No matter the time of year — in the middle of flu season or during the hottest days of the summer — it never hurts to give your immune system a boost to protect yourself from illness and injury. Who doesn’t want to always feel at their best? We have many patients who initially come in for back/ neck pain, and then tell us they haven’t been sick or had a cold in years!
We may not be able to completely prevent illness, but there are certainly ways you may lessen the severity or duration of your time under the weather or in pain. And that’s something anyone can be happy with, right?
Here is how regular chiropractic adjustments can help, plus what else you can do to naturally boost your immune system:
Spinal adjustments have been shown to boost immune function because they serve to correct the spinal misalignments that cause neural dysfunction. Neural dysfunction stresses a body out, which may lead to a weakened immune system and lowered response to a foreign body, such as the cold virus. Did you now that a Chiropractic adjustment stimulates the nervous system, which stimulates the immune system? Many think adjustments are just for decreasing pain, but the same nerves that help decrease back pain have branches that go to all of our internal organs. After an adjustment, your immune system is increased by 48% for the next 24-48 hours. The fighter T-Cells are working at their optimum during this time! Now more than ever is the time that everyone should be taking extra special care of themselves so your body can function at it’s highest level to fight off germs!
Organs that have a strong relationship with the immune system, such as the lymph nodes and the spleen, communicate with your brain and nerves, and if your nervous system isn’t functioning at an optimal level, a communication breakdown can occur. You can imagine what may happen next. Getting a chiropractic adjustment is a great place to start so you can get any spinal misalignment you may have corrected. Even one adjustment can bring about an immediate immune boost.
“I try to get people to understand that your nervous system and your brain control every function of your body,”
“When we have a condition in chiropractic we call subluxation, which is misalignment or dysfunction in the spine as far as mobility is concerned, it can cause nerve interference, which will interfere with the expression of intelligence that flows over the spinal cord and nerves.“
“It can contribute not only causing pain that most people perceive as a chiropractic problem but also can cause organs not to function 100 percent.”
A chiropractic adjustment isn’t the only way to increase your immune function. The following methods should be used in conjunction with regular chiropractic care.
First, get more sleep! We are a nation of sleep-deprived individuals, but you don’t have to be one of them. Sleep helps your body to reset and recharge, and keeps your system firing and protecting in the way that it should. Next, arm yourself with vitamin D from the sun plus vitamin C from eating the fresh produce that contains it. Regular exercise is also important when it comes to immune health because it serves to improve blood circulation, which in turn kickstarts the release of immune system substances into your body.
Through listening to your body, providing it with what it needs, and going to regular adjustments, you may find yourself fighting immune system illnesses better than before! Below is a chart detailing that the nerves that come out of our spines not only go to spinal joints and muscles, but also every organ in our body. That is why chiropractic adjustments improve our overall health, and are not just for pain relief!
According to DeMoss, “Chiropractic is like brushing your teeth;” it’s something you need to do on a regular basis to maintain the life of your spine, because regular activities, such as chronic sitting, can contribute to its functioning less than optimally.
