Whether they’re trying to survive cold and flu season or attempting to break a cycle of frequent illness, people are finding ways to improve their body’s immune response to disease, including eating healthier diets and incorporating exercise into their daily routines.
However, a lesser-known but very effective way for people to strengthen their immune systems is to visit a chiropractor. Chiropractic care is much more than just finding a quick fix for neck and back pain. Receiving chiropractic treatment to restore spinal alignment and mobility directly supports your body’s central nervous and immune systems. It offers a natural alternative to helping your body ward off current and future ailments.
In this article, we’ll explore the relationship between your spinal health and immune system and how chiropractic care can boost the immune system.
The Relationship Between Your Spine and Immune System
When considering the role that spinal realignment plays in boosting the immune system, it’s important to first understand how they are related. There exists a link between the immune system and central nervous system, which are two highly intricate and organized systems that regulate the human body. These systems maintain extensive communication with one another, allowing the nervous system to influence and regulate the body’s immune response.
In a healthy state, the immune system provides several benefits, including:
- Helping the body recover from illness faster.
- Allowing the body to heal injuries.
- Increasing the ability to fight off bacteria and viruses.
- Helping prevent frequent illness.
So, how does this relate to the spine? The central nervous system includes the spinal cord and the nerves in the brain. If the spine is misaligned or damaged, this creates tension on the central nervous system, slowing its communication pathways and reducing the body’s immune response. This puts the body in a constant state of stress and makes it much more susceptible to illness, disease, chronic neck and/or back pain, and imbalance.
Spinal misalignment also reduces blood and nutrient flow, weakening the body’s overall ability to heal wounds and fight infections.
Examining How Chiropractic Care Boosts the Immune System
Because of the intricate connections between the spine, central nervous system, and immune system, undergoing chiropractic care boosts the immune system and re-equips the body to function properly. During a chiropractic consultation, your current spinal alignment is assessed and a treatment plan is created to realign the spine and get the body back to its peak performance physically and systemically. Chiropractic adjustments help improve immune function due to several factors:
- They have been shown to create “respiratory bursts,” in which the body increases white blood cell production to fight infection.
- They restore nervous system communication pathways and reduce inflammation in the spine.
- They improve blood and nutrient flow to restore the body’s optimal health with improved organ function, heart health, brain activity, and wound healing.
- They reduce chronic pain caused by subluxations (spinal fixations or immobile joints),
- to help eliminate the body’s stress response and improve immune response.
Chiropractic care also goes beyond physical spinal adjustments to improve the body’s overall health and give the immune system additional support. Chiropractic appointments can include nutritional counseling, at-home exercise routines, and spinal health education to help give your body its best chance at remaining healthy and fighting off stress and disease more easily.
Create a Plan for Long-Term Immune Support
General chiropractic care boosts the immune system greatly; however, although most chiropractors focus on long-term benefits, general chiropractic care tends to yield only short-term improvements. You will maintain immune system benefits only as long as you continue to see your chiropractor; once you stop, the benefits also wane.
At PostureWorks, we focus on creating a treatment plan that will give you lasting results and allow you to take better care of yourself to retain those results as long as possible. We use Chiropractic BioPhysics® to help you regain mobility and flexibility and realign the spine to its original healthy position, allowing your central nervous system and immune system to communicate freely and improve the body’s healing response and disease/injury prevention. We also work to retrain the brain and body connection to help your body unlearn its unconscious poor posture habits and help you maintain a healthy, balanced position while performing daily activities.
While working to get your spine health back on track, we also provide you with postural exercises to do in the office and at home so that you build the endurance necessary to hold the proper posture and continue to restore your spine to its unique alignment. We aim to fix spinal misalignment so that your body’s natural defenses work properly and keep you as healthy as possible.
Chiropractic BioPhysics®, or CBP, is a deeply researched and results-oriented corrective care technique. CBP-trained chiropractors aim to realign the spine back to health and optimal function while eliminating the source of pain and circulatory and nervous dysfunction. As with all chiropractic care, CBP is conservative, painless, and non-invasive. To learn more about how chiropractic care boosts the immune system, contact us today to schedule your consultation and be one step closer to a pain-free life.