If you’ve been reading my past newsletters or have been into the office, you understand that the nervous system controls literally every function in your body.
Your nervous system tells the heart to beat, it tells your lungs to breath, it tells your stomach to digest, along with every other body function you can name.
And since your nervous system is housed mostly by your spinal cord, a lot of problems can happen in your spine that will eventually produce dis-ease in your body.
That’s the reason that chiropractic focuses on correcting misalignments in your spine to optimize your health. What’s going on beneath the surface in your spine? I’ll make this as simple as possible.
There is a very predictable sequence of events that can occur when a bone gets out of alignment in your spine. It’s called “The 3 Phases of Spinal Decay.”
Phase I is called Subluxation. This is where a bone gets out of alignment and begins to irritate a nerve. The bad part about this is that you will not necessarily have PAIN with a subluxation, but SOME part of the body will begin to function abnormally.
Phase II is called Decay. We’ve all heard the term “arthritis.” That’s all arthritis is…decay. Once a Phase I has been there long enough, the bones begin to grind and rub against each other. Think of a car with the alignment off. The parts start to rub and the longer it stays like that, the more the parts wear down. Other terms that you’ve probably heard for this are “osteoarthritis”, “degenerative disc disease”, and “stenosis”.
IMPORTANT POINT: Decay or arthritis IS NOT caused by old age. If that were true, every joint in your body would be worn out by the time you’re in your sixties or seventies.
Phase III is called Fusion. This is permanent damage. Once a segment is fused, there’s not much we can do other than work on the vertebrae above and below.
The bottom line is that all of this can be going on in your spine or in someone you know and love without even knowing about it! Know anyone who has cancer? Of course you do. And the symptoms from the cancer didn’t show up until the disease had been there for months or even years. I can guarantee you that a lot of people you know have a Phase I, Phase II, or Phase III right now and don’t even know because the symptoms haven’t shown up…yet.