Many people suffer from some form of breathing problems such as asthma, allergies, lung disease, or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). While there are a variety of treatment options such as medication and surgeries, most people don’t even consider chiropractic treatment as a way to reduce and relieve symptoms of certain respiratory conditions.
Think of the spinal cord as the roots of a tree. If the roots are in poor condition, it can cause the entire tree to suffer. In the same way, when something is out of alignment within the spine, other parts of the body may also function poorly. Chiropractic is a healthcare profession that focuses on the musculoskeletal system, the nervous system, and how disorders within those systems can affect a person’s health. It is a generally drug-free, hands-on approach to health care. Spinal manipulation is the most common form of treatment performed by chiropractors, but other manual therapies and approaches are used such as heat and ice, relaxation and meditation, lifestyle counseling, nutrition advice, exercise, and other treatment methods.
Chiropractic care focuses on correcting subluxations or misalignments within the spine that can affect different areas of the body beyond your spine, including the respiratory system. The thoracic nerves are found in the chest, but they stem from the spinal order. They help to operate the lungs and the rest of your respiratory system such as the muscles within the chest, ribs, upper back, and neck. Misalignments within the spine can impact the thoracic nerves which can cause problems with the lungs expanding or contracting, resulting in breathing complications that can become severe.
In chiropractic treatment, it is common for patients suffering from back or neck pain to also have difficulty breathing or another form of respiratory issue. This is because everything within the body is connected. For the body to function optimally, the spine must be in proper alignment so that the nerves attached can function properly and support the organs they are connected to within the body.
Your chiropractor will address the cause rather than merely treat the symptoms and note any subluxations within the spine that may be putting stress on your thoracic nerves. A combination of manual adjustment, soft tissue therapy, physical therapy, and lifestyle changes will be offered to you as a custom treatment plan that will not only reduce your breathing problems but will also return your body to optimal health giving you a better quality of life.
There can be many different causes and reasons behind respiratory problems, many of which are often rooted in the health of the spine. If the spine is out of alignment, the nerves will suffer and the organs controlled by those nerves will become impaired. To learn more about chiropractic treatment and how it can help you breathe easier, contact our office today for more information or a consultation.
Optimizing your respiratory health with chiropractic care can provide relief and improve your overall well-being. Don’t let breathing difficulties hold you back from living your life to the fullest.
Schedule a consultation with Stephenson Chiropractic Center today and take the first step towards better respiratory health and a brighter future.
My dad is a chiropractor and my grandfather was a chiropractor, but as I was growing up, I didn’t always plan to follow in the family business. In fact, I was pretty stubbornly devoted to NOT going into the family business until my sophomore year in college.
My dad and grandfather attended a seminar at Parker University (which is one of the 17 chiropractic schools in the nation), and during their seminar, I heard some of the chiropractic students talk about why they wanted to be chiropractors. There wasn’t any specific quote that inspired me, but as I listened to them talk about their passion for the profession I had a very definite “calling” moment.
Preachers and ministers talk about having a calling - when they know that God has instructed them to dedicate their life to ministry. At that moment, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that all of the talents, interests, abilities, and experiences that God had gifted to me were for this purpose: so that I could help people be healthy.
As chiropractors, we pursue health. We pursue normal physiology. We want our practice members to operate at the highest potential, and we know that the best way to achieve their highest potential is to remove problems. We want you to be able to accomplish your health goals for an entire lifetime.
In any business, not every day is easy. Even if you love what you do, there are days that are difficult. When I have those days, I hold onto that calling and remember why I do this - because everything in me desires to keep my patients healthy.
I’m going to let you in on a not-so-secret secret: the health industry doesn’t always agree about what it takes to get and keep people healthy.
There are research studies that show that coffee is good for you, and studies that show that coffee is bad for you. There are studies that show that red wine is good for you, and studies that show that red wine is bad for you. There are studies that indicate that whole grains are essential for heart health, and studies that show that all grains are bad for you.
So who do you believe? Who do you follow? What actually works?
The most honest answer: listen to your body.
I know that that sounds weird to most people… when we start talking about this concept with practice members, they get really skeptical. “Listen to your body” sounds like crystals and voodoo to the general public, because they have been taught - either explicitly or implicitly - to only trust modern medicine. The constant messaging from commercials, advertisers, social media, friends, and family members is that you CANNOT be healthy without a medical doctor’s consent.
“Talk to your doctor about…” is repeated to us more than any other phrase on tv, and now those ads are infiltrating your instagram/twitter/facebook/tiktok feeds. If you actually talk to your primary care provider, you will find out that they desperately want you to take control of your own health by making healthy choices.
Put down your phone at a decent hour and go to sleep. Stay hydrated. Move your body. Etc. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do those things.
But back to the original point: your body is communicating to you all the time.
Is your skin irritated? Your body is communicating something to you. Are you having trouble sleeping? Your body is communicating something to you.
Is red wine good for you? How do you feel the day after you drink it?
Are whole grains good for you? How do you feel after you eat them?
When people come into our office, we will do a thorough examination and evaluation that assesses multiple systems of the body - not just the spine. In our modern society, the vast majority of people entering our office are dealing with subclinical or full-blown problems in several different areas.
After we begin working on correcting subluxations, we will have practice members take a survey of their health. It’s called the Healthy Human Evaluation, and it comes from Dr. Marcia Schaefer’s practice. If there are areas that need help, we will start working on lifestyle changes to take steps towards health and full function.
For more information about Dr. Schaefer and the Schaefer Protocol, check out:
I have started taking a walk in the mornings. I used to work out at lunch time, but if I get sweaty then I have to take a shower and start all over with hair and makeup, and my lunch break isn’t that long. Many days, I’m either too busy or too tired after work to get a workout in. If it’s dark when I leave the office, I have a real hard time motivating myself to get moving.
