Friday, January 27, 2017

Your Nerve System and You

Your Nerve System and You



Keeping Your Nerve System Healthy
 B-complex vitamins are necessary for normal functioning of the nerve system. B vitamins include thiamine(B1), riboflavin(B2), niacin B3), and pyridoxine (B6).
Thiamine is necessary to prevent beriberi (causing weight loss, impaired sensation, and pain and weakness in the arms and legs).
Riboflavin deficiency causes sensitivity to sunlight, glossitis (inflammation of the tongue), and swelling of the throat.
Niacin deficiency causes insomnia, weakness, aggression, and mental confusion.
Pyridoxine deficiency causes depression, anemia, and high blood pressure.
The B vitamins work together to promote health. Good sources of B vitamins include bananas, turkey, tuna, potatoes, and beer. Vitamin-and-mineral supplements are also good sources of the daily B-vitamin requirement.
Your nerve system is your body's master communication system. Your brain - your body's central processing unit - receives information from every other system. Information on sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell is constantly bombarding your brain. Information on muscle activity, placement of your arms and legs and fingers and toes, and the positioning of your joints reaches the brain, nanosecond by nanosecond. Feedback is constantly being supplied on how many new red blood cells are being manufactured, how much acid has been secreted into the stomach to help digest your breakfast, and how much insulin, epinephrine, and other hormones is needed for healthy functioning.1

Your brain processes information faster than the world's fastest computer2, and you get to have one for free!

Remarkably, man-made computers are exactly like the human brain. How information is received, how it is processed, and how instructions are sent back out again - these activities are quite identical in both the artificial machine and the living organ.3

How is all the information transferred back and forth? Messages coming to the brain from the body and messages going from the brain to the body are transmitted via the spinal cord, the tail-like direct extension of the brain itself. The spinal cord - delicate nervous tissue - is encased in the bony structures of the spinal canal, housed within the spinal column.

Of course, all systems in the body are related. Interestingly, problems with spinal mechanics may interfere with normal activities taking place in the spinal cord. If spinal muscles are irritated and spinal ligaments are tight, pain signals from these structures will affect normal signals flowing through the local spinal nerve. Ramped-up pain signals impact levels of other signals, enhancing some and depressing others. The ultimate result is that of "wires being crossed". Systems then begin to break down and the person's health may be affected.

So, mechanical problems in the spine can lead to many other physical ailments. Tight neck muscles, headaches, painful lower backs, and even arm pain or leg pains suggest altered spinal mechanics. How may these health issues be addressed?

Chiropractic health care is specifically designed to diagnose and treat spine-related complaints. Treatment is gentle and directed toward restoring mobility, reducing pain and irritation of spinal muscles and ligaments. As these painful conditions resolve, more normal functioning within the nerve system is made possible. The result is greater health and improved well-being across the range of your body's systems.

Dr. Dave Edenfield, "Your Jacksonville Chiropractor", and Lakewood Chiropractic offers the most advanced treatments for back pain, sciatica, neck pain, whiplash and headaches. They also treat auto accident victims with state-of-the-art technologies. Now accepting VA patients. For more information visit:

Lakewood Chiropractic
Jacksonville, Florida 32217
904-733-7020

http://www.lakewoodchiropracticjax.com/

https://www.facebook.com/lakewoodchiropractic

https://twitter.com/AskDrEdenfield


1Carpenter RHS: Neurophysiology, 4th ed. Hodder Arnold, 2002
2Moravec H: When will computer hardware match the human brain? J Evolution Tech 1, 1998 - http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.pdf
3Lytton WW: From Computer to Brain. Springer, 2002

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

Chiropractic and Reducing Stress

Take a Break! 
Pop quiz - how long have you been sitting in that chair? Half-an-hour? An hour? Two hours? More?!!!

Or, basically, how long have you been working at the same task without taking a break?

Most likely, the answer is "too long"!

