Chiropractors help keep the body healthy by improving the communication between the nerve system and the brain by aligning joints to keep pressure off nerves.
How would you define the term chronic disease, and what are some examples of chronic diseases?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, Liz, it’s pretty basic. When we think about chronic disease, the word chronic generally refers, or chronicity, refers to time. So, it generally means a condition that you’ve had for a long period of time, or one that’s developed slowly over time and is expected to affect you for an extended or a long period of time. The interesting thing now is that most of the chronic diseases that we experience today are what we call lifestyle diseases. And it seems today that lifestyle diseases, they’re the ones that are killing us much more than the acute, dangerous diseases that used to plague the earth way back in the day, like bubonic plague, leprosy, and all those really scary diseases. Nowadays the chronic diseases that most Americans are really fighting are things like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, congestive heart failure, all these different things. And the thing about most of us these days is that lifestyle plays a big role in your health, and how you think about it and how you deal with your lifestyle is really an important factor now in your health.
And how do most people deal with heart disease, or how do you prevent these lifestyle diseases? Heart disease, it’s simple. It’s diet and exercise. How do you combat diabetes? It’s simple. It’s diet and exercise, right? And so, if we can change our lifestyles, we can really mitigate the severity and even prevent these lifestyle diseases from ever happening. And the cool thing is, the MacArthur Foundation did some awesome research a while back, and they said that most of the diseases, these lifestyles, are 30% genetic and 70% lifestyle. Only 30% genetic, 70%. So, the majority of the control lies with us. That gives us an actual opportunity to rewrite our family tree and our family history if we play our cards right because just because Mom had diabetes, if you employed proper diet and better exercise and lifestyle changes, you can mitigate that or even eliminate it all together. How cool is that?
RC: Yeah, definitely.
Can chiropractic care help someone manage their arthritis?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: We did a whole section on this one in arthritis. And if anyone listening really wants more detail, they should try and track that one down. I know it’s on our website. But there are different types of arthritis. And yes, most of the time the arthritides are long-term chronic conditions, right? They last for a long time, but they tend to flare up. They come and go.
The most common type of arthritis is osteoarthritis. And it’s so common that it’s even in the past been called everyone’s disease, which is kind of interesting, meaning that no one really gets spared. Everyone gets a certain amount of osteoarthritis.
These arthritic conditions are usually caused by the slow degenerative changes that happen in the joints. Slowly over time, as the joints are misused, stressed or strained or injured, they’ll heal wrong, they’ll grow slightly wrong, there are alignment changes. And when things start to become out of alignment, we get a lot more friction and then they start to become inflamed. If you remember in any of our previous talks, “itis” means inflammation, “arth” means joint. So literally arthritis, all it means is inflammation of the joint. So, if these things heal wrong and grow wrong and they start to erode the cartilage that generally keeps everything smooth and gliding 100 times more efficient than ice on ice, when that cartilage starts to degenerate, it’ll stress the subchondral bone, the bones underneath the cartilage, and then the bone will start to deform. And this, with more inflammation, becomes cyclical as that starts to feed on itself. And then the more inflammation in the joint, the more swelling, the more painful it is, the less they move the joints. The less you move joints, the more they’re going to start to degenerate.
It’s so important that we have proper mechanics. And chiropractors happen to be pretty darn good at improving mechanics of the joints of the spine and some of the joints of the extremity as well. So, when everything is lined up, we can slow down those degenerative changes of the spine and we can make sure that we have an active, healthy life. Now, it can’t make bone spurs go away or reverse some of the damage that’s already occurred, but it can slow down that progression and stop it dead in its tracks.
The other thing that’s important is maintaining proper alignment through childhood, through adulthood. That can also mitigate the effects of arthritis, because most of these alignment issues and things really occur from all the stresses and strains and accidents and falls and sports injuries and bicycle crashes that we have when we’re kids. It’s so important to understand that osteoarthritis can be mitigated with proper care and taking certain precautions.
The rheumatoid arthritis, that’s a whole other ball of wax because that’s an autoimmune disease where our own body’s immune system and defense mechanisms start to attack our own cartilage because it looks at it as foreign. Why would the body do that? If the immune system and the nerve system is irritated and hypersensitive, the nerve system sends out these cells all the time to go out and find things that are foreign and attack them to keep the body safe from invading organisms. But if those white blood cells look at the cartilage as something foreign, then they go and attack that, and that causes inflammation and erosion of the cartilage and then the pressure and discomfort can really get bad. So, a lot of these people have a lot of trouble.
When we look at autoimmune disease, what tells the immune system what to do and why is the immune system basically going awry and attacking its own cells? And a lot of times that can be related to miscommunication in the body, and we all know that chiropractors improve communication of the nerve system by lining up the joints better to keep pressure and irritation off those delicate spinal nerves. So, I know that’s a whole mouthful, but again, we talked about this at length in prior talks on arthritis, and I would encourage people if they want more information on that to try and dig up that old blog, and they can listen to those blogs and podcasts.
