The History of the Adjustment

Do you know how the chiropractic profession began? Do you wonder what made people start getting their spines adjusted in the first place? Most people believe chiropractic is about neck and back pain, that it started out as a treatment for the discomfort. Truthfully, chiropractic was not intended to be used as a treatment for any kind of pain. This is because the first chiropractic patient, a man named Harvey Lillard, had loss of hearing. Lillard was working as a janitor when he first got adjusted by D.D. Palmer. D.D. was the very first chiropractor and went on to start Palmer College of Chiropractic and educate thousands of chiropractors. After the first adjustment, most of the hearing Harvey Lillard had lost, returned. D.D. Palmer later revealed he simply adjusted his neck and that shortly after Lillard regained his sense of hearing. Initially, the thought was that chiropractic was a cure for hearing loss. Over time, the thinking changed. Now we know that chiropractic isn’t so much a treatment for hearing loss. Instead, it’s important to the overall function of the nervous system. Harvey Lillard’s story is not an isolated incident. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of stories similar to this one over the past one-hundred years. However, the majority of the public still believe chiropractic is focused primarily around neck and back pain. Now, that’s not to say the average person won’t notice improvement in discomfort of either their back or neck. BUT… Chiropractors work with the nervous system which runs and coordinates everything in the body. Making sure it’s functioning at a high level helps create...

Sympathetic Dominance: Part 2

In last week’s post we discussed stress and the role it plays in our health. We also talked about how stress is cumulative and builds on itself over time. Therefore, if we’re not doing anything to eliminate or reduce the stress, it will continue to worsen over time. This is the process that leads to Sympathetic Dominance. Many symptoms can be caused by an overload of stress. Most people wouldn’t even consider them to be related, however, the truth is these symptoms have a lot more in common than we would initially believe. For example, symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, ADHD, eczema, hypothyroid, etc., can often times be related, and traced back to stress. How do we get rid of the excess stress? First, we need to take note of the environment we’re living in. Is it allowing us freedom, creativity, balance? Or, is it toxic? Are we eating junk two out of three meals? Are we missing out on exercise routinely? Is our home life relaxed or are we on edge? Nutrition is vital in cases of sympathetic dominance because usually, cholesterol in the body is very low. Cholesterol is an important nutrient the body uses to make a large number of critical hormones. If the cholesterol is low, our bodies can suffer from sympathetic dominance. If we’re missing exercise routinely, we increase stress in our bodies. Eighty percent of the brain’s energy goes toward toning down the rest of the nervous system. However, when we’re not exercising, the brain doesn’t have the available resources to do that, so, it becomes wound-up leading to breakdown in other areas of...

Sympathetic Dominance: Part 1

What comes to mind when you think of stress? If you’re like most people, your mind goes to feelings of overwhelm, frustration, anger, etc. You wouldn’t be wrong if you attributed those emotions to stress. Those are all major components when it comes to emotional/mental stress. However, there are two other types of stress you might not be thinking about. The other two stresses are chemical stress, like the food and drink we have, air we breathe, etc. And the final type is called physical stress, or, bad posture, sitting for hours everyday, car accidents, sports, etc. Stress is cumulative. Meaning, each stressful situation builds on the previous one if nothing is done to alleviate the wind-up. And that’s exactly what happens to your body when you stress. It begins to get wound-up. Until, finally, it reaches a point called sympathetic dominance. At this point, there’s very little you can do to stop the pain and suffering being caused by the stress. Many people don’t attribute the symptoms to stress, but that would be a mistake. Some typical symptoms that people suffer when they’re dealing with sympathetic dominance are: sensitivity to light or sound, headaches, fatigue, irritability, difficulty sleeping, loss of hair, brittle nails, weight gain, painful periods, indigestion, etc. These symptoms don’t seem to have anything in common at first glance. However, knowing what we know now about the body, there is a perfectly good explanation for why each symptom happens. This is a topic that demands a lot of attention and more information to really get to the core problem going on. Therefore, we will be continuing...