But I know that I have to get some movement in my day for my health, so I have started walking in the mornings. Some mornings I am only able to do 5 minutes, but most days I am able to do 20-30 minutes before I get dressed for work.
A funny thing has happened since I started walking in the mornings: I can’t sleep late anymore.
It turns out that getting sunlight in your eyeballs first thing in the morning stimulates your serotonin production, which inhibits melatonin release. Serotonin and melatonin are opposite neurotransmitters in your brain - serotonin says, “wake up!” and melatonin says, “go to sleeeep”.
It is a really good thing to get your neurotransmitters in a healthy pattern of high serotonin/low melatonin in the mornings, and high melatonin/low serotonin in the evenings. Do you want to lay in bed for hours without falling asleep (otherwise known as insomnia)? Or do you want to be super groggy every morning and have to force yourself to get out of bed? No, definitely not!
I would like to do more vigorous exercise than just walking in the mornings, but building the habit is the first step to transitioning my workouts to the morning. In the process, I think I have given myself a bonus of a healthy sleep cycle!
p.s. If you decide to try a morning walk, leave your earbuds at home. Listen to the birds, notice the color of green on the trees, take some deep breaths… but don’t listen to anything other than your own thoughts and the sounds of the morning. It’s delightful.
There is an interesting trend in healthcare today… nobody wants to diagnose anything.
I understand why: when you diagnose someone with a condition, it’s real hard for the patient to let go of that condition.
Once they have been diagnosed with depression, they will always see themselves as someone with depression. Once diagnosed with diabetes, they will always see themselves as someone with diabetes. The diagnosis becomes their identity. And what if the doctor is wrong?
What if the patient doesn’t really have rheumatoid arthritis, and the doctor told them that they did? The patient has “come to terms” with having a chronic condition, and now someone else says that they don’t have that chronic condition… it can create a lot of problems.
Instead, most healthcare providers don’t diagnose any more. In place of diagnosis codes on medical records, they list symptoms.
I see so many notes/records from other healthcare providers, and they have drastically shifted to listing symptoms instead of diagnoses. Here’s a common example: even when we have an MRI showing a herniated disc putting pressure on a nerve, other healthcare providers diagnose the patient with “low back pain” or “neck pain”.
The herniated disc is the cause, and the pain is a symptom. In my opinion, the diagnosis should be a herniated disc.
I recently saw this in my own life. One morning I woke up and couldn’t talk. Absolutely zero sound came out when I tried to talk. I didn’t have any fever or any other symptoms, just no voice. Most people would describe the lack of voice as laryngitis.
I went to urgent care, and they told me that I had a lot of post-nasal drainage coming from my sinuses and coating my vocal cords with gross stuff (yuck, I know). That’s what was causing my laryngitis, and the post-nasal drainage was probably a result of allergies. Laryngitis was the symptom, and drainage from the sinuses was the cause.
But when I got my records after that visit, they had diagnosed me with laryngitis. Not sinus drainage (sinusitis) or allergies (allergic rhinitis). Laryngitis.
A diagnosis should explain the “why”. Symptoms are signs or indications of a condition. If we keep treating symptoms instead of the cause, we are never going to get rid of a condition.
Pain is a symptom. Muscle spasm is a symptom. Neuropathy is a symptom. Headaches are symptoms. Brain fog is a symptom. Fatigue is a symptom.
At Stephenson Chiropractic, we don’t want to keep treating symptoms over and over. We want to get to the root cause of dysfunction. That’s why we’re far more concerned about pursuing health than reducing symptoms.
Have you ever been to the dentist and - after taking x-rays - the dentist says, “Hmmm, it looks like you have a cavity in this tooth back here. We need to do a filling to make sure it doesn’t cause further damage to the tooth.”
I know I have.
In that moment, I usually think, “But I’ve been doing so good! I brush twice a day, I floss every night, I use mouth wash… and I haven’t had any pain! How could I have a cavity?”
In the same way, we frequently find subluxations that have given the patient zero indications that they have a problem. No pain, no numbness or tingling, no reason to believe there is a problem. But through routine testing on their initial visit, we find that there are subluxations present.
Sometimes patients come in for low back pain, and we find subluxation(s) in their neck. If they don’t have pain in the neck, should we leave it alone?
Whether a subluxation is causing pain or not, we want to correct those subluxations.
When we have a bone that is out of place, it will cause abnormal motion in the joint. Abnormal motion means that over a long period of time, the joint will have abnormal wear and tear, eventually leading to arthritis.
Nobody wants arthritis in the spine. If there are some simple things we can do now to prevent arthritis later, shouldn’t we do that?
Beyond the long-term effects, frequently patients actually are experiencing symptoms of subluxations, but they may not be pain symptoms.
When we have a subluxation, it reduces the communication between the brain and the other parts of the body. As a result, we might experience internal organ dysfunction such as constipation or diarrhea, acid reflux, shortness of breath, difficulty controlling the bladder, problems with the reproductive organs, vertigo, and more.
Another commonly ignored symptom is muscle weakness. It may not be significant enough to cause people to worry, but they notice that one shoulder is “stronger” than the other. Or one leg has better balance than the other. Many times, that muscle weakness is caused by decreased nerve signal from the brain to the skeletal muscles.
A lack of pain is not an indication that there are no problems. Frequently pain is the last symptom to appear and the first symptom to go away. If pain relief is the only reason you want to see a chiropractor, you may miss out on all the other benefits down the line: healthy joints and better function.
Website developed and Designed by Evolved Marketing