For people suffering with migraines and chronic headaches, how can chiropractic care help?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, people suffering with headaches and migraines, if they’ve had them for a long time, the only thing worse than suffering is truly suffering for a long time. And whether the headaches are acute or chronic, there’s always hope for people with these conditions when they enter into chiropractic care. In our office we have a subspecialty, besides doing the pediatric and maternity care, we focus on the upper cervical situation. And the upper cervical are the top two bones. And what makes them so important is that every nerve in your body essentially passes through the ring of atlas. As a matter of fact, atlas was the bone that Christopher Reeves broke in that horrible accident and he became paralyzed, couldn’t use his arms, his legs, he couldn’t breathe on his own. Since every nerve in your body passes through that ring of atlas, his whole body was affected. And that’s important to understand, because even his immune system didn’t work properly.
By checking the alignment in the upper cervical junction and maintaining proper alignment, there’s less irritation to those upper cervical nerves and the brain stem. And what’s interesting is that the atlas and the lower part of the skull protects the brain stem. When you irritate the brain stem, that’s a big problem, because that’s where a lot of people get these headaches and they can become chronic. So, we work on the alignment of that cranial cervical junction, and that very often eliminates the mitigation of headaches, migraines, dizziness, all these things. They get great relief with chiropractic care. And don’t get me wrong, every now and then we get a couple of cases that come through that don’t respond as well, and there can be other causes of headaches. But a lot of times when we get pressure off that atlas, their world opens up and they just have less headaches, less severity, and they hit at a less intense level and don’t last as long, which for someone who has chronic headaches, symptoms, and things like that, it’s a godsend.
How does chiropractic care help people who struggle with asthma?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, asthma is really interesting. And everyone thinks that there’s just some type of trigger, right? And it’s interesting because many people don’t really understand the connection between your nerve system and all the other systems. In chiropractic, we look at the nerve system, we realize it is the master system. It controls all the other systems, your immune system, your digestive system, your circulatory system. They’re all controlled by the neurology. And asthma seems to be like a hypersensitivity reaction to things that are commonly normally in the environment. So, for some people, their trigger might be cat dander. They walk into a house that has a cat, all of a sudden their chest tightens up, they start coughing and wheezing, and it’s difficult to breathe. The airways become constricted. But why did their body do that? Why did their body look at cat dander, which doesn’t affect me, but affects someone else in a really difficult way?
It always goes back to the nerve system. If the nerve system is irritated, and when we irritate the nerve system, a lot of people will go into sympathetic overdrive because when the nerve system is irritated and we’re more tense and high strung, our body cranks out cortisol and adrenaline, which keeps our body on high alert, keeps our nerve system very tense and tight. That tension will keep pulling bones out of alignment. And when you think about it, when people are breathing, the ribs go up and down like a bucket handle and the vertebrae have to move. And that’s what allows the breathing process to take place. So, any irritation to the neural structures that creates that hypersensitivity will affect their breathing.
And again, I don’t want to misconstrue, I don’t mean that every person who has asthma, it’s caused by misalignments. But a lot of these people who have asthma get a lot of relief and have less episodes that are less severe, less intense, and don’t last as long. And for some kid who’s going to take allergy medication for the rest of his life, that can be a game changer in his life.
How can ongoing chiropractic care help people avoid chronic pain like sciatica and back pain?
Dr. Gregg Rubinstein: Well, ongoing chiropractic care is wellness care, right? And it’s so interesting how people have this block. They’ll come into my office, and they’ll be like, “Hey, doc, when can I stop coming?” And I often answer that question kind of joking around and say, “Well, when are you going to stop brushing your teeth and when are you going to fire your dentist?” Usually, it’s when they’re in a box underneath the ground or they don’t have any more teeth left. And it’s the same thing with the spine. You should be caring for your spine throughout the course of your lifetime to prevent degenerative changes and back pain and things like sciatica.
These chronic pain conditions like sciatica have long been associated with misalignments of the vertebral column, particularly in the lumbar spine where the bones shift out of their position, they can pinch and irritate the nerves that travel down the back of the legs and create sciatica. Sciatica can be chronic or acute. And a chronic condition, again, is something that you’ve been dealing with on and off for several years and can be related to degeneration or herniation of the discs, because when the vertebrae are not in proper alignment, they put uneven stress on the disc and then the disc will start to bulge, degenerate, or even herniate. So lower back pain can wax and wane depending on how well things are lined up and how well you maintain it. So, the better you align, the better you maintain the mechanics of the spine, the less irritation to the discs and nerves, the less inflammation, the healthier you’re going to feel and the more activity you’ll be able to enjoy for the rest of your life. So again, it doesn’t matter if it’s chronic or acute. The principle in chiropractic is always the same, maintain proper alignment, less irritation to the nerves, a higher level of function from the body and the nerve system.
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To speak with Dr. Gregg Rubinstein, visit www.ChiropractorMidtown.com or call (212) 977-7094 to schedule an appointment.
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