Such talk happens all the time as input comes in from our external senses (eyes, ears, mouth, nose and touch), as well as through an inner ‘map’ of the location of our muscles and joints in three-dimensional space relative to each other (proprioception), as the brain carries out its decisions and functions.

Contrary to decades of scientific dogma, a recent wave of research has shown that the brain is actually highly adaptable to its ever-changing environment throughout life. It achieves this by keeping an up-to-date tab on its sensory inputs and its internal map of the self. This ability to adapt is known as ‘neural plasticity.’

Haavik likens the plasticity of the CNS to the subtle changes in the bed of a flowing stream. “You can never really step into the same river twice; the water, stones, and silt of the riverbed are constantly changing,” she says. Likewise, your brain is changing with every thought and every execution and is in a constant state of flux.

In fact, she believes her research demonstrates that vertebral subluxations (dysfunctional spinal segments; see box, page 32) lead to a breakdown in the way the brain perceives and controls the movement of the spine. And this spinal dysfunction doesn’t just affect how the brain then perceives and controls the spine, but also how it perceives and controls other parts of the body as well.

When the brain gets even slightly wrong information, it builds a faulty map that can impede neural signaling as effectively as damped sensory input—like wearing a blindfold or losing the sense of taste. And that translates to faulty functioning.

Chronic pain and neurodegenerative disorders have been linked to these faulty perceptions by the plastic brain.”Pain and conditions with other symptoms don’t necessarily happen all of a sudden for no reason. They can slowly develop without your awareness, a bit like a thousand straws on a camel’s back before it breaks,” says Haavik. “Only when the last straw is added do you feel the effect.”

Haavik’s team hypothesizes that spinal adjustments that restore normal movement also restore more normal data input from the spine to the brain. This, in turn, allows the spinal cord, brain stem, and brain to process any incoming information more coherently.

“We believe these to be the mechanisms by which adjustments of vertebral subluxations can improve nervous system function, as observed daily in chiropractic practices all around the world.”

While the New Zealand researchers are reluctant to speculate on immunity, an emerging body of research is demonstrating the interconnectedness of both the nervous and immune systems too. An entirely new lymphatic system in the brain was only discovered in 2015 by a team of researchers at the University of Virginia,10 which highlights how limited our understanding of the brain, and the effect of the nervous system on global health, still is. It also raises further questions about how improving one system can lead to an improvement in the other—and so perhaps why some people experience benefits to their immune-mediated disease with chiropractic manipulations.

“What is becoming clear is that chiropractic care seems to impact our brain’s inner reality by restoring the proper processing and integration of sensory information, which alters the way our brain controls our body,” says Haavik.

“It’s so exciting to see that there are other possible ways now to explain the effects of chiropractic that are actually congruent with current neuroscience,” she adds. “It’s actually more profound and powerful than we could have ever thought.”

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THE MANY FACES OF CHIROPRACTIC

There are two schools of thought in chiropractic: the ‘mechanics,’ who claim it should be absorbed into mainstream medicine as a standardized treatment for back and neck pain, and the ‘vitalists,’ who believe that the treatment is much more far-reaching, as they’ve seen it help cases of fatigue, joint pain, migraines, allergies, asthma, bedwetting, and even infertility.

The latter philosophy is radically different from the current medical paradigm. “The body has an innate ability to heal, provided there is no interference,” says Gilles LaMarche, vice president of professional relations at Life University in Atlanta, Georgia, the world’s largest chiropractic college. “It is self-developing, self-maintaining, and self-healing.”

In this vitalistic view of chiropractic, when you get an infection or scrape your knee, the best practitioner merely assists the body in getting on with its own spontaneous and spectacular business of healing itself.

The chiropractor’s job, as vitalists see it, is to remove any interference in the body at the level of the spine, which they consider central.

“Conventional medicine doesn’t interpret symptoms as we interpret symptoms,” explains LaMarche from his end of chiropractic.

He sees fever, for instance, as one of the body’s natural mechanisms to fight infection: raising the body’s temperature kills bacteria and viruses, and facilitates other immune functions.

“Many doctors see fever as bad, as something to reduce,” he says, “and they give Tylenol [acetaminophen], not considering it as a toxin that is actually going to stay in the liver and therefore interfere with healing and health.”

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HOW CHIROPRACTIC CHANGES THE BRAIN

So what’s going on in the Brain after a chiropractic adjustment that could be increasing muscle strength in stroke patients? As a 2016 study from Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark demonstrated, a single chiropractic adjustment helps to improve something called ‘somatosensory integration’ (when the brain receives accurate sensory input, so allowing it to properly organize and execute subsequent behaviors).

Such a change mostly happens in the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain known to be a key player in executive functions. It’s a sort of command control center, integrating and coordinating the multiple neural inputs from a constantly changing environment to solve problems and achieve goals.

“Chiropractic care, by treating the joint dysfunction, appears to change processing by the prefrontal cortex,” the authors conclude.

So, while some chiropractors (and their patients) may have thought their adjustments were making changes locally and directly from the spine, in fact, the change is apparently effected indirectly by being sent to ‘central command’ (the brain), then redirected back down neuronal chains to give the perception of reduced pain as well as other benefits.

“This suggests that chiropractic care may, as well, have benefits that exceed simply reducing pain or improving muscle function and may explain some claims regarding this made by chiropractors,” the study researchers say.

These claims include the ability of adjustments to increase muscle strength and core stability and improve reaction time and proprioception (your awareness of your body’s position in space), reducing the risk of injury.

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WHAT IS A SUBLUXATION?