First off, I’m a firm believer that in order to better understand a concept like chiropractic, you must dig into the history of it all.
It was September 18th, 1895 in Davenport, Iowa where there was a healer named Daniel David Palmer (D.D. for short) who helped a man named Harvey Lillard that day. Harvey was working in the same building as D.D., and was talking about how he has been deaf in his right ear for 17 years. It was D.D.’s passion to be in service of others, and his confidence in the natural innate healing properties that the human body holds allowed him to make the decision to check Harvey. He found something along Harvey’s upper neck and decided to apply an adjustive force onto it (some say it was C2 on the right side), and because of that Harvey was able to regain his hearing back. It was right then and there, D.D. thought he had the cure for deafness, and had coined the term chiropractic which means “done by hand.”
D.D. then tried to help other people with deafness by adjusting them, but his luck wasn’t as successful as he anticipated. However, other phenomenon’s started to occur in these people. D.D. noticed their blood pressure had become more regulated, digestion and constipation gotten better, stress levels started to decrease, etc. It was then and there that D.D. concluded that our nervous system; the brain, spinal cord, and the peripheral nerves; is the master controller that provides the functionality to our bodies, and the bony vertebrae of the spine can twist, tilt, and get pushed back out of alignment. This causes interference of nerve conduction, thus impeding the function of the target area. It was then where his son Barratt Joshua Palmer (B.J. for short) took over and started to do research and formulate techniques to adjust the spine as we do today.
The majority of the world population has 7 cervical (or neck) vertebrae, 12 thoracic vertebrae, 5 lumbar vertebrae, 5 sacral vertebrae, coccyx bone, and 2 ilium/pelvic girdle bones when we are first born. As we get older, the sacral vertebrae fuses together into one triangle bone called the sacrum. As we start walking, we start forming primary and secondary curves all along the spine. The curves are important because they allow the discs to help support your upright stature properly, and allow shock absorption to disperse evenly when gravitational forces are going down and forces from the feet coming up.
The spinal nerves that come out of the foramina (little tunnels created by the facet joints) of the vertebrae can channel towards any cell, tissue, muscle, or organ depending on its location. When the spine gets misaligned due to a past trauma (either from birth, falls, car accidents, sports, etc.), this can inflame the nerve causing dysafferentation, and if not resolved it can later dead to spinal degeneration AKA osteoarthritis.
The first system of the human body to develop in-utero is our nervous system, and it help guides the development of the entire body and giving it its organized anatomy and physiological function. Thus, giving it the innate intelligence that animates within all of us to heal itself from above-down-inside-out. The chiropractic profession is perhaps the only healthcare profession today that honors the bodies innate ability to heal, and it requires no drugs and surgery is necessary to do so.
As a chiropractor, we seek these subtle misalignments, also known as vertebral subluxations, and we specifically adjust them by hand or instrument to allow nerve conduction to flow at its optimal best. Chiropractic care brings alignment and balance to the body in order to bring your full potential of health, function, healing, and quality of life. When an adjustive force is applied to the body, it allows it to do what it was built to do which is to heal itself. This occurs due to optimal function of the nervous system, allowing the brain to communicate with the entire body much more efficiently and effectively.
For more information about the author, you can visit www.drdavidwongdc.com