When most people think about chiropractic, they think of one thing, pain. Luckily, pain is what gets people through the door but its how they leave that is important. Chiropractors believe in the philosophy of above down and inside out. This is the principal that our body has an innate ability to do what it needs to do to function properly. The nervous system is our main system of communication with the brain being the command center. Its messengers are the nerves that control every function in our body. We have 12 cranial nerves and 31 pairs of spinal nerves. These nerves are the origin of all of the other nerves.
So when your leg falls asleep, this is a nerve that has been compressed somehow either by crossing your legs or your arms. This is the simplest way to view pressure on a nerve. Our arms or legs puts pressure on the superficial nerve of the thigh and after 20 minutes or so its start to become numb. One thing to note is that only 10% of nerves are pain nerves and the rest are function nerves. So when there is pressure on those function nerves, some bodily function is decreased.
The superficial nerve comes from the nerves of our low back and is much smaller than those found near the vertebra. It only takes 8-10 mm of pressure to affect these nerves. That is a weight of a dime. What happens is that once we feel the symptoms of this, the nerve has had a 60% decrease in function.
Now back to the case, A female patient came in with unilateral numbness and weakness on the left side. She had suffered from headaches throughout her life and this was her first chiropractic experience. X-ray's and palpation revealed subluxations, when a bone twists out of its normal position, throughout her spine. After one adjustment she stated that her numbness had decreased 60% and that her headaches had gone away.
I want to explain the adjustment that took care of these symptoms.... The atlas. So called the atlas because it holds our head in place. Attached to the brain is the spinal cord. The spinal cord goes through a big hole called the foramen magnum and the first bone below the foramen magnum is the atlas. If the atlas is subluxated or misaligned, it affects the brain, the brain stem and the spinal cord which in turn affects the entire body.
After 3 adjustments, the weakness, numbness and the headaches were gone. All it took was to take the pressure off the spinal cord and the body was able to do the rest.
Chiropractors do nothing but locate and eliminate subluxations, the body does the rest.
As quoted by Hippocrates, "Look well to the spine for the cause of disease".
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