Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries Presents the Influence of the Brain/Spine Connection in Back Pain
The brain and the spine. They’re connected. They are connected more intimately than any of us realize as we go about our daily lives. Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries keeps this connection top-of-mind as we treat our Manchester back pain sufferers’ spines and listen to their stories of pain and ways of coping. Manchester chiropractic care at Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries respects the brain and spine connection and use gentle, safe chiropractic services including spinal manipulation to ease pain concerning both.
BRAIN CHANGES IN Manchester BACK PAIN
Pain changes the brain. A person in pain feels it. Special tests today can reveal it. BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) responses were examined after stimulating lumbar spinous processes with manipulation and exhibited activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex, cerebellum and other brain areas. (1) Motor cortex stimulation provokes a spinal anti-inflammatory response to decrease pain. (2) Depression, anxiety, cognitive deficits often come with chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve due to its effect on the medial prefrontal cortex. (3) Spinal manipulation may be a way to deal with the brain changes in chronic pain and its related issues.
SHORT TERM STIMULATION’S EFFECT ON BRAIN
Stimulating the brain even for a short time may influence the pain experience. A recent study on Euclidean distance between cortical sources and temporal dynamics of plastic changes in the somatosensory cortex of the brain had even your Manchester chiropractor’s mind spinning a bit! What a subject! Without having to understand all these terms and measurements shared in the study, know that the study presented that the brain, even the adult brain, is impressionable. Certainly, the young brain in development is most impressionable, but with the appropriate input, the older, adult brain can change. The researchers in this study measured and compared the brain’s cortical size before and after stimulation and compared them on MRI. They noticed a difference. More research should be done, but they did explain that long term experience establishes cortical organization while occasional, new and different stimulation can trigger cortical reorganization of the adult brain. Such changes have been noted in musicians, Braille readers, and persons after spinal manipulation and stroke rehab. (4) This knowledge of the brain contributes to the Manchester chiropractic treatment plan!
BRAIN CHANGES WITH CHRONIC PAIN
Just how is the chiropractic treatment plan influenced by such information of the brain? Let us start by examining the brain with chronic pain. The two brain regions that encode the intensity of pain and add to the whole experience of chronic pain are the primary somatosensory cortex and posterior insular cortex. (5) The cortex of the brain was discovered to be thinner in chronic low back pain patients. After treatment, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thicker. To the researchers, this implied that treating chronic pain may well restore normal brain functions. (6) Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries treats Manchester back pain patients all day long. It is amazing to imagine that treatment might alter more than just the pain response!
CONTACT Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries
Listen to this PODCAST by Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he explains more clearly the brain and spine and pain connection, illustrates in more depth how the cells of the body are continually remodeling and adjusting to their always-changing mechanical environment, and how chiropractic may intervene positively.
Schedule a non-surgical Manchester chiropractic care appointment with Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries for your pain, brain, and spine! The connection is there between pain and the brain. Manchester Chiropractic & Sports Injuries can get in the center of those two and help you get some Manchester pain relief.
