Balance, Body Awareness, and Chiropractic

Here in Redmond, as you sit at your computer at Microsoft (or other companies) working away, do you look at your fingers?  If not, have you ever wondered how your brain knows where they are and what they are doing without looking at them?  Your joints are the key.  They provide huge amounts of information about their position, whether they are moving or not, and what sorts of pressure they are being subject to.  These nerves are called proprioceptors and feed into a part of the brain that is responsible for coordinating body movements and posture.

Your eyes and ears are also very important for body balance, movement, and posture.  Anyone who has had an ear infection and gotten dizzy can attest to that.  Obviously your eyes can tell you whether your head is moving or if you are leaning to one side. 

Less obvious is the role of the joints so I'd like to focus on that for today.  An important problem is when you have a loss of movement in a specific joint.  This can be due to acute inflammation or more long term ligament change.  The joint is usually misaligned in this case and often does not correct itself from this problem.  We call this a vertebral subluxation when it is in the spine and simply a subluxation if it is in another joint.  There may be several components of a subluxation but let's discuss the motion aspect for now.

The motion stimulates the proprioceptors to tell the brain how the joint is moving and changing.  It also tells the brain what direction and how fast the joint is moving.  This is quite useful in something like typing.  Without looking I can tell where my fingers are moving and at what rate.  Therefore I can send messages to them to direct various key strokes.

On a bigger scale, the combination of several joints and this movement information allow us to walk and balance ourselves on one foot.  They also allow us to stand still and in a straight and upright posture.  The loss of this information then, is very detrimental for us.  You might feel as though "good" posture feels wrong.  You might be getting clumsier.  You might find that you are losing dexterity in your fingers or bumping into things more often.  You could even get vertigo or other balance disorders.

The handling for this is relatively simple.  The chiropractor needs to isolate which joints are functioning incorrectly and restore that motion.  He will likely recommend movement exercises as well to aid in your recovery.  Would exercise alone handle this problem?  Not likely.  Exercising the spine in particular, moves many joints not just the specific one with a problem.  And if you are diligent and do a very good exercise routine it may very well cover up the problem.  Then it will just come right back when you stop exercising and may be causing joint deterioration the whole time anyway.  A far better solution is to get the spine adjusted AND do the exercise.  That will allow both activities to support each other and give you a far better result.