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Upper Cervical Chiropractor - The Connection to the Nervous System, Stress Treatment and Natural Healing - North Lakes, Brisbane, Australia
The Upper Cervical Chiropractor's Paradox
In the previous article, we mentioned that your spine should return to normal when you reduce stress in your life. Often, this does not happen. For chiropractors, it is a most interesting paradox: If the body is able to self-heal which includes self-correcting misalignments of the spine, why does an Upper Cervical chiropractor need to adjust the spine at all? The answer is simple but involves a couple of issues.
Is It Misaligned or Subluxated?
First, there is a difference between misalignment and a subluxation. Imagine that you are reaching for a pen. If the pen is within your reach, you will be able to pick it up. If it is not, you will not be able to get it unless you physically move. Similarly, your body’s muscles and ligaments have a normal orbit of flexibility, which is the normal range that they can reach.
Beyond that range, they cannot. Plain and simple! And there is no stretch or exercise that can be done to change that. If you have such a major injury, it will cause your bones to break. Will, your body heal from this? Yes! However, if the fracture is to set properly WHEN the injury heals, it may not heal in the correct place.
At the other end of the spectrum is an injury so slight that it only bruises your bones WITHIN their normal orbits of flexibility. If this happens, you will heal pretty darn close to 100% without any complications.
But what about all those injuries in between?
Not great enough that they caused a fracture or even dislocation, but just enough that your body is not able to correct the issue on their own. This is what an Upper Cervical chiropractor refers to as a subluxation. A subluxation is a specific type of misalignment that is just beyond your body’s normal ability to self-correct and requires just that little extra “oomph” to reset and to bring back within your body’s normal control.
This is the importance of the chiropractic adjustment. If it was a simple matter of doing a certain stretch or exercise, there would be no need for a chiropractic adjustment. Alas, this is not usually the case. The adjustment is the only solution for a subluxated vertebra!
Note: In the exact same breath, I want to stress the essential need for physiotherapy, rehabilitation, and exercise because these elements are necessary so that the vertebra is able to stay there.
Why is the Atlas & Upper Cervical Spine So Important?
Because the C1, C2, and C3 vertebrae at the top of the spine have the greatest normal ranges of movement (360 degrees as a unit), your brain prefers to use them to compensate for stress. As a result, these are the vertebrae most likely to be subluxated.
The Upper Cervical spine has a unique relationship with your central nervous system that the rest of your spine does not. C1, C2, and C3 tether onto the brainstem itself with a number of thick ligaments, which are actually strong enough to exert tension on the spinal cord itself.
The reason these ligaments exist is to support the brainstem. If these ligaments did not exist, we would crush our brainstems every time that we moved our heads (a serious body design flaw!). The problem occurs when the upper vertebrae are subluxated.
If this happens, the same protective mechanism can now exert physical tension on the brainstem itself! … and the brainstem is only responsible for all the functions of life like circulation, respiration, digestion, sleep, coordination, etc.
I think you get the idea. The take-home point is that the atlas, the axis, and the C3 vertebrae are the most important vertebrae in the spine. However, if they are subluxated, they are the ones that can cause the most serious damage not just to the neck, but to your entire body and life.
The goal of an Upper Cervical Chiropractor is not just to adjust subluxations in the neck for your neck’s sake. It is to make sure that the vital centers that control everything in your brain - that give life and power to every cell in your body - are flowing as free and close to 100% as possible.
For more information on the Upper Cervical Chiropractor in North Lakes, Brisbane, or from around Australia, visit our homepage. An Upper Cervical Chiropractor corrects misalignments of the upper neck that your body cannot self-correct. Read for more info in Brisbane and Australia.
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