Connected Chiropractic Offers Treatment with Relaxing Effects
Where do you carry your stress? Neck? Upper back? Head? Low back? Would you like some help relaxing? Chiropractic spinal manipulation may well produce relaxing effects especially when applied to the cervical and thoracic spine regions. Connected Chiropractic sees stress daily. Connected Chiropractic hears our Elgin chiropractic patients request more spine treatment once they experience how good it is! Wise chiropractic patients!
MEASURING RESPONSES TO SPINAL MANIPULATION: STRESS
Initially, how do we respond to stress? Sweaty palms. Rapid pulse and heart rate. We can feel these responses. Researchers want to quantify these responses. Measuring blood pressure, heart rate variability, heart rate, and numeric pain scale after treating upper and lower cervical spine segments of healthy and neck pain patients, researchers discovered that upper cervical manipulation enhanced parasympathetic (calming) system and lower cervical manipulation enhanced sympathetic (fight or flight) activity. Interestingly, neck pain patients’ parasympathetic activity was boosted by both upper and lower cervical manipulation. (1) Connected Chiropractic notices that the effect of touch alone is influential.
EFFECTS OF MANIPULATION ON STRESS RESPONSES
The body responds to all sorts of stimuli. Researchers strive to see how. One group did a meta-analysis of multiple studies about the effect of spinal manipulation and mobilization on cardiovascular responses. Changes in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure and heart rate were charted. They concluded that spinal manipulation and mobilization may bring about a significant decrease of systolic as well as diastolic blood pressure. (2) An analysis of articles about the effect of spinal manipulation on heart rate variability stated that a greater parasympathetic response was noted when cervical and lumbar spine areas were treated while a larger sympathetic response was seen when the thoracic spine was treated. (3) Another study tied pain response to resting blood pressure pre- and post-cervical spine non-thrust manipulation. Non-chronic neck pain patients who underwent such manipulation had reduced short-term pain and decreased systolic blood pressure. (4) There’s something to manipulation beyond pain relief, and Connected Chiropractic is happy to present the research as it comes available.
SPINAL MANIPULATION TREATMENT
Connected Chiropractic utilizes gentle spinal manipulation applied to the cervical, thoracic and lumbar spine areas to decrease pain. Spinal manipulation of the thoracic spine effectively manages painful mechanical thoracic spine pain better than placebo treatment. (5) Effects of thoracic manipulation go beyond the thoracic spine. Benefits of manipulation of the thoracic spine reach the cervical spine for patients with bilateral chronic mechanical neck pain. Thoracic thrust manipulation and non-thrust mobilization produce similar changes in patients’ pressure pain thresholds and decrease neck pain intensity. (6) These are benefits of Elgin chiropractic care Connected Chiropractic is well-trained to deliver.
CONTACT Connected Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes how chiropractic and The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management may well attune parasympathetic and sympathetic and pain responses in the body.
Make your next Elgin chiropractic appointment soon. Your neck and shoulders and upper back will be grateful for the attention as will your decreased pain and heart rate and blood pressure after a gentle Elgin spinal manipulation session.
