Neuropathy - the real truth!

During the last month we have seen a surprising large influx of patients with various neuropathic conditions. It has been shocking really to see how many people go thru day by day with these daily limiting conditions. Neuropathies are preventing people from performing at their jobs, lifting their kids, spending quality time doing outdoor activities and sleeping. More tragic yet, is the fact that chiropractic care is not being suggested as a treatment option by their primary care physician and patients are faced with a gloomy future and long-term high-risk drug and medication use.

Peripheral neuropathy is a disorder of the peripheral nerves—the motor, sensory and autonomic nerves that connect the spinal cord to muscles, skin and internal organs.  It usually affects the hands and feet, causing weakness, numbness, tingling and pain.  Peripheral neuropathy’s course is variable; it can come and go, slowly progressing over many years, or it can become severe and debilitating. One finding is that the longer the condition persists or recur, the chance of permanency increases.

Peripheral neuropathy is common. It is estimated that upwards of 20 million Americans suffer from this illness. It can occur at any age, but is more common among older adults. A l999 survey found that 8-9% of Medicare recipients have peripheral neuropathy as their primary or secondary diagnosis.  The annual cost to Medicare exceeds $3.5 billion. Peripheral neuropathy has always been present, but has not received much attention, arguably because drug companies are not successful in producing a drug for it. It is apt to be misdiagnosed, or thought to be merely a side effect of another disease like diabetes or cancer or kidney failure. There are many causes of neuropathy.  Approximately 30% of neuropathies are “idiopathic,” or of an unknown cause. In another 30% of cases, the cause is diabetes. Other neuropathy causes include autoimmune disorders, tumors, heredity, nutritional imbalances, infections or toxins.

Some types of peripheral neuropathy can be cured, however, many more can be helped if treated by a chiropractor, because many neuropathies are caused by structural issues. The medical approach is directed at medicating for the disease process (ex. diabetes) and at reducing symptoms with the medications. On the other hand, because neuropathies are poorly understood, the chiropractic approach is proving highly effective in patients with neuropathies. But it is extremely important to get examined by an experienced chiropractor as soon as you notice the symptoms before the disease has a chance to cause permanent damage.

Now, the chiropractic approach deals with a particular, common structural situation called a vertebral subluxation.  The spine is made of many bone segments which house and protect the spinal cord and the smaller spinal nerve branches that come off the spinal cord and exit between the bones.  These nerve pathways carry information or messages between the brain and the cells of the body.  These messages are essential for the life of the cells.  Without brain messages, the cells immediately begin the process of dying; i.e., they can no longer function the way they should to maintain life.

Because the bones are moveable, they can misalign in such a way as to interfere with the messages and, ultimately, the ability of the person to function at their best or express their optimum potential, whatever that may be.  People with vertebral subluxations are not able to get all they can out of life.

Vertebral subluxations can be caused by what we'll generally call stresses.  These stresses can be physical (such as exercise routines, sleeping posture and mattress condition, the birth process, sneezing, falling down, etc.), mental / emotional (in its many forms, probably the most familiar use of the word stress), or chemical (such as pollution, drugs, etc.), which are, unfortunately, regular parts of daily living for all age groups.  In short, a vertebral subluxation can occur for a multitude of reasons.

Tragically, vertebral subluxations are rarely obvious to the individual they affect.  People usually have no symptoms.  The reason is that most of what goes on inside you happens without your awareness. As an example, try to "feel" your liver. What's it doing right now? You can't know, so you can't know if it's functioning at its best or something less. To complicate things, nerve pathways that carry messages of control (termed "motor" nerves) have no way of transmitting ache or pain messages, so your body function may be far from perfect and you'd not have any alerting signal whatsoever.  The branching of the nerve pathways is complex and extensive, making it exceedingly difficult to predict or determine exactly how the person will be affected.  For this reason alone, it is impossible for anyone to give you reliable answers as to a connection between the spine and something like a neuropathy, for example, of any kind.  Certainly, every part of the body must have connections to the nerve system so that vital information may be transmitted between the brain and the cells. There are some who would attempt to review the possible nerve connections between a nerve root and specific organs or tissues, but this ignores the multitude of variables that determine the expression of function. The question of how your individual body carries out the myriad of activities just to maintain life is enormous and would require your Creator’s (or creator’s, for the agnostic) knowledge, or at least far more than our educated knowledge of the complexities of life.

Now that you have more information about the body and vertebral subluxation, how do you make use of it?  Are there reasons for the symptoms you are experiencing?  Even though they may be beyond our ability to identify, yes, there are; but pinning them down is not relevant to the matter of whether you will benefit from being free of vertebral subluxations. Vertebral subluxation is, in and of itself, detrimental to your life. It is not valid or reliable to try to connect it to a neuropathy or any other organ or tissue conditions. In order to know if someone has a vertebral subluxation, it is necessary to have that person’s spine checked by a chiropractor using a method of "analysis."  When a vertebral subluxation is detected this way, it is obviously important to correct it as soon as possible. The term for this procedure is “adjustment.”

Since vertebral subluxations are caused by so many different things, people choose to go to a chiropractor on a regular basis to enjoy the most time free of the life-robbing effects of vertebral subluxation. There's a saying that chiropractic is not about your back, it's not about your problem, it's about your life.  Each person has a unique potential in life. With vertebral subluxation, it's impossible to realize that potential.

A key question to ask yourself, then, would be, is someone with for instance peripheral neuropathy better off with vertebral subluxation / nerve interference or free of subluxation / with the nerve channels open? It is easy to see that having all the available nerve messages getting through is better than only some of them getting through, regardless of the person's situation otherwise. It’s not that you should see a chiropractor FOR your symptoms – you should visit one in an effort to be free of vertebral subluxations, even WITH those symptoms. Chiropractic is not about treating symptoms or any medical therapeutic-model or medical condition. It is entirely separate in its goal – and healthier outcome.