a problem? It’s like driving your car when you can’t see. How do you know which way to turn? Heart malfunction, in time, typically causes abnormal blood pressure, reduced fitness, anxiety, difficulty sleeping and of course heart disease. Any of these could be caused in part or in full because of misalignment of a bone at the top of your spine pressing against the nerve. It could be there for years without you even realising it. Maybe you've had some discomfort in that part of your spine but just put up with it not realising it was affecting the wellbeing of your entire body.

And if the subluxation were pressing on the cord itself? You will have less vitality as the central communication pathway in your body becomes more and more disrupted. How much of the loss of wellness that people experience with age comes from subluxation? It’s hard to say but in my experience, it can be a lot.

Some High Blood Pressure Caused By Subluxation

Dr George Bakris of the Department of Preventive Medicine of Rush University Hypertension Center in Colorado had a series of his patients tell him about chiropractic. These were people he had seen who he had diagnosed as having high blood pressure. They had visited a chiropractor in the area and were finding that their blood pressure was normalised, many to the extent they could stop their medication. Dr Bakris was intrigued and organized a study on 50 patients with high blood pressure. Half of them were given chiropractic adjustments to align the atlas – the bone at the top of the spine. The other half were given sham adjustments. The patients had no experience with chiropractic so they could not tell if they were getting the real thing or not.

After 8 weeks, the patients getting the chiropractic adjustments had a very large average reduction of 17 points. The researchers concluded, “Restoration of Atlas alignment is associated with marked and sustained reductions in BP similar to the use of two-drug combination therapy.” It was as effective as taking two blood pressure medications at the same time... only with no side effects¹. Here is the TV news report.

I saw the same thing in my practice with literally hundreds of patients.

When to check for subluxation

Subluxation can be corrected to provide relief from a particular problem. Regular maintenance of your spine is also popular to help maintain optimal health without any specific problem. I practiced for 13 years as a family chiropractor and saw thousands of patients present with many different problems. Of course, a lot of people come because they want help with back pain, neck pain or headaches. But when you correct someone’s spine, not only do these pains usually become a thing of the past, patients often find many other problems disappear too when the only change they have made is to see a chiropractor.

When I saw a patient I would have them rate every symptom they had when they arrived on a scale from zero to 10 where zero was nothing at all and 10 was impossibly bad.  Here is a list of symptoms I have seen go from 10 to zero with nothing more than correcting subluxation:

• Concentration – I had countless parents tell me how their children’s grades went up, even from D’s to A’s.
• Viral Infection – many, if not most chiropractic patients find they stop getting colds and flu.
• Nausea – many people suffer with this and don’t need to.
• Tantrums – behaviour of children and babies consistently improves with chiropractic.
• Depression – our Drug Jug repeatedly filled with antidepressants that patients no longer needed. I would regularly take them to the pharmacist to have them disposed of safely.
• Inability to conceive – in my career I had 7 mothers conceive after they started chiropractic care who were certain it was the cause of their restored fertility.
• High Blood Pressure – while not the only cause of high blood pressure, I had dozens return to normal.
• Allergies – of all kinds would improve 9 times out of 10, with 6 out of 10 becoming allergy-free.
• Constipation – over 100 dramatically improved cases.
• Abdominal Bloating – a common symptom.
• Brain Fog – the first step to Alzheimer’s.
• Middle Ear Infection – a common recurring problem in babies that resolved every time, stopping the recurrence.
• Colic – another common problem in babies resolved in 9 out of 10 cases.

But remember, chiropractic is not a treatment for any of these symptoms. Chiropractic corrects a fundamental block to the expression of optimal health – the subluxation. When this happens your body can function at a higher level of wellness and symptoms are just not a part of optimal health.

What about the Science?

Chiropractic doesn’t have a corporate interest to pay for research like medicine has the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, most of the research into Chiropractic has been done by field doctors studying patients in their own practice. This means there are less studies but they are also less influenced by corporate agendas. Subluxation has been proven to cause:

• Depression²
• Pain³
• Lack of motivation²
• Poor balance and gait²
• General disability^{2, 4}
• Weakness^{2, 4}
• Pelvic organ prolapse⁵
• Shortened life^{6, 7, 8, 9}
• Reduced blood pressure¹

When should you go see a chiropractor?

So how much of your health problems are due to subluxation? The easy way to find out is to go and see a good chiropractor. In fact, I would recommend you see one regularly for wellness whether you have symptoms or not.

I do, and everyone in my family does at least once every two weeks. So does Arnold Schwarzenegger. He said, “You chiropractic doctors are really miracle workers.” Mel Gibson does too. Lance Armstrong said, “I could not have won the Tour de France without Jeff's help.” Jeff is his chiropractor. You’ll be in good company.

What else can I do to keep my spine healthy?

Good nutrition, good posture and regular exercise are all very important to a healthy subluxation-free spine. Yoga is especially good for your spine. In other words, all the stuff I recommend in the 3 Step System for Optimal Health!

Yours in Optimal Health,

Richard Sawyer.

Key Message

• Subluxation is a misalignment of the bones of your spine interfering with your nerves.
• Subluxations are common – most people have them.
• Subluxation can cause just about any kind of symptom.
• You often can’t feel subluxations in your own spine – you need a chiropractor to find and fix them for you.

Making It Real

1. Improve your posture - read the Optimal Posture BluePrint.
2. Get your spine checked for subluxation by a chiropractor.

References

1. Bakris G, Dickholtz M, Meyer PM, et al. Atlas vertebra realignment and achievement of arterial pressure goal in hypertensive patients: a pilot study. Journal of human hypertension. 2007;21(5):347-52. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17252032.

2. Balzini L, Vannucchi L, Benvenuti F, et al. Clinical characteristics of flexed posture in elderly women. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2003;51(10):1419-26. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14511162.

3. Griegel-Morris P, Larson K, Mueller-Klaus K, Oatis CA. Incidence of common postural abnormalities in the cervical, shoulder, and thoracic regions and their association with pain in two age groups of healthy subjects. Physical therapy. 1992;72(6):425-31. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1589462.

4. Kado DM, Huang M, Barrett-Connor E, Greendale GA. Hyperkyphotic posture and poor physical functional ability in older community-dwelling men and women: the Rancho Bernardo study. The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences. 2005;60(5):633-7. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15972617.

5. Mattox TF, Lucente V, McIntyre P, Miklos JR, Tomezsko J. Abnormal spinal curvature and its relationship to pelvic organ prolapse. American journal of obstetrics and gynecology. 2000;183(6):1381-4; discussion 1384. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11120500.

6. FREEMAN JT. Posture in the aging and aged body. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1957;165(7):843-6. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13462861.

7. Milne JS, Williamson J. A longitudinal study of kyphosis in older people. Age and ageing. 1983;12(3):225-33. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6624608.

8. Anderson F, Cowan NR. Survival of healthy older people. British journal of preventive & social medicine. 1976;30(4):231-2. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1009273.

9. Kado DM, Huang M, Karlamangla AS, Barrett-Connor E, Greendale GA. Hyperkyphotic posture predicts mortality in older community-dwelling men and women: a prospective study. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. 2004;52(10):1662-7. Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15450042.