071- Brain Changes After Chiropractic Adjustments

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Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host Dr. Jeff Langme. This week we are back with another fantastic piece of research. It is all about the brain today and the research we are going to touch on is titled Glucose Metabolic changes in the brain and muscles of patients with Non Specific Neck pain treated by Spinal Manipulation therapy. So it is all about how a chiropractic adjustment or how a spinal manipulation can affect the brain. Before we get started I will say a few words as I do each and every week about Rock Tape Rock Tape, makers of the world's best kinesiology tape are proud to introduce completely redesigned rocksauce and Rocksauce Chill powerful topical muscle and joint pain relief now available in 3 ounce roll ons and 32 ounce clinical pump tops. Give long lasting pain relief to your patients. Learn more@rocktape.com top rocktape.com topicals couple other bit of housekeeping before we dive into this week's episode. I am actually recording this a little bit early in the week. Normally I I don't know if anybody knows this. Normally I record our episodes each and every week on Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening and they go out bright and early Monday morning. But I'm recording this on Tuesday because I am about to head to Puerto Rico for an entrepreneurial mastermind group. I can't wait to get down there and I won't be back until late so I'm recording this a little bit earlier in the week. Also this has been interview week at the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I've been posting interviews that I did with standard process with dynamic disc designs. I have a Chirotouch interview coming out. You can check those out our Facebook page, the Evidence Based Chiropractor or more preferably if you have the opportunity as soon as you get done listening to this or if you want to stop it right now, YouTube.com the evidencebasedchiropractor I have been putting out putting a ton of effort into the YouTube page and I would love to get to 1,000 chiropractors subscribed to that page. I'm at about 160 so I got a long way to go. It would help me out tremendously. I would really appreciate it if you subscribed or even just checked out any of our videos. YouTube.com the evidencebasedchiropractor what I post over there is always super high production value edited and we spend a lot of time and effort to make it cool. So check it out when you get the chance for for today we are gonna talk again about brain activity following spinal manipulation or following chiropractic adjustment. Again the title of the paper Metabolic changes in the brain and muscles of patients with nonspecific neck pain treated by spinal manipulation therapy. And this is from Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine Journal and it was released in 2017. It's brand new again evidence based Complementary and alternative medicine and it released in 2017. So this is cutting edge stuff that we are doing here. Consequently I actually also put this out as our member research brief. All members of the Evidence Based Chiropractor the complete solution to marketing your practice in the year 2017 to other healthcare providers. Get on the ticket. Check it out if you haven't the evidencebasedchiropractor.com this was our research brief for February 2017. So we always try to put out the latest and greatest in research for the most impact possible. So as we know, spinal manipulation therapy SMT and the research is a hallmark of chiropractic care has been proven to reduce pain, improve range of motion and activate the central nervous system. New research has begun to show how the stimulation of mechanoreceptors in a spinal segment are processed in the brain. Patients receiving spinal manipulation chiropractic adjustments, they really have a decrease in sympathetic nerve activity and they experience physiological relaxation. Some of the mechanism of action. This is highlighted by a decrease in muscle tension and a reduction in pain. Again that's pretty basic stuff. We're familiar with that muscle tension. The decrease in muscle tension typically with the chiropractic adjustment is due to this action on the spindles, the muscle spindle fibers. And that creates muscle a decrease in muscle tension. Excuse me. And then secondarily when you get that big hit bang of the mechanoreception, it is going to attenuate or take over the nociception which are the pain receptors so to speak or transmit. And when you get that bang of mechanoreception it overtakes the nociception, reduces the pain overall that patient experiences. So decreased pain and improved function have been well documented improvements as a result of chiropractic adjustments. We know this, I mean that's one of the age old things that we have seen and it's really, you gotta remember it's always about both sides of the coin. So from a patient's perspective, often they walk in our front doors hoping to decrease pain. They came in, they made the call, they broke down, they decided to do it and come into the practice because of pain. But really what they're trying to get back to is that functional level. It's quality life, basically. So patients often come into our office again based upon the pain, but they probably already had a decrease in quality of life. Then the pain got great enough that they decided to make a decision. I mean, that's just normal human behavior. People are procrastinators by nature, by and large. Improve