Everybody's in the same boat. There's so much to do and so little time. That may not be the real reality, but it certainly is

our experience. We drive ahead, force ourselves to keep going, and forget to "stop and smell the roses".

But "smelling the roses" is critical to our health and well-being.

Taking a break, relaxing for just five minutes every hour, makes all the difference.
We certainly live in stressful times. It's not easy to assess whether our era is the most stressful, but we do have plenty of daily stress. The job, the home, the kids, the relatives, and the economy - all these stresses add up and yet we wonder why we have so many aches and pains.

So many ailments are stress-related. Americans are notoriously overweight. Overeating is a stress-coping mechanism.1 Headaches and backaches are often associated with increased stress. There's a strong correlation between high blood pressure and stress, ulcers and stress, and even cancer and stress.

What can we do? The external stresses in our lives aren't going away. Our activity-filled lives are busy and complex - there's always going to be stress. The key is to help avoid or ease the physical effects of stress. Interestingly, chiropractic treatment can be of great assistance in reducing the effects of stress on the body.

In general, stress causes muscles to tighten. This is an unconscious reaction. Tight muscles cause a cascade of further muscle tightening, shortening of muscles and ligaments, and a resulting decrease of mobility in joints, particularly shoulder joints, hip joints, and joints of the spine.2,3

This overall mechanical effect of stress has a number of additional consequences. All the extra unconscious muscle activity wastes precious nutritional resources and uses up energy needed for critical body functions. Lactic acid accumulates, irritating nerve endings and further increasing muscular tightness. And, importantly, the losses in spinal joint mobility lead directly to increased levels of pain. This, of course, leads to more stress.

This vicious circle of stress, muscular tightness, and pain can be relieved and reduced by chiropractic treatment.4 Chiropractic therapy is specially designed to improve joint mobility of the spine and pelvis. This gentle, effective treatment gradually restores maximal spinal motion. Muscle tightness is alleviated, metabolic processes begin to return to normal, and nutrients become more available to help maintain healthy functioning. Levels of pain are reduced, and we become better able to withstand the physical effects of stress.

Your chiropractor will explain the many benefits of treatment, and will provide instruction in stretching techniques and specific exercises that help maintain the positive results of therapy.

There will always be stress. We can learn how to reduce the physical effects of stress, and become stronger, healthier, and happier in the process.

Take a Break! A few quick tips -
  • Get up out of your chair or leave your workbench and walk over to an open window. Change your point-of-view. Breathe some fresh air.
  • Go for a five-minute walk, either in the corridors of your building or out-of-doors.
  • Call a friend and chat for five minutes.
  • Close your eyes, clear your mind, and take an imaginary vacation - relaxing on a warm beach, deep-sea fishing on a beautiful yacht, or skiing down a gorgeous mountain.

These short, focused breaks will help reduce muscular tightness and physical stress, and also help your brain recharge so you can be more creative and productive!
Dr. Dave Edenfield, "Your Jacksonville Chiropractor", and Lakewood Chiropractic offers the most advanced treatments for back pain, sciatica, neck pain, whiplash and headaches. They also treat auto accident victims with state-of-the-art technologies. Now accepting VA patients. For more information visit:
Lakewood Chiropractic
Jacksonville, Florida 32217
904-733-7020

http://www.lakewoodchiropracticjax.com/
https://www.facebook.com/lakewoodchiropractic
https://twitter.com/AskDrEdenfield


1Marchesini G, et al: Psychiatric distress and health-related quality of life in obesity. Diabetes Nutr Metab 16(3):145-154, 2003
2Weickgenant AL, et al: Coping activities in chronic low back pain: relationship with depression. Pain 53(1):95-103, 1993
3Burns JW: Arousal of negative emotions and symptom-specific reactivity in chronic low back pain patients. Emotion 6(2):309-319, 2006
4Hurwitz EL, et al. A randomized trial of chiropractic and medical care for patients with low back pain. Spine 31(6):611-621, 2006