School's Out, but Our Bodies Keep Working

School may be out for summer, but despite the break, our bodies keep working. Many of us get to enjoy a reprieve from the usual school routine and all the activities that go with it. But not everyone gets the break - and our bodies never do! Some parts of our bodies keeping working, never taking breaks or resting.

One of those body parts is the heart. It stays busy pumping blood to your organs and cells, all day and night, like that pink bunny on the battery commercials that never quits. Likewise, your kidneys keep working. They constantly filter the blood your heart is pumping. Your kidneys filter about a liter of blood per minute!

The next body part that works without ceasing is really two organs: your lungs! You never stop breathing, so your lungs never stop allowing you to breathe oxygen in and carbon dioxide out.

Your ears and nose are two more organs that keep working, all the time. You may not realize it, but they’re hearing and smelling, even when you’re asleep. (It’s also pretty cool that our brains help to filter out some sensory input to help us rest.)

And that brings us to your brain! It’s constantly buzzing with activity, sending and receiving signals throughout your nervous system, and therefore, your entire body. When your nervous system isn’t working at its best, your other organs don’t work as effectively. Your nervous system is the central command center for your body, and it’s so important that most of it is protected by the bones in your skull and spine. This is why proper spine alignment is so important! Vertebral subluxation can keep your nervous system - and whole body - from working at its best.

See also: Give Your Nervous System a Boost for Improved Performance

So, school may be out, but your body will keep working hard all summer. Visit your chiropractor to give your nervous system a boost.

Learn more in our blog, How Chiropractic Adjustments Improve Body Function.

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Read more from ICPA, School’s Out for Summer!

The Three Ts of Chiropractic: Toxins, Traumas and Thoughts

Back in 1910, D.D. Palmer, the founder of chiropractic, identified the three main causes of spinal misalignments, or subluxations, as toxins, traumas and thoughts. These three Ts are just as relevant today, over a hundred years later! How do these three Ts affect your nervous system? Let’s take a look:

Toxins

Toxins are everywhere! Toxins are sometimes hard to identify. We see toxins as antibiotics, preservatives, hormones, etc. in processed foods, pollution in our environment, chemicals in our cleaning supplies, and sometimes even in the water we drink. These toxins can cause interference with how our nervous system communicates. When our bodies are disrupted by these toxins, homeostasis (equilibrium) within them becomes imbalanced.

If toxins are everywhere, what are some things you can do to rid your body of them? 

• Drinking water is very important to maintaining homeostasis. A spine under stress without enough water can lead to degenerative changes over time that are harder to reverse! Drinking plenty of water is also an excellent way to help your body flush out toxins. 

• Get plenty of sleep. Sleep is critical for many reasons. In this instance, it’s because sleep is part of our bodies’ natural process for removing toxins.

• Exercise regularly to help your kidneys, lungs and colon work efficiently to get rid of waste. It also promotes better circulation, which helps our organs cleanse themselves. 

Chiropractic care is about correcting subluxation so that our nervous system can communicate effectively, and our body can adapt to these chemical stresses better. Being more adaptable and resilient creates more homeostasis/health inside.

Traumas

When we talk about trauma in chiropractic, we’re generally talking about physical trauma. 

Think back to a time when you had your major head bump, or maybe fall from a tree as a child. This would be an example of a form of isolated, or single, trauma. It’s not hard to imagine how a car wreck or bad fall could lead to a spinal misalignment. 

Now, think of common habits that you have everyday, like wearing your purse on the same side of your body, looking down at our phones or computers for long periods of time, wearing high heels, carrying your child on the same hip every time, or sleeping on your stomach.

These are repetitive traumas that can be overlooked or undetected at first but can lead to larger disruptions in our nervous system by building up over time.

Both single and repetitive traumas lead to interferences within our nervous system. With the help of continual chiropractic care, however, interferences can be corrected and caught before leading to bigger problems. 

Thoughts

Our thoughts, mindset, and mental health can affect our physical health. In chiropractic, we talk about how the quality of our thoughts affect the body’s ability to adapt to life, the environment, and our health.

If our adaptability is reduced due to stress, this can make it harder to function optimally day to day.

Consider the fight or flight response you experience in frightening or stressful situations. This stress response is beneficial in the short term, but a constant state of stress can lead to spinal subluxations that keep our bodies from operating at their best.

When we have stressful thoughts, we may experience this as anxiety or excessive worry.

We may start to see this affect our sleep and digestive system, and we may also have more tension in the body, specifically our necks and upper backs.

Learning how to breathe deeply and practice mindfulness are ways to calm our thoughts and minds, and chiropractic can correct subluxations caused by our physical responses to stress and worry. 

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Our aim is to help families – especially pregnant moms and kids -- regain and maintain their health by correcting subluxations, structural misalignments, in the spine. This type of care goes beyond mere symptom relief and helps to improve the function and health of the entire body. Contact us to experience life with a clear and connected nervous system.

How Chiropractic Adjustments Improve Body Function

Our brains are the control centers for our entire bodies. Everything that happens in our bodies is regulated by our brains and our nervous systems. Not only do our brains control our physical selves, but they’re also centers for our senses, emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. As chemicals and signals from our brains travel across our nervous systems and out to our organs, tissues and other systems, they allow our bodies to function.

Our nervous systems are a lot like busy highways that need be maintained so that brain signals and chemicals can flow smoothly to their proper destinations. Just like highways get worn down with normal wear and tear, so do our bodies. Those daily stressors - poor posture, injuries, repetitive motions - can create vertebral subluxations that compromise the signals our nervous systems are trying to send out.

Related: The Importance of the Vagus Nerve

“Vertebral subluxations are like static in a
communication system. They prevent the
brain from accurately perceiving what is
happening in the body and from properly
regulating bodily functions.”

Vertebral subluxations are misalignments of the spinal bones that prevent your nervous system from functioning at 100% of its potential. If your nervous system isn’t operating at its best, then neither is the rest of your body.

Subluxations can be so subtle that you don’t notice obvious symptoms or pain, but they may still be negatively affecting your body’s ability to perform at its best. Chiropractic adjustments improve body function by correcting those subluxations to improve the health of your entire body. That’s why we believe chiropractic care is for everyone, not only those who are suffering from pain. When your body is free from subluxations, its systems work in harmony to keep you healthy.

Learn more about the benefits of chiropractic care and how it improves a number of health concerns.

Read the full article, which was published in Pathways to Family Wellness, Issue #62.

Parental Satisfaction with the Chiropractic Care of Their Children

Excerpted from "Parental Satisfaction with the Chiropractic Care of Their Children" by ICPA.

Patient satisfaction is an important benchmark in the utilization of healthcare services, especially for complementary and alternative (CAM) options. A patient’s satisfaction not only equated to the perceived effectiveness (i.e. symptom relief) but also to the overall experience. Aspects of the interpersonal process of care such as empathy, communication, friendliness, and cultural sensitivity plays a large role in the perceived quality of care and patient satisfaction.

Studies comparing patient satisfaction in allopathic versus CAM models have suggested that satisfaction and patient preference may correlate more strongly with the doctor-patient relationship and overall experience than with symptom resolution. A 2014 European survey of parents with infants under chiropractic care showed only moderate correlation between satisfaction and symptom improvement. Yet, the same study showed significant satisfaction overall. It is beneficial to further study the common factors that influence parental satisfaction and lead to continuation of chiropractic care for their families, particularly in the care of children.

Courtesy of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA). Read the full article.