or decrease the pain. Consequently, improving the function is really gets them their quality of life back, which is when people start raving and referring other patients. So chiropractic care, we all know, has long been considered to be a safe and effective treatment option for a variety of health conditions. And new research such as this paper give us a better understanding of how a chiropractic adjustment can impact the physiology within the body and why the benefits of treatment are received. So the big question is, well, what happened? And I will read three quotes from this paper that I think really get down to the point of the glucose metabolic changes in the brain and muscles that occur after a chiropractic adjustment. The researchers found changes in brain activity after SMT spinal manipulation therapy included activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, cerebellar vermis and somatosensory association cortex, and deactivation of the prefrontal cortex and temporal sites. That's a lot of action. I'll read that one more time. That gets a little bit heavy. The bottom line is, when you give a chiropractic adjustment, it impacts the brain big time. But what structures? Let's read that again. The researchers found changes in brain activity after SMT included activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, cerebellar vermis and somatosensory association cortex, and deactivation of the prefrontal and temporal sites. So that if you've ever been concerned, if you ever wanted to, I could probably read that to you four more times if you ever wanted to go to sleep gently. But the bottom line is those are the sites within the brain that are really impacted when a chiropractic adjustment is given. The researchers also found, quote, cervical muscle tension was significantly reduced bilaterally after smt, so muscle tension decreased. Cool. We knew that. Good to see it supported in literature. And finally, the researchers found, quote, we observed metabolic changes in the brain and skeletal musc muscles, as well as reductions in subjective pain, muscle tension and salivary amylase after SMT intervention. These results may be associated with reduced sympathetic nerve activity. So that kind of drives home what we've talked about over the last few minutes, which is really when you give a chiropractic adjustment, as you give that chiropractic adjustment. You're on your way to your office right now. This is released 6am Monday morning. You are on your way to see a bunch of patients in your practice. You are about to impact brain changes because ultimately the brain is where we process pain and it's also concurrently, arguably where we process function, where we have quality of life, where we have the thoughts about the improvement that we receive in practice or by the adjustment rather. So again that last quote. Researchers found we observed metabolic changes in the brain and skeletal muscles as well as reductions in subjective pain, muscle tension and salivary amylase after SMT intervention. These results may be associated with reduced sympathetic nerve activity. So the hypothesis with this paper is that that may result in a decrease or reduction in sympathetic nerve activity, but there is no question that there is significant impact on multiple structures in the brain. There is also no question that there is significant impact in reducing muscle tension concurrently. As a result, as a direct correlative, however you want to describe it, patients have a reduction in pain and an improvement in function due to that adjustment. So I really like this paper because I think it gives a little bit more insight into Alzheimer's ultimately, what changes are occurring in the brain as a result of spinal manipulation, as a result of a chiropractic adjustment and those mechanism of action. Any research regarding the mechanism of action is welcome as far as I am concerned. So great paper, brand new paper, evidence based, complementary and alternative medicine. This was from 2017. Definitely a great paper. I've had awesome member feedback that this has been shared with the providers in their community and it's really stimulated a lot of conversation for our members as they've gotten out there and given these papers, given this paper amongst everything else that they've gotten from the evidence based chiropractor. But when they are able to give this paper over to those other healthcare providers that explains a little bit more about what goes on, what happens. So there's been other papers that focus on the facet joints, the reduction in disc pressure, all intradiscal pressure, excuse me, and all of that fun stuff but this touches upon brain activity. So what's up with the brain when a patient gets a chiropractic adjustment? Well as we learned with this paper quite a bit. So I hope you guys had a fantastic week in practice. If you get the opportunity, I am still looking. I'm calling you out. I'm looking for feedback and reviews on itunes. I am also looking for one other thing and one other thing only. Please go to YouTube.com the evidence basedchiropractor and subscribe to our page. It's only chiropractic videos. You're not gonna get spammed with weirdo cat videos or ninja videos or some sort of, I don't, I don't know going to be any comedy show on it anytime soon. It is all chiropractic all the time at the Evidence based chiropractor at YouTube. So check it out and I hope you have a fantastic week in practice. I will talk to you soon.

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