When asked to name the most vital parts of the body, those most crucial to your health, most people might name the heart or brain. But did you know in fact the spine and your spinal cord may be just as vital to your overall state of health and well-being.
Although it is the brain that generate the impulses controlling the activities that run your body, such as making sure your heart keeps pumping, these impulses reach the body by traveling along a bundle of nerves that make up your spinal cord, which runs through and is protected by the spine. You are usually not conscious of most of these messages because they are part of the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls your reflexes and the unconscious actions that keep your heart beating and other vital organs functioning.
If your spine is damaged by injury or become misaligned, the nerves along the spinal cord may become pinched and unable to communicate vital messaged to and from the brain properly. The result can be observed as pain, and not just in the back or neck. A pinched nerve caused by a misplaced joint in the spine may be experienced as pain, weakness or distress elsewhere in the body and may affect respiration, digestion, limb movement or cause even more sever dysfunctions.
Misalignments of the spine may happen in many ways. Physical traumas such as a slip and fall or accident are the easiest sourced to identify. However other spinal misalignments may build up over time as the result of small stressed that you did not notice at the time but have combined to create a larger problem. The result may be a general feeling of being unwell, tired or sluggish. If you are experiencing headaches, pain in your back or any other lack of well-being you might want to consider seeing a chiropractor.
Chiropractors specialize in detecting and correcting the imbalances and misalignments in the spine that may cause these conditions. Their approach is holistic free from drugs and surgery and aim at treating the whole person, not just the individuals symptoms. Many patients have received chiropractic care to relieve pain following an accident only to find that their overall health and sense of well-being improves drastically. Not only does that pain disappear but that feel a new sense of vitality as their now properly aligned spine no longer “gets in the way” of transmitting message to and from the brain.