For a long time we at SR3 have been talking about the benefits of adjustments at the local, segmental, and supraspinal (your brain) levels. In the past 2 blog posts we learned about some of the effects that happened at the local and spinal cord levels. Now will be heading to the final frontier of the human brain and talk a little bit about what happens here as result of an adjustment.   A recent research study took a deep dive at looking at brain activity before and after an adjustment.  The Harvard researchers conducting the study placed patients in a special fMRI scanner that measures brain activity using a BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) analysis.  What this does is it measures oxygen saturation in different areas of our brain, and how these levels change in response to stimuli.  If we can measure oxygen saturation, then we can also measure which areas of the brain are active after providing a stimulus.  In this case the stimulus was watching videos of regular people performing exercises that put stress on their backs such as bending and lifting objects.  One might think that simply watching videos of a person lifting wouldn’t do much for brain activity, but in fact it did.  The patients that have been experiencing low back pain had pronounced spikes in activity in brain areas associated with fear avoidance, and fear of movement compared to normal controls without low back pain.  So the individuals with back pain had more fear associated with bending and lifting.  Luckily the intervention was much simpler than the analysis, the participants with chronic low back pain received an adjustment.  After receiving the adjustment and being re scanned, the participants with low back pain showed less fear when watching the videos, as well as less fearful anticipation in movement.  This shows that our adjustments can decrease the fear associated with bending, as well as with lifting objects. Often we are not totally aware of the fear of bending, but our brain compensates around doing so because of it.  These compensations can lead to further disability and injury over time. It is important to recognize that an adjustment is not just a quick pop in your back but has far reaching effects on both your body as well as your mind. Both adjustments as well as active rehabilitation are employed by our office to help you reach your health goals, your summit if you will.  Give us a call or schedule an appointment so that we can help you reach your Summit.  

-Your team at SR3

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1526590018303031

Ellingsen, D. M., Napadow, V., Protsenko, E., Mawla, I., Kowalski, M. H., Swensen, D., ... & Loggia, M. L. (2018). Brain Mechanisms of Anticipated Painful Movements and Their Modulation by Manual Therapy in Chronic Low Back Pain. The Journal of Pain, 19(11), 1352-1365.