Just like you'd keep an appointment with primary care physician when you're sick, you should keep your chiropractic appointment to boost your immune system.
Yes… you don't feel well this may cause you to call our office and cancel, but it's far better that you come in to get your adjustment than skip out.
Chiropractic care goes way beyond simply eliminating back or neck pain.
The Spine is Linked to the Immune System
Sure, if you're getting chiropractic adjustments, it's likely because of neck pain, back pain or headaches. But the truth is, every single time you get adjusted, you are fine tuning your nervous system because the spine houses your spinal cord and nerves.
This critical system, containing the brain stem and spinal cord, controls and regulates all body functions. Research also tells us that it is linked to the immune system.
This is the main reason why researchers see an increased incidence of infections and decreased immune cells in people who have spinal cord injuries!
That's right. Several studies have observed that people with spine disease and spinal cord injuries have demonstrated immunodeficiency (weak immune systems).
A healthy spine is integral to a fully functioning nervous system. The nervous system controls the regulation of the immune system.
Thus, a healthy spine = a healthy nervous system = a healthy immune system.
Chiropractic Adjustments Boost Your Immune System
Researchers have even found that chiropractic adjustments specifically BOOST your immune function!
What we know is that immediately after a chiropractic adjustment, there is a HUGE increase in immune boosting chemical messengers.
These chemical messengers known as “cytokines” are little immune system post men who deliver the messages telling your body to ramp up your immune systems response to germs, bacteria, viruses and foreign invaders.
In fact it is largely understood that chiropractic became a licensed profession due to the increased immune response seen in people in chiropractic care during the 1918 Flu Pandemic which killed between 20-50 million people world wide.
In 2017, a group of researchers looked at how chiropractic adjustments affected body chemistry. They found that spinal adjustments “can influence inflammatory/immune biomarkers”.
Another study found that chiropractic adjustments resulted in a significant boost in polymorphonuclear neutrophils.
What the heck are those you may ask? They are the most abundant circulating white blood cells in your body. They are literally the first line defense against infections.
Finally, one of the more recent scientific investigations into chiropractic and immunity demonstrated an immune response from just one chiropractic adjustment.
For a list of other benefits of chiropractic, check out this article titled 10 Conditions Chiropractic Care Can Help With.
Symptoms Serve a Purpose
Don't forget… your body has been optimized over the course of thousands of years.
It comes fully equipped with a detection and alarm system giving you a heads up of where it's working.
So it's important to understand that the typical symptoms of illness—runny nose, cough, mild fever, swollen or glassy eyes, loss of appetite, weakness and lethargy—indicate that your immune system is doing its job!
These symptoms aren't random, each serve a purpose:
- A runny nose helps excrete the virus or organisms
- A mild fever serves to stimulate the immune system and create an environment that kills the invading foreign bodies
- Watery or glassy eyes cool down the cornea so that its heat-sensitive protein make-up is not damaged by the fever
- A loss of appetite is due to the body redirecting energy from the digestive cycles to the immune system
Your body is designed to fight illness and often the symptoms you exhibit are simply signs that your body is doing exactly what it should be and getting your next chiropractic adjustment helps to boost it even more!
Final Thoughts
Every day we are surrounded by billions of bacteria, viruses and “germs”, so why aren’t we always sick?
We get sick when our body is exposed to higher levels of stress, this stress (either lack of sleep, decreased movement, emotional stress, increased sugar, decreased sunlight, etc.) slows down our immune function, and ramps up our sympathetic nervous system; making us less able to adapt to the already abundant levels of bacteria, viruses, germs.
The same sympathetic nervous system STRESS response occurs when we have misalignments and fixation in our spine, this lack of mobility in the spine is known to create a disturbance in your nervous system, this constant irritation to the nervous system slows down our immune response.
This is where chiropractic adjustments come in, by restoring proper motion, creating ease within the body, and balancing the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, our body is better able to adapt to our environment, making us less prone to getting sick.
We hope this has been an insightful explanation of how chiropractic is a known safe, and effective way to improve your immune function whenever you are feeling an increased amount of stress or starting to feel ill.
We hope you will forward this along to a friend who is constantly calling out sick or saying “I’m too stressed”.
