The basic type of allergies that chiropractors help with are seasonal allergies. Allergies that occur in the sinus, and allergies that occur within the ears and the eyes. How the body responds to, for example, spring, when all the flowers bloom, those types of allergies are the types of allergies we can help people with.
Chiropractic is all about the innate ability of the body to function at an optimal level inside out. The premise is if your spine is in alignment and the joints are moving well, it is not going to create stress and tension onto the nervous system. However, there are three types of traumas. There are big traumas like car accidents, repetitive stresses, sitting for example. You’ve got emotional stress, and then you’ve got toxins and things you put into the body. Those three types of stressors can create subluxations within a spine. A subluxation essentially means that the joint that should be able to move well stably does the exact opposite. It stops moving well and or it can actually shift out of alignment. This creates stress and tension onto the joint, the tissue and specifically the nerve. If the nerve is under stress, that nerve is not going to function well.
You have two nerves in the nervous system. You’ve got sensory pain, so you have a nerve or joint that shifts in your neck. You pinch a nerve in your neck, likelihood is you’re going to get neck pain. However, 85% of our nervous system is acentric. These nerves don’t actually give off pain; they help the body function. So, for example, consider the top two bones in your neck; there is more nervous system activity there than anywhere else in the body and the second joint within the neck specifically innervates the sinuses. So, if we have a shift in the second level that is putting tension on that second nerve in your neck, yes, you can get headaches and neck pain. So that innervation around a sensory nerve called the a sensory, the nerve that doesn’t emit pain, is going to create disfunction. Disfunction at C2, for example, is going to create those sinus allergies, all those kinds of allergies that we get with the seasons. So how do you address it?
Addressing it is evaluating the joint that has shifted, finding that subluxation. We do that through examinations and several different techniques. Then we are going to adjust that joint, and by adjusting the joint, specifically, we are going to take stress and tension off that joint and the tissue. If the nerve is under stress and tension, it is going to allow the body to function as it should optimally. When the body is functioning with no stress on the nervous system, then we should be able to fight off allergies. Second of all, there is plenty of research out that that states by getting your spine adjusted it actually boosts the immune system, and it actually increases neuro plasticity within the brain. So essentially by the spine getting adjusted, it triggers the nervous system into firing up the immune system. It gives it a little bit of spark of life and the immune system does its thing, and obviously fights off infection, allergies, et cetera.
Once we’ve made an improvement, we want to manage that improvement. For example, if you’re suffering with neck pain and the neck pain causes allergies due to those subluxations in the neck, and the variable that brought you into the office was you sit 60 hours a week, you got a high stress job. Once you go through treatment and you no longer have neck pain and your allergies are gone, or they’re improved, but the environment that got you here doesn’t change.
So, you want to handle that environment. How would you do it? You need to be proactive. So we are going to prescribe you a standup desk (“motion is lotion”). We need to make sure that you are standing and sitting throughout your work day. We want to make sure you are taking postural breaks throughout your workday, to make sure that the muscles that control spinal stability are being engaged and being active. Then you see a chiropractor on a reduced basis for the supportive care to make sure your joints are in alignment, they’re moving, making sure your spine is in alignment, making sure those muscles are balanced. Then you get homework to do throughout the week to make sure that you are being proactive.
If you are not proactive, if you just come in, you get treated once or twice, and don’t think you need more treatment because you feel great, wo years later, you sat 50 hours a week and your neck pain, your allergies have returned. You didn’t do any of the proactive stuff, then you’re going to be falling back into that reactive type of treatment, which is essentially getting treated when your allergies are flaring up.
We always try and preach proactive, trying to get ahead of things before they flare up.