CONNECTIONS to HEALTH

The Safety Pin Cycle The safety pin represents an easy to understand analogy of the way chiropractic interacts with your nervous system. In a healthy nervous system, with a well aligned spine, the brain is in a constant communication loop with the rest of your body. Information flows from the brain to the rest of the body, and information flows from the body, back to the brain, over your nervous system. The muscles are tight when the brain tells them they are supposed to be (you are lifting a heavy weight), and they are loose when they are not (you are sitting at your computer). The stomach secretes acid when the brain says it is appropriate (you've eaten something); it doesn't secrete acid when not appropriate (you're sitting at your desk writing up a stressful report). If the communication loop of nerves between the brain, the tissues, becomes open, (like an open safety pin) there is a failure of that information to flow back and forth appropriately, and organ malfunction may result. The muscles and stomach aren't talking or listening to the brain. The spine needs to be aligned to ensure normal nerve flow. Rather than prescribe medicine to hide the malfunction, the chiropractor, in effect, re-closes the nerve "safety pin" into a loop again, allowing normal information flow to return again, and the body to stay healthy naturally. While this is obviously a very simplified explanation, it helps to visualise how nerve information must flow in a complete loop for normal health. Let's see it working The safety pin may potentially describe all healing arts to one degree or another. In Chiropractic, the safety pin provides the foundation of all happenings in the body. All processes in the human body revolve around the nervous system. Your beginnings stem from the formation of the nervous system. Each organ develops at a branch of the nervous system. Like a tree, the trunk supports the branches that give rise to the fruit. Therefore, it stands to reason if problems exist in or around the nervous system, tissues and organs may be affected. The nervous system connects two parts of the human body: The brain and the tissue cell. The nervous system creates the continuity in our body. The top circle represents the brain and the bottom circle represents the tissue cell. The lines between represent the communication link, the nervous system. Shall we begin with the lower circle, the tissue cell? The tissue cell is the weakest part of the cycle. What you bring to us is the accumulation of years of damage. This damage is the result of months or years of living. What weakens cells? The food we eat. The air we breathe or that of our mother. The supposed rest we get. As a child, we all fell numerous times got up and ran to the next opportunity to inflict damage upon us. These items all create subtle damage to the structure of your being. Then there are those things that we have no control over…Our DNA! Those little double helix strands provide the blueprint for all the building blocks in your body. Little nasties like free radicals cause havoc with your DNA each second, causing irreparable damage. If the situation were not bad enough, your DNA is only as good as what your parents gave you. The blueprint is half from mum and half from dad and you are stuck with it. Nervous System Let's look at the communication going toward the brain cell (afferent). The afferent side or the information going to the brain is fascinating. I could blind fold you, place earplugs in your ears and put you outside and you would instantly know that snow is falling or rain or that the wind was blowing. All this information and you did not see or hear a thing, only the cells of your skin noting pressure from the droplets of snow or rain and the hair on your arms denotes the wind is blowing. This not only happens from the outside environment, but the internal one as well. Have you ever stopped and tried to make your liver process alcohol from the evening before? It does not happen. All of these internal processes happen behind the scenes by an ever-present connection between the tissue and the brain via the afferent half of the nervous system. So, how do these messages get to the tissue cell? That happens through the connection going from the brain and the tissue cell (efferent). The brain makes certain decisions based on the information from the afferent side and sends mental impulses to the tissue cells of your body. Changes take place immediately following the exact instruction of the mental impulse. This is how health is maintained in your body. Get your safety pin closed.  Organise a Chiropractic check-up today!

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