Let’s talk about healing. When you get adjusted by a chiropractor, you may think that the chiropractor is the one doing all the work to help your body heal. It’s a reasonable thought. After all, you needed some help and you turned to a professional to provide that help. However, healing is a far more collaborative relationship than you may have been led to believe.
It’s your brain that is going to be responsible for regulating and organising all your healing changes. So it makes sense you would want your brain functioning at its best then, right? The brain needs three things to function well – nutrition from what you eat, oxygen coming from the lungs, and feedback received from the neurological connections in the body.
Embedded between all the vertebrae in your spine are many small yet powerful nerve receptors. Together, they are responsible for sending 85-90% of all the neurological feedback in your entire body to your brain. These receptors give the brain feedback about the position of the vertebrae, how they are moving and the health of the tissues in and around the spine. The receptors provide the brain with good quality information when your spine is balanced, moving freely and without tension.
Imagine you were using a map to find out where you wanted to go. The very first thing you would need to work out is where you are currently located, before you could make any decisions on how to move forwards. It would be handy to know what city you were in, but it would be far more valuable to know exactly what position within which street you were in and even the direction you were facing. It’s the same for the brain; first it needs these receptors to be sending high quality information about where exactly the spine is, in order to be able to decide how best to make healing changes. Nerve signals are occurring throughout the body literally billions of times per second of every single day.
This is why a chiropractor will focus their attention on your neck and back. When you get adjusted, your spine will begin to start moving the way it was designed, therefore sending good quality feedback to the brain. That means your brain will be able to heal you as best as it possibly can. Look after your brain like it is the most important thing to you on the entire planet. Because it is.