Moriarty Chiropractic Presents the Influence of the Brain/Spine Connection in Back Pain

The brain and the spine. They’re connected. They are connected more intimately than any of us realize as we go about our daily lives. Moriarty Chiropractic keeps this connection in mind as we take care of our Nashua back pain sufferers’ spines and listen to their stories of pain and ways of coping. Nashua chiropractic care at Moriarty Chiropractic respects the brain and spine connection and implement gentle, safe chiropractic services including spinal manipulation to ease pain affecting both.

BRAIN CHANGES IN Nashua BACK PAIN

Pain changes the brain. A person in pain knows it. Special tests today can reveal it. BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) responses were examined after stimulating lumbar spinous processes with manipulation and exhibited activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex, cerebellum and other brain areas. (1) Motor cortex stimulation triggers a spinal anti-inflammatory response to decrease pain. (2) Depression, anxiety, cognitive deficits often come with chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve because of its effect on the medial prefrontal cortex. (3) Spinal manipulation may be a means to deal with the brain changes in chronic pain and its related issues.

SHORT TERM STIMULATION’S EFFECT ON BRAIN

Stimulating the brain even for a short time may impact the pain experience. A recent study on Euclidean distance between cortical sources and temporal dynamics of plastic changes in the somatosensory cortex of the brain had even your Nashua chiropractor’s head spinning a bit! What a topic! Without having to grasp all these terms and measurements discussed in the study, know that the study shared that the brain, even the adult brain, is pliable. Sure, the young brain in development is most impressionable, but with the appropriate input, the older, adult brain can change. The researchers in this study took measurements before and after stimulation and compared their size on MRI. They saw a difference. More research should be done, but they did explain that long term experience establishes cortical organization while transient, new and different stimulation can induce cortical reorganization of the adult brain. Such changes have been seen in musicians, Braille readers, and persons after spinal manipulation and stroke rehab. (4) This understanding of the brain contributes to the Nashua chiropractic treatment plan!

BRAIN CHANGES WITH CHRONIC PAIN

Just how is the chiropractic treatment plan influenced by such information of the brain? Let’s start by looking at the brain with chronic pain. The two brain regions that encode the intensity of pain and add to the whole experience of chronic pain are the primary somatosensory cortex and posterior insular cortex. (5) The cortex of the brain was shown to be thinner in chronic low back pain patients. Post-treatment, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thicker. To the researchers, this implied that treating chronic pain may well reestablish normal brain functions. (6) Moriarty Chiropractic takes care of Nashua back pain patients all day long. It’s amazing to think that treatment might alter more than the pain response alone!

CONTACT Moriarty Chiropractic

Listen to this PODCAST by Dr. James Cox on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he explains more clearly the brain and spine and pain connection, illustrates in more depth how the cells of the body are continually remodeling and adapting to their always-changing mechanical environment, and how chiropractic may help.

Schedule a non-surgical Nashua chiropractic care appointment with Moriarty Chiropractic for your pain, brain, and spine! The connection is there between pain and the brain. Moriarty Chiropractic can get in the middle of those two and help you obtain some Nashua pain relief.