I am very lucky that I get to do a lot of public speaking both within my profession and to the general public. We have a community outreach scheme here at the office that sees us going out to local businesses, community groups, sports clubs and commercial enterprises and delivering educational talks and events. One of the main questions I ask at these events is ‘what is the most important organ in the body?’………….the answer is the brain, although I bet most of you thought the heart yes? Where the heart is number 1 is in the table that no one wants to be part of, the disease of it being the number 1 cause of death in the world (2nd in the UK after Dementia).
After years of advising people to eat a low fat diet, get lots of low level exercise, take cholesterol lowering drugs and lose weight, we still see heart disease effect and take the lives of 23,000 people in the UK [2018].
Now unless you have been living under very secluded rock, you will be aware that a lot of people in our country are overweight (67% of UK men). It is not difficult to fathom how that increase in load the body has to carry around will put more demand on the heart. It has to increase its work rate, pump out more blood, at a quicker rate, more of the time. Simples right?
So why, as a Chiropractor, do I get people under our care report increases in circulation, reductions in resting heart rates, improvements in Oxygen blood levels or even some patients seeing changes in skipping heart beats (Atrial fibrillation in medical language). I want to be clear, these are NOT things we have treated at all. The reason why comes back to our autonomic nervous system, the automatic side of our nervous system which controls heart rate, breathing rate, digestion etc. The system has (like a good story) two sides to it, fight or flight and rest and digest, accelerator/brake, alert and defense vs growth and repair. One of the number 1 risk factors for heart attack is increased activation of the fight/flight stress response, which may in part explain why heart attack risk is highest around 25th December.
The more your fight/flight nervous system is stimulated the higher heart rate, volume of blood pumped and effort your heart is putting in is. Poor lifestyle choices can activate this alarm response in our body but did you know that one of the biggest activators of the alarm response is a stuck and non-moving spine? Fixations in the spine cause altered feedback in sensors in the spine which feedback to the brain and the brain increases activation of this pathway. It provides a link to the Thalamus, a part of the brain that helps control stress hormones and their release, the spine is the only area of the body with this direct link!
Spinal adjustments (the correct term for the cracking we Chiropractors get up to) have been shown to help influence the brain in reducing the activation of the fight/flight response. This aids in creating a more balanced, more adaptable, healthier nervous system and human!
Dr Gareth Ward DC MChiro (Doctor of Chiropractic)
