Chiropractic Response to Stress - A Perfect Union!

Why Chiropractic Care is Perfect for Dealing with Stress!
It is Time to Set The Record Straight!

Everyone who comes into my office is complaining about stress. Stress accentuates tension in the body by simply increasing cortisol from the adrenal glands and that, in effect, will increase blood sugar, respiration and muscle tone resulting in increased pain in various parts of the body, headaches, muscle spasms and altered chemistry in the body. This culminates in you feeling on chemical overwhelm and “lousy”. There certainly has been enough literature that supports the brain’s impact on healing and physiology. When we feel alright, in balance, we tend to feel all is well with the world and sometimes even forget about any pains we previously had. Enter the home of Chiropractic Care!

The nervous system controls and coordinates physiology. This is not a point of view or belief system – this is scientific fact. All healthcare providers in their respective universities are taught that. The nervous system completely dominates and affects organ systems which affect our physiology – thyroid hormone, adrenal hormones, male and female hormones to name a few.

When we are under stress, the adaptation to that stress is the nervous system. Stress can be defined as physical (how we sit, sleep, work, previous car accidents, sports injuries), mental (how we think, our mood,) and chemical (food we eat, drink, air we breathe, meds, supplements we take). The goal of the nervous system is to mediate stress so that our physiology is adaptive and not reactive. When it is adaptive, we stay in balance with our health. When it is reactive, we usually, over time, will feel sick or “off” with our energy, healing, health status.

Chiropractic is not just about back and neck pain. It is about your life. Seriously. When spinal bones get out of alignment from daily tasks of sitting, sleeping, working , playing, previous injuries , and they are not addressed…over time this will take a toll and have a negative impact on your health. This is fact.

It is like going to the dentist and finding out you have a cavity. The cavity did not develop the night before the dental exam. It was growing, like cholesterol in your arteries…unnoticed. Most people would not just say “Thanks Doc for the info, I’ll keep that in mind. Have a good day!”. They would schedule a time to immediately take care of it, right? Dentists would drill your tooth to get rid of the cavity and a medical doctor would likely put you on a cholesterol lowering drug to deal with your high cholesterol.

The point is: even though you had absolutely no symptoms…that cavity, that cholesterol is.still having a deleterious impact on your teeth, on your body. If you ignore the cavity…you are a likely candidate for root canal – it is not a question of “if” but “when”. If you ignore the cholesterol warning, you are a likely candidate for a heart attack – we see it over and over again. So – what does this have to do with chiropractic care?

Even though misalignments in the spine usually have no symptoms – it is like the cavity example – ignore it and it will come to affect your health much more than you realize in time to come. The reason misalignments have no symptoms? It is because nerves allow you to feel. If you decrease ability to feel – you will likely feel less or nothing at all. Usually people come into my office when they feel too much – at this point the other end of the spectrum is operating – the nerve is not on a low dim, it is instead on high alert – irritation, pain, inflammation, obvious muscle spasm.

Going back, since the nervous system controls and coordinates physiology and chiropractic is the only health profession that deals with correcting misalignments to the spine and resultant insult to the nervous system and your physiology, chiropractors and the chiropractic field is uniquely positioned to deal with your stress from a “causative” angle. In my office, I use specific technology to locate and correct irritation to the nervous system caused by spinal misalignments. And guess what…I correct the spinal misalignments very safely – not by drilling them out and not by medicating them out. I don’t do any invasive treatments in my office and I usually get fantastic results. My patients love to get “adjusted” as there is an immediate feeling of well being that
re-establishes neurological tone to the body, equipping it with just the arsenal it needs to innately adapt to the stresses of life.

So, next time you feel stressed out…just know that stress is just the effect of what has already been occurring in your mind and body for days, weeks and years of being on neurological overload. If any of this makes sense, please do yourself a favor and check into chiropractic care to address your stress. When you get adjusted, your body releases hormones to balance your mind and your body. Most people notice wonderfully positive differences almost immediately with their stress and energy levels and also very impressively with better sleep, memory, concentration, quality of life. Your life will change and you will feel like a million! Oh and something else important to note: chiropractic has been around since 1895 – I think that shows staying power! It is interesting to me that other professions are finally picking up on the wisdom of our founders DD and BJ Palmer by noting that neurological tone can impact the status of health. This has been the tenet and philosophy of chiropractic from the beginning. You know what I love – how brilliantly chiropractic was so ahead of its time!

As Albert Einstein once stated: Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Local Doctor Points to New Findings in Alternative Medicine

Our Cells Respond to Human Touch

(March 1, 2009). A 2-year research study headed by Gloria A. Gronowicz of the Department of Surgery at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, New Jersey, credits certain forms of alternative energy medicine with the successful stimulation and growth of normal human cell cultures.

Energy medicine includes such biofield therapies as Reiki, quikong and Therapeutic Touch (TT), according to Santa Monica, CA-based Dr. Lynn Kerew, D.C., M,P.H. The study focused on TT, which was credited with directly impacting how human cells respond to external stimulation.

Dr. Kerew points to the case report published this year in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. The findings suggest that external stimulation with TT may also be effective in decreasing abnormal cell growth in cancer patients.

