We at Van Every Family Chiropractic Center of Royal Oak, Michigan, care about your health and well-being and strive to provide you with current information in a variety of health topics!
Chiropractors were right all along. Researchers at the University of Leeds, UK, have found a direct connection between neck muscles and a part of the brainstem – called the nucleus tractus solitarius (NTS) – which plays a crucial role in regulating heart rate and blood pressure.
The finding could explain why blood pressure and heart rate sometimes change when people have been in accidents, especially when there’s a whiplash injury and the neck muscles are affected. There are many tiny muscles between the neck vertebrae (spinal bones) that can be affected in an injury.
Additionally it has been hypothesized that hours spent hunched over a computer may raise blood pressure for similar reasons. (1)
It seems that researchers are still catching up to the insights of Doctors of Chiropractic who for over a hundred years have reported that the integrity of the spinal column can have a profound effect on a person’s health.
The University of Leeds research is a step in the right direction but what will they do with this information to help their patients? Will they continue to give people dangerous blood pressure medication or pacemakers and stents when what is really needed is chiropractic care? Will they decide to cut or anesthetize the neck muscles or perhaps apply electrical stimulation to affect blood pressure and heart rate?
Chiropractors have observed that more than blood pressure and heart rate can be affected: whiplash and other accidents (including sports injuries) have long been linked to many different health problems (of the eyes, ears, nose, throat, shoulders, hands and thyroid) and even the flow of blood and cerebral spinal fluid to the brain that results in personality changes. Long-term damage to the head and neck has also been correlated with Alzheimer’s, ALS (Lou Gehrig Disease), Parkinson’s disease and MS.
It is for these reasons that chiropractors have long advised that anyone who has ever been in an accident, no matter how long ago and no matter how slight or severe, needs a chiropractic checkup to see if they have any subluxations in their neck or other parts of their body. And Doctors of Chiropractic should be in every emergency room in every hospital in the world – it could make the difference between a life of health and a life of illness!
References:
Edwards IJ, Dallas, ML, Poole SL. The neurochemically diverse intermedius nucleus of the medulla as a source of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic input to the nucleus tractus solitarii. The Journal of Neuroscience. 2007;27(31):8324-8333.
