Aaron Chiropractic Clinic Presents the Influence of the Brain/Spine Connection in Back Pain
The brain and the spine. They’re connected. They’re connected more deeply than any of us appreciate as we go about our daily lives. Aaron Chiropractic Clinic keeps this connection in mind as we take care of our Fort Wayne back pain sufferers’ spines and listen to their stories of pain and ways of coping. Fort Wayne chiropractic care at Aaron Chiropractic Clinic respects the brain and spine connection and implement gentle, safe chiropractic services including spinal manipulation to ease pain affecting both.
BRAIN CHANGES IN Fort Wayne BACK PAIN
Pain changes the brain. A person in pain knows it. Special tests today can reveal it. BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) responses were analyzed after stimulating lumbar spinous processes with manipulation and exhibited activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex, cerebellum and other parts of the brain. (1) Motor cortex stimulation triggers a spinal anti-inflammatory response to reduce pain. (2) Depression, anxiety, cognitive deficits often come with chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve as a result of its effect on the medial prefrontal cortex. (3) Spinal manipulation may be a way to deal with the brain changes in chronic pain and its related issues.
SHORT TERM STIMULATION’S EFFECT ON BRAIN
Stimulating the brain even for a short time may impact the pain experience. A new study on Euclidean distance between cortical sources and temporal dynamics of plastic changes in the somatosensory cortex of the brain had even your Fort Wayne chiropractor’s head spinning a little! What a subject! Without having to understand all these terms and measurements shared in the study, know that the study shared that the brain, even the adult brain, is impressionable. Certainly, the young developing brain is most impressionable, but with the appropriate input, the older, adult brain can change. The researchers in this study measured and compared the brain’s cortical size before and after stimulation and compared their size on MRI. They saw a difference. More research should be done, but they did describe that long term experience establishes cortical organization while transient, new and different stimulation can trigger cortical reorganization of the adult brain. Such changes have been noted in musicians, Braille readers, and persons after spinal manipulation and stroke rehab. (4) This understanding of the brain contributes to the Fort Wayne chiropractic treatment plan!
BRAIN CHANGES WITH CHRONIC PAIN
Just how is the chiropractic treatment plan affected with such information of the brain? Let us start by examining the brain with chronic pain. The two brain regions that encode the intensity of painful stimuli and add to the overall experience of chronic pain are the primary somatosensory cortex and posterior insular cortex. (5) The cortex of the brain was shown to be thinner in chronic low back pain patients. After treatment, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thicker. To the researchers, this suggested that treating chronic pain may well reestablish normal brain functions. (6) Aaron Chiropractic Clinic treats Fort Wayne back pain patients all day long. It’s amazing to imagine that treatment might alter more than the pain response alone!
CONTACT Aaron Chiropractic Clinic
Listen to this PODCAST by Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he explains more plainly the brain and spine and pain connection, describes in more depth how the cells of the body are continually remodeling and adapting to their ever-changing mechanical environment, and how chiropractic may help.
Schedule a non-surgical Fort Wayne chiropractic care appointment with Aaron Chiropractic Clinic for your pain, brain, and spine! The connection is there between pain and the brain. Aaron Chiropractic Clinic can get in the center of those two and help you obtain some Fort Wayne pain relief.
