The Body’s Ability To Heal: Chiropractic Scientist

The body’s ability to heal itself is quite remarkable. When injury or illness presents, the body’s systems activate to deal with the problem and restore itself to health. The spine’s bones protect the communication pathways of the spinal cord and nerve roots. If the nervous system suffers injury or is damaged in some way, causing impairment, it can cause malfunctioning of the tissues and organs throughout the body. Chiropractic care combined with functional medicine can restore and enhance the body’s self-healing abilities to optimal levels.

The Body’s Ability To Heal Itself

A healthy body regenerates, fights infection, heals wounds, and repairs damage. The body is in a constant state of removing damage and producing new, healthy tissues.

• Cells can heal themselves when they become unhealthy and replicate to replace injured or damaged cells.
• The body produces new cells to heal the damage if a bone gets fractured or broken.
• When the skin gets cut, the blood clots, stopping the bleeding, white blood cells remove the injured and dead cells, and new healthy cells repair the damaged tissue.
• The immune system deals with viruses, bacteria, and toxins.
• Natural destroyer cells recognize when the body’s cells have been invaded by a virus and destroy the infected cell.

Inflammation

Inflammation is the body’s reaction to an injury or infection, activating the immune system to restore the injured or infected area to health.

• A fever is the body’s raising its temperature to levels that will kill viruses and bacteria.
• The elevation in temperature also triggers certain cellular mechanisms which help the body fight the infection.

Stem Cells

The body heals and regenerates itself through stem cells.

• Once the body is formed, embryonic stem cells disappear, and adult stem cells take over.
• The adult stem cells divide, producing an identical stem cell and a healthy, mature cell of a specific type.
• Each type of adult stem cell only can become certain types of tissue.
• For example, Mesenchymal Stem Cells can regenerate bone, fat, muscle, and cartilage cells.
• Neural Stem Cells help regenerate nerve tissue in the brain and spinal cord.
• Epithelial Stem Cells regenerate skin.
• Adult stem cells can reproduce for a long time but eventually stop reproducing as efficiently.

Nervous System

The nervous system assists the whole body in maintaining communication, using electrical and chemical impulses to send and receive messages. The system reacts to changes inside and outside the body. Infections, injuries, disorders, and conditions can cause imbalances causing communication problems that can lead to health issues. Common problems of the nervous system include:

• Sciatica – Pressure on a nerve/s caused by a slipped, bulging, or herniated disc in the spine or arthritis of the spine and, sometimes, other factors.
• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Neuralgia
• Shingles – Infection of sensory nerves caused by the varicella-zoster virus.
• Stroke – Lack of blood to part of the brain.
• Parkinson’s disease – The death of neurons in a part of the brain called the midbrain. Symptoms include shaking and mobility problems.
• Epilepsy – Abnormal electrical activity in the brain causing seizures.
• Meningitis – Inflammation of the membrane covering the brain.
• Multiple sclerosis – The myelin sheaths protecting the nerves of the central nervous system become damaged and deteriorates.

Chiropractic Care

Subluxations are misaligned or damaged joints that are not functioning correctly. These joints can place pressure on a nerve, which interferes with the normal nervous system function. Chiropractic care can realign, restore and maintain neuromusculoskeletal system health to reactivate the body’s natural healing abilities.

Cerebral Palsy Chiropractic Treatment

References

Haavik, Heidi, et al. “Effects of 12 Weeks of Chiropractic Care on Central Integration of Dual Somatosensory Input in Chronic Pain Patients: A Preliminary Study.” Journal of manipulative and physiological therapeutics vol. 40,3 (2017): 127-138. doi:10.1016/j.jmpt.2016.10.002

Lee, Courtney, et al. “Mind-body therapies for the self-management of chronic pain symptoms.” Pain medicine (Malden, Mass.) vol. 15 Suppl 1 (2014): S21-39. doi:10.1111/pme.12383

Maltese PE, Michelini S, Baronio M, Bertelli M. Molecular foundations of chiropractic therapy. Acta Biomed. 2019 Sep 30;90(10-S):93-102. doi: 10.23750/abm.v90i10-S.8768. PMID: 31577263; PMCID: PMC7233649.

McSwan, Joyce, et al. “Self-Healing: A Concept for Musculoskeletal Body Pain Management – Scientific Evidence and Mode of Action.” Journal of pain research vol. 14 2943-2958. 21 Sep. 2021, doi:10.2147/JPR.S321037

Navid, Muhammad Samran et al. “The effects of chiropractic spinal manipulation on central processing of tonic pain – a pilot study using standardized low-resolution brain electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA).” Scientific reports vol. 9,1 6925. 6 May. 2019, doi:10.1038/s41598-019-42984-3