Dear Bill

I can easily understand how physical stress can result in subluxations but not so much how chemical or emotional stress can do that. I understand how chemical and emotional stress can damage health, but it’s not obvious to me how these sources of stress can result in subluxations.

Here's how I explain it.

While for some, chiropractic has degenerated into a form of physical medicine limited to joint function, from the beginning chiropractic was about nervous system tone.

Apart from blunt trauma, bones of the spine and elsewhere, are static structures. They move as a result of muscle contraction. Muscles contract upon the command of the nervous system. Thus, vertebral subluxation, muscle spasms and virtually all neuromuscular-skeletal aberrations are expressions of nervous system tone.

Muscle contractions affecting efferent or afferent nerve communications may be expressions of the body’s exquisite survival strategy. This can include emotional and chemical threats to the body as much as the inclination to brace prior to an impending physical insult.

Emotional Threats

While many think emotions are largely a brain phenomenon, emotions are whole-body experiences that involve various neuropeptides ( Molecules of Emotion by Dr. Candace Pert as well as The Biology of Belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton) and are mediated over the meridian system familiar to acupuncturists.

For example, the Kidney Meridian is linked to the emotions of fear and dread. The Liver Meridian is linked to anger, resentment and frustration. The Lung Meridian with grief and sadness. Healthy individuals experience various emotions, and they resolve. When they don’t, we can get caught in an unhealthy loop, a conditioned Pavlovian Response.

Our language has captured many of these mind/body connections. We’ve all heard someone referred to as “a pain in the neck” or something being a “pain in the butt.” Or being so afraid “that I wet my pants” or “felt weak in the knees” or had “butterflies in my stomach.”

Emotions affect our posture and muscle tone. The work of Dr. Scott Walker, developer of the Neuro-Emotional Technique has operationalized the diagnosis and resolution of these emotional patterns, using the intersection of the Meridians and the spinal column as a window for neutralizing chronic emotional patterns.

Chemical Threats

Obviously, chemistry can affect muscle tone as well. A lack of calcium can produce muscle spasms. A build-up of lactic acid from exercise can produce muscle cramps. The body’s delicately balanced chemistry can be upset by smoking, alcohol, caffeine, processed foods, pollution and the lack of proper nutrition.

Chemicals can have a negative impact on muscles and muscle tone. Since the spine depends on muscle strength for the proper motion and position of spinal bones, too much or too little muscle tone can impair the function of joints, soft tissues and proper nerve transmission.

If the innate wisdom of the body, expressed by the nervous system, perceives these non-physical stressors to be threatening, it directs the muscles to react, defend and brace the body, holding bones in positions that may cause asymmetry and imbalance in the spine.

The Chiropractic Difference

The vertebral subluxation is the body’s gorgeous, creative attempt at accommodating stress, whether physical, emotional or chemical. In this way, vertebral subluxation is simultaneously a cause and a symptom.

Countless chiropractors go about the business of using their intervention to normalize spinal biomechanics and virtually ignore the fact that the emotional or chemical stressor may still be present in the patient’s life. If so, their care, while better than traditional allopathic treatment, is likely to be palliative at best.

The key is to uncover the cause of the cause. Which can be messy, time-consuming and require more cooperation and partnership from a patient than they are interested in providing. Not to mention it may require a genuine interest in the patient with the problem, rather than focusing on the problem in the patient.

Thanks for the question!

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