Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office Presents the Influence of the Brain/Spine Connection in Back Pain
The brain and the spine. They are connected. They are connected more closely than any of us realize as we go about our daily lives. Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office keeps this connection top-of-mind as we treat our Groton back pain sufferers’ spines and pay attention to their stories of pain and ways of coping. Groton chiropractic care at Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office respects the brain and spine connection and use gentle, safe chiropractic services incorporating spinal manipulation to reduce pain affecting both.
BRAIN CHANGES IN Groton 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 provokes a spinal anti-inflammatory response to decrease pain. (2) Depression, anxiety, cognitive deficits often accompany 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 associated 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 Groton chiropractor’s mind 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 impressionable. Of course, the young developing brain is most malleable, but with the appropriate input, the older, adult brain can transform. The researchers in this study measured and compared the brain’s cortical size before and after stimulation and compared them on MRI. They saw a difference. More research needs to be done, but they did explain that long term experience establishes cortical organization while transient, new and different stimulation can spark 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 knowledge of the brain contributes to the Groton chiropractic treatment plan!
BRAIN CHANGES WITH CHRONIC PAIN
Just how is the chiropractic treatment plan affected with such information of the brain? Let us start by examining the brain with chronic pain. The two brain regions that encode the intensity of painful stimuli and contribute to the overall experience of chronic pain are the primary somatosensory cortex and posterior insular cortex. (5) The cortex of the brain was discovered 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) Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office treats Groton back pain patients all day long. It is amazing to think that treatment might affect more than the pain response alone!
CONTACT Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office
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 adjusting to their ever-changing mechanical environment, and how chiropractic may help.
Schedule a non-surgical Groton chiropractic care appointment with Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office for your pain, brain, and spine! The connection is there between pain and the brain. Shoreline Medical Services/ Hutter Chiropractic Office can get in the center of those two and help you find some Groton pain relief.
