Hey, Dr. Michael Schuneman here, chiropractor at Life Symmetry Chiropractic. Today’s chiropractic thot deals with a question that I hear a lot, “what can chiropractic help with?”
Most people have an idea that chiropractic can help with back pain, neck pain, headaches and things like that. Which is true. However, if you saw the first chiropractic thot video you learned that the first chiropractic patient was helped with his hearing and not pain! I want you to think about a couple of questions “what effect does reducing stress have on health?” and “what effect does strengthening the immune system have on health?”
As you’re thinking about those questions, we are going to get into a little more chiropractic history. That history deals with 1917-1918 Flu Epidemic which is one thing that helped lead to chiropractic being licensed in many states.
During 1917-1918 Flu Epidemnic it is estimated the flu was responsible for 500,000 deaths in the US alone. To put that in perspective currently that is a little less than deaths from heart disease or cancer in the US each year. Those are currently the #1 and #2 causes of death in the US.
During flu epidemic people started noticing that chiropractic patients had much better outcomes than medical patients. Here are a few stats, in Davenport, Ia where chiropractic had its start, medical doctors treated 4,953 cases with 274 deaths. That is not bad, it’s a 94.47% survival rate. However, chiropractors in Davenport saw 1,635 cases with only one death. That is a survival rate of 99.94%! Now if you are like me when you hear a statistic like that you may think, “Okay but they probably weren’t getting the bad cases of flu.” Not necessarily. In Oklahoma there were 233 flu cases that had been treated by medical doctors and given up as hopeless, that were then treated by chiropractors and all survived except 25. That is an 89.27% survival rate for a group that were given up as dead! That is amazing!
How can this be? Well, the nervous system coordinates and controls all functions in the body, including the immune system. Besides this historical evidence there have been a few studies that have shown that after a chiropractic adjustment the immune system is strengthened.
When the spine is misaligned or not moving properly, what we call a ‘spinal subluxation’ in chiropractic terms, it affects how well the nervous system functions. Spinal subluxations cause interference with the information sent through the nervous system and the body cannot function at its best because of blocked or garbled signals. Think of trying to give someone directions over a bad cell phone connection and you’ll get the idea.
So to answer what can chiropractic help with? It can help the body overall to function better and therefore I sincerely believe it can help with any health problems! Now I want to be clear, that does not mean that chiropractic is a ‘treatment’ for every disease or will solve every health problem. Chiropractic does not treat a disease or illness like medicine, but it does help the body to function better and that allows the body to heal itself.
I hope you enjoyed this video! Please hit the like button below and leave a comment of what you thought or any questions that you may have. Thanks! We’ll see you on the next thot.
