Experience the Top Chiropractic Care in Santa Clara
Over the last few weeks, we have highlighted some changes you can implement immediately to impact your overall health significantly. This week we are closing out the series with, you guessed it, Getting Checked and Adjusted!
Yes, we realize this health advice is coming from us, a chiropractic office. To better understand why chiropractic adjustments are objectively essential to your well-being, let’s go ahead and look at the science behind them.
The body’s most important function is the Autonomic Nervous System, or as we like to call it the Automatic Operating System, AOS. Like a self-driving automobile, the body’s AOS operates autonomously (on its own).
These functions are happening within your body without you having to think about it. The AOS monitors, regulates and controls all of the unconscious, involuntary systems and organs that maintain your body’s homeostasis, or its physiologically most stable state.
These physiologic functions are essential for our survival and enable us to interact with our environment, while effectively adapting to a wide range of conditions. For instance, you may automatically begin to shiver when exposed to the cold, which is a mechanism to warm up your body temperature.
Some other examples of your ANS in action include:
- Regulation of heart rate and blood pressure
- Sweating, shivering and temperature control
- Ability of focusing your eyes and pupil movement
- Urinary motility
All super important stuff right?
Your spine is the communication hub from which your nerve roots pass out of your spinal canal and extend to every organ and body part. This is the main way the Automatic Operating System communicates. Now, imagine your spine becomes misaligned from the stress of toxicity in your diet, emotional stress or possibly an injury.
When there is an obstruction or damage to your spine, the nerves extending from that area inevitably suffer as well, impeding their ability to receive signals from your brain to transmit sensation. The resulting symptoms you experience will depend on where there is an obstruction in your spine or in peripheral nerves located throughout the rest of your body.
To be able to put this into perspective, let’s look at Sciatica – a condition patients often come in struggling with. They experience a radiating pain that goes down their lower back, hips, buttocks and down one leg or both.
These areas follow the sciatic nerve path, and they are experiencing pain in these specific areas as those nerves branch from their lumbar spine, specifically from the 1st through 5th Lumbar and Sacral level (L1-S1). This is due to irritation and/or pinching of the nerve bundle usually caused by a disc herniation or an overgrowth in bones (bone spurs) located in the lumbar spine.
Overall, the result of any type of misalignment or obstruction is that your communication system is now compromised. In other words, there is a Neuro-Structural Shift in your spine. Consequently, your AOS cannot properly communicate to the rest of your body and normal function begins to go awry.
A Neuro-Structural Shift, or a disruption or obstruction within the AOS, typically results in underlying health issues an individual would experience in the form of symptoms or what we call Secondary Conditions. These secondary conditions related to the AOS include, but are not limited to:
- Dizziness and fainting
- Body’s inability to regulate heart rate, heart palpitations
- Sweating abnormalities (absence or excess)
- Digestive issues (diarrhea, bloating, constipation, inability to swallow)
- Difficulties with urination and/or incontinence
- High blood pressure
- Organ dysfunction
- Sexual dysfunction
- Blurry vision and/or inability of eyes to react to light quickly
The body is behaving abnormally due to repeated misuse and poor biomechanics. Because of the obstruction in their lumbar spine, the nerves are then pinched and cannot properly communicate with the rest of your body, resulting in leg pain, muscle weakness and foot drop.
Imagine what happens when you fold a running hose, water cannot pass through, creating tension and cutting off the connection to the end of the hose.
We only feel 10% of what’s going on within our bodies, and we only start to feel anything when there is 40% compression/obstruction to our nerves. That means that dysfunction has already begun internally without our knowledge.
For example, a neurological obstruction in the liver may start to manifest in the form of digestive issues, referred pain to the upper back, excessively frequent visits to the bathroom, etc. But our internal system functions have been compromised well before we actually feel these symptoms.
When there is a breakdown in this system, no amount of pills, potions, stretches, or lotions can correct that connection. In order to restore normal function, your AOS must be able to communicate effectively — proper structure and alignment is the only way that can happen.
A traditional medical center approaches injured nerves by suggesting rest, over the counter pain relievers such as aspirin/ibuprofen, anti-inflammatory steroid injections solely to reduce pain, physical therapy and/or surgery depending on severity.
At Platinum Chiropractic, our mission is to help our Santa Clara community achieve their highest health potential and experience the effectiveness of chiropractic care themselves, so they can live their best life full of health, joy, and abundance, free from dependency on any drugs or surgery.
Our approach to helping people achieve their highest health potential is through chiropractic treatment that focuses on Neuro-Structural Correction. We also educate our patients on how to promote their healing and nerve health with proper nutrition, supplements and exercise.
In comparison, other health care providers, doctors, chiropractors, physical therapists etc., attempt to treat symptoms (secondary conditions). This may be effective for temporary relief, but if the obstruction (Neuro-Structural shift) is still present, the symptoms will arise again.
Here at Platinum Chiropractic, we focus on correcting and reducing Neuro-Structural shifts to correct the underlying cause of many secondary conditions. When these shifts are corrected/reduced, the body restores its connection to the brain and functions normally, which alleviates the secondary conditions while also proactively prevents any further nerve damage.