Children and adults are the same but different. Most kids want to
play all the time, but they also are required to go to school. Most
adults would prefer to play all the time – relax, go to the gym, read a
book, watch TV, or get together with friends – but most adults need to
go to work at least 5 days a week. Interestingly, what most young people
don't know about adults, especially older adults, is that they think of
themselves as much younger than they actually are chronologically. For
example, long ago, when a reporter asked the great golfing champion
Arnold Palmer how he felt about turning 60, he famously replied that "it
doesn't matter to me, I think of myself as 27." Thus, speaking broadly,
kids and adults share similar primary goals. Regular chiropractic care
can enhance the quality of life for both young and older people by
helping make possible the attainment of high levels of overall health.
Young people and adults share identical physiological systems that
are distinguished by age and experience. For example, a child's nervous
system and immune system grow and develop over time, acquiring training
and additional features as the young person proceeds through childhood,
preteen years, and the teenage period. The cardio respiratory system has
full capability at birth and achieves strength, resiliency, and
adaptability as the child grows. Similarly, the gastrointestinal system
is fully capable at birth, but must be trained to digest and otherwise
process a wide variety of foods over the first several years of the
newborn's life. The skeletal system of young men and women achieves
maturity in the late teens and early twenties.
The commonality among all physiological systems, at any age and at
any stage of development, is the requirement for optimal control by the
nerve system, the body's master system. The nerve system establishes a
highly sophisticated feedback system between its components, that is,
the brain, spinal cord, spinal nerves, and peripheral nerves, and the
numerous other physiological systems. The brain sends instructions via
the nervous system to other cells functioning in other systems, and the
cells report back to the brain via the nervous system, providing
information on their current status and metabolic requirements. In this
feedback system, the spinal nerves are the central intermediary between
the brain and spinal cord and the rest of the body. The presence of
nerve interference can disrupt the flow of information between the brain
and all the other physiological systems, resulting in system
malfunctions that are apparent in the form of pain, symptoms, and
disease.
Nerve interference is the result of spinal vertebral dysfunction,
that is, suboptimal biomechanical functioning of the spine and its
segmental components, the spinal vertebras. Spinal dysfunction causes
painful limited motion of the neck and/or lower back, headaches, tight
muscles, and possible radiating pain and/or numbness and tingling in the
arms and/or legs. As importantly, spinal dysfunction irritates local
spinal nerves and causes nerve interference that creates a host of other
problems. Regular chiropractic care detects and corrects causes of
nerve interference, enabling your body to function at peak
effectiveness, as it was designed to function. In this way, regular
chiropractic care helps people of all ages, young and old, obtain high
levels of health and well-being.
- Goncalves G, et al: Primary prevention in chiropractic practice: a
systematic review. Chiropr Man Therap 2017 Mar 20;25:9. doi:
10.1186/s12998-017-0140-4
- Maiers M, et al: What do patients value about spinal manipulation
and home exercise for back-related leg pain? A qualitative study within a
controlled clinical trial. Man Ther 2016 Dec;26:183-191. doi:
10.1016/j.math.2016.09.008. Epub 2016 Sep 23
- Rosen MR, Bergfeldt L: Cardiac memory: The slippery slope twixt
normalcy and pathology. Trends Cardiovasc Med 25(8):687-696, 2015