In this particular study, three different cell cultures — fibroblasts (derived from neonatal foreskin obtained during circumcision), tendon cells (derived from human hamstring discarded during orthopedic procedures) and bone cells (obtained from healthy bone chips) — were grown and isolated.

All cultures were obtained from different patients. In addition, each of the three cell types that were simultaneously subjected to the various tests all came from different patients.

The cultures were subjected twice a week, over a period of two weeks, to the healing hands of three experienced TT practitioners. During that time, the cultures also underwent sham treatments, or they received no stimulation at all. Each experiment was repeated three times at a minimum.

TT was performed by sweeping hand motions at least 4-10 inches above the plate without ever touching the specimen itself, for a period of 10 minutes, twice a week. “These hand motions direct positive intentions through the hands,” explained Dr. Kerew. Control groups of the cultures underwent sham treatments — random hand motions without any thoughts or intentions — or they received no treatment at all.

All cultures were assessed at the same time. The results were obtained by statistical analysis and were rather surprising: TT resulted in a measurable change in all three cell cultures. Osteoblasts (bone cells) showed a significant increase in cell growth, compared to the untreated cells; a slightly smaller increase was seen in fibroblasts (cultures from neonatal foreskin).

But the largest increase in growth compared to the control group occurred in tenoctytes (cells derived from hamstring tendon).

“We see that human touch has the capacity to affect even cell growth and thereby has a real healing potential,” exclaimed Dr. Kerew. “More studies are needed, but the findings also give hope to many patients who suffer from abnormal cell growth — in particular cancer patients. By and large, energy medicine treatments, in particular TT, promise significant benefits for our bodies.”

Anyone wishing more information may contact Dr. Lynn Kerew, whose office is located at 3435 Ocean Park Blvd., Suite 101, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Office Phone Number: 310-399-0337

Reference:
“Therapeutic Touch Stimulates the Proliferation of Human Cells in Culture” by Gloria A. Gronowicz, Ankur Jhaveri, Libbe W. Clarke, Michael S. Aronow, Theresa H. Smith, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, Volume 14, Number 3, 2008.

Power of the Human Body

Is our body something that just carts us around? Do we value its powers behind the scenes as we sleep, breathe, eat, digest, think, exercise? I think not. We are all guilty, to some degree, of not doing more to honor our bodies. An example that comes to mind is something you have heard all too many times....eating good food and exercise.

But what is often overlooked is honoring our nervous system which is housed in our skeletal system. The power of the human body lies not in the brain or heart - it lies in the nervous system that controls the brain and the heart. The nervous system is thee most important system in the body for development, growth, performance and not least of all - immunity.



Case in point: Lately folks have been coming in with severe viral infections. I usually recommend Colloidal Silver and Lysine to start and to immediately get baseline blood work done. One patient had a simplex herpes infection on her lip and that solved the problem once blood work proved a viral infection that medication could not address. Rest and improving immune functions were at the top.



This particular patient is very chiropractic savvy. She knows chiropractic is not just about your back and neck - actually it is about your life. Your life - the biochemistry of your life. By getting her spine adjusted, her immune system is in the best position possible to fight infection.



Guyton's Medical Physiology states : The nervous system controls and coordinates all body physiology. As a chiropractor, I work with the nervous system, thus I am working with her body's innate ability to heal and tap into the immune system. Within 2 days infection gone. She said most of the time, it takes weeks to heal. The power of the human body. It is incredible.



Next case in point: Another patient in her 50's comes in with a condition labeled "Post-Shingles Neuralgia". She has had this for months. Nothing has helped and she has been to more specialist doctors than you can count on two hands. No medications have worked for her yet.



I did my usual objective tests of rolling thermal scan and surface EMG. Discovered that she had major inflammation in the lumbar and sacral areas along with 3 standard deviations muscle spasm in upper neck area (No, she wasn't complaining of neck pain). Within a week of care, about 50% of the symptoms were gone. This was a few weeks ago and she is feeling better day by day.



I think it is essential that she got evaluated by a neurologist, a rheumatologist, her primary care doctor, an infectious disease specialist and a Virologist. It is essential to get to the bottom line. As long as I know that I can proceed without delaying necessary medical care - I feel confident that chiropractic will help her. To what degree I can never know for sure. But it certainly makes sense that a body will work better when the nervous system is not interfered with. And it certainly makes sense that the least invasive way to do that is with chiropractic care. And my 14 years in practice just proves that each day.


The power of the human body is so fantastic. I am honored to help all patients who enter my doors or refer them to the right doctor if need be. I am honored to be in a profession that respects the vitalistic component of healing that being that the body has the potential to be self-healing. I am honored to work with medical doctors who know when to refer to me when what they have to offer is not going to move the patient further towards healing. I am fortunate enough to refer patients to these wonderful medical doctors as I know they will take excellent care of my patient when I cannot handle their clinical issues within the scope of my chiropractic practice.

Power of the human body = power of the immune system = power of the nervous system. As my favorite person in chiropractic is wont to say : Enuf said!