The Human Joint Chiropractic, Nutrition, Lifestyle, Allergy Elimination, Denver Colorado : Dr. Jeana's "Rant" on Chiropractic Maintenance

Keep Fit for Personal Achievement & Longevity

At Wellness First we are in the "personal achievement" & "longevity" business. We help you reach your personal goals and live longer and healthier.

You know, the anatomy of the spine is a "given" in all of our lives. We all have one, and they're all shaped pretty much the same. They're even shaped pretty much like the spines of giraffes, and cats and dinosaurs. I don't know how it got designed, but its design gives us a remarkable compromise between flexibility, strength and protection of the spinal cord. We all know what happens when the spinal cord gets injured--we lose the use of large parts of the body. So the spinal cord must be protected, but the survival and happiness of mammals also required flexibility and strength for hunting, gathering, farming, installing plumbing parts under sinks, dating, skate-boarding and Tae Bo classes.

Hence the moveable vertebrae. If we didn't require flexibility, the spinal cord could be protected by a solid bone rod with holes in it for the nerves to come out and supply every cell of the body with the intelligence from the brain. (And chiropractic wouldn't exist.) But if we want flexibility, we need moving parts.

Think about when we're deciding between buying a machine with a lot of moving parts versus a machine with just a few movable parts. We always say the one with the fewer moving parts will last longer and be less likely to break. However, the moving parts are often the "bells and whistles" that make the machine more interesting, more effective, and more fun to spend time with. It's the same with people.

For instance, I have an espresso maker that sits on the stovetop. It has four moving parts, counting the lid. I've had it for over 30 years. I love it. I can take it anywhere. I don't have to be careful with it. It's solid stainless steel. And it still works perfectly with no repairs, ever. I also have an electric espresso machine with a steamer attached. It has 9 moving parts that I can think of, plus lots of other joints that would move if you dropped it, and that doesn't count all the electrical brains of it. I'm on my fourth one. Krups has a great repair policy, but you have to mail it back to them and they send a replacement. I love it. It makes better espresso than the stovetop model. It also steams the milk. It looks cool in my kitchen. But you see the trade-off. (Hint: The one with more moving parts requires maintenance.)

Moving parts wear out where the parts come together. In our bodies those are called "joints". Every pair of vertebrae has five joints between them. That makes about 125 joints in the human spine-all moving most of the time and therefore susceptible to wearing out. Which ones wear out the most? The ones that are being used improperly, the ones that are being overused, the ones that are being used despite being a little "out of adjustment". What happens when your bicycle or car gears are a little out of adjustment? They don't shift when you ask them to, they shift when you don't want them to, they slip.

This is why chiropractic exists. Because chiropractors are trained to make tiny adjustments to the joints of the spine to allow the joints to work better. But I've left out one important thing--the electrical system. What happens when a moving part on a machine causes erosion of an electrical wire? Or when the part wears off the protective covering of a wire? You might get a short. You might get unpredictable results, or no results, after the defect. I just spent most of yesterday tracking down the reason that our phone line wasn't working at the office. Could a phone guy have knocked my line off while installing a new one for someone else? Or could the wind have caused a line to break? Or could a mouse have chewed the line somewhere inside the office? The defect has to be located in order to be fixed and also to decide whether Qwest or Wellness First pays for the repair.

Well, in the human body, the wires are the nerves. And because of the way the spine is built the nerves are "disturbed" (irritated, inflamed, hurt--not necessarily "pinched") when the spinal joints are "out of adjustment". When nerves are disturbed, it means we could have pain, or numbness, or tingling, or burning right at the problem area or anywhere that nerve goes-down your arm, down your leg, around your body. In addition, the nerves carry other information besides pain impulses, and when that information is compromised, it is possible for organs to function improperly or inefficiently. That can make us sick in all kinds of ways. It can make us not breathe as well. It can make us not digest our food as well. There are other causes for these problems also, but nerve interference can set the stage for illness.

So this is what chiropractors do all day long. We search for places in the spine that are "out of adjustment" for any number of reasons (we call these "subluxations"), and we adjust them. This adjustment causes the joints to function better and the nerves to do their job better.

This is where personal achievement and longevity come in. Machines and people who are well-adjusted meet their personal goals better and don't wear out as fast.