General Summary:

Sometimes a computer malfunctions and you need to reboot the hard drive. This can help because it is cleaning up and clearing out the accumulation of unnecessary and extraneous information from your hard drive… ie. static and noise.

In a study out of New Zealand, in 24 patients with a history of neck stiffness and sometimes neck pain (but sometimes no neck pain), the central nervous system activity in the brainstem and spinal cord of the participants was measured both before and after neck (cervical) adjustments.

The sensitive measurements (called sensory evoked potentials) of their nervous systems indicated that neck adjustments may “reboot the nervous system” to help it to function better.

The researchers believe this could indicate a more normally functioning nervous system not only at the spinal level but also possibly in higher order functions of the brain, and deeper brain structures such as the basal ganglia (associated with movement and movement disorders).

Episodes of acute pain (new pain after an injury in this case) may cause changes in the way a human body functions, and in the long term this may manifest as chronic neck pain. This may happen by the brain learning wrong messages, then resetting itself to less correct firing patterns of the nerves involved (that is they become too hypersensitive).

Then after chiropractic adjustments, the nervous system firing patterns became more normal in the adjusted group in the research, suggesting that the brain can relearn more normal firing patterns, thereby improving the person’s overall functioning.

Haavik-Taylor H, Murphy B. Cervical spine manipulation alters sensorimotor integration: a somatosensory evoked potential study. Clinical Neurophysiology 2007; 118: 391-402.

Slosberg, Malik DC, MS, Validating Chiropractic, Cutting-Edge Research to Improve Patient Outcomes, 2008, p8 supplemental research handout.

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