How does chiropractic help with immune function?
Have you noticed you get sick less often when you are getting regular chiropractic care? Many people do notice that! And that is because chiropractic care is great for helping your immune system function better.
Here’s why:
Chiropractic focuses on addressing your nervous system. Your nervous system is the communication system of your body. Your nervous system takes information from inside and outside your body and interprets it.
Additionally, your nervous system sets the priorities for your body. If there is both a bacteria in your body and a tiger chasing you, your nervous system has to decide which is the priority. In that situation, your nervous system will decide that your body should prioritize running from the tiger. It will tell your immune system to take a back seat. Your nervous system decides to ignore the bacteria and focus on running from the tiger. This is what we call the “fight or flight” state.
Ignoring the bacteria in favor of prioritizing the tiger is a good decision. However, we rarely encounter tigers, or other dire threats to our safety. Rarely should we, in our modern American world, send energy to our muscles to run rather than send energy to our immune systems to heal. We are better served staying in the “rest and digest” state.
More often than not, the stress we experience is not a threat to our physical safety or well-being. We should not prioritize the stress in our lives over our immune function. And this is where chiropractic comes in. (There are clear exceptions to this. But our patients who are in unsafe situations are also not often in a position to physically run. They need the next step more than most.)
Chiropractic can help you shift out of the “fight or flight” state that is focused on running from the tiger into a “rest and digest” state that allows you to heal from germs. Right now there are a lot of germs out there in the world! Chiropractic will help your body refocus on fighting off those germs.
So next time you are feeling a bit under the weather, or you are exposed to someone who is sick, come get adjusted! We can put you in the private room, so you do not expose others. And we have masks you can wear if you would like.
