Over the years I have learned quite a bit about attaining health and wellness and, for the most part, the difference between the habits of the healthy and the habits of the sick. And as a chiropractor, I have especially become aware of the relationship between the health and function of someone's spine and their overall health.

You see, the "axial skeleton" consisting of the skull and spine protects the "CNS" (central nervous system) which controls the body. Gray's Anatomy puts it like this: "The nervous system controls and coordinates all the other organs and structures, and relates the individual to his environment."¹ Stress and tension on the joints of the axial skeleton affects the function of the CNS. When the CNS is stressed, health is affected.

The problem begins when we are so busy we fail to care for ourselves.

Consider cats and dogs. They have very little to do so they spend lots of time in the same posture doing nothing at all. But when they get up from their stale postures, they stretch their spines. In fact, they stretch their spines many times every day after every period of inactivity.

But humans for some reason don't stretch their spines innately and I am convinced that this is why there is a chiropractor in almost every shopping center in the U.S.

I am certain our inborn desire to stretch was meant to protect our body from an arthritic degenerating spine and the "vertebral subluxation complex", the spinal condition that chiropractors work to correct. But we have learned to suppress our innate desires so as to not interrupt our busy schedules.

But the truth is, it is probably easier to keep our spines healthy than to let them degenerate and then try to fix them. Keeping our spines functioning can really slow down spine degeneration and may even reverse it somewhat.

"Disc dessication", a common diagnosis in the aging, is when the vertebral disc get dehydrated from lack of proper spinal joint motion. Disc dessication can painful inflammation (arthritis), loss of joint flexibility, decreased nerve function that causes numbness, weakness, and illness as well as further joint degeneration; and disc dessication is quite preventable; yet disc dessication is also rather inevitable for those that don't use the full range of motion in their spines.

Chiropractic adjustments are certainly helpful for fixing spine function. Maintaining spine motion with proper exercises following a specific chiropractic adjustment is a key to improving quickly and preventing future spinal problems. Chiropractic and proper spinal exercises are a winning combination and a path to better physical performance, less pain, and more health.

Michael Haley
Chiropractor, Agape Chiropractic
Pompano Beach, FL 33060

1. Gray's Anatomy, Carmine D. Clemente, Thirtieth American Edition, p. 5.