Can your chiropractor keep your brain from shrinking? The Journal of Neuroscience brings sobering news to chronic back pain sufferers. Scientists found that even one year of chronic back pain can age the brain 10 to 20 years. 26 people with chronic, continuous pain of more than a year were compared with 26 healthy people. The researchers theorize that the stress of chronic pain causes “burnout shrinkage.” But that may not be a life sentence.

Brain shrinkage doesn’t always equal loss of brain cells and some shrinkage may reverse once the chronic pain ends. Can chiropractic reverse the damage associated with brain shrinkage? Chiropractic success with chronic conditions is well known to the population. Apparently learning to live with it may cause serious long-term health problems. If you know anyone with chronic back pain, please advise them to explore chiropractic care. Their pain and their brain will thank them.

Most of you know that there are damaging effects to your brain from different types of electromagnetic radiation, environmental pollution, toxic chemical additives to food and other chemicals added to the things we drink and eat. But did you know that pain can cause your brain to shrink. I have been contemplating this brain shrinkage phenomenon since I first read about it a year ago. The conclusions I have come up with may astound and surprise a lot of you.

Here they are (keep in mind that I am being sarcastic here to prove a point): 1) it may be beneficial to most of us that we only use a minor percentage of our brain’s capacity to engage in our daily activities (the myth that we use only 10% of our brains is exactly that, a myth). But this could mean that most of us have lots of brains to spare so if we ever get into pain and start to lose our brains, we shouldn’t have much of a problem. 2) Because people tend to think that their pain will “eventually go away by itself” (if only I had a dollar for every time I heard this), I suppose that the logic explanation for the reason that the pain eventually goes away is that part of our brain just disappeared. 3) If pain causes our brains to shrink it would probably be a good thing for those of us who are quite knowledgeable on every subject known to mankind (i.e. smarty pants) to be in pain every once in a while in order to give the other people around us a chance to keep up with us. 4) Some of us have been told that we have “swollen heads”, pain every once in a while might help our heads to shrink slightly, allowing us more easy passage through doorways and getting in and out of cars, we would also be less of an obstruction for the people behind us at the movie theatre. 5) Chronic pain could allow us to have that constant light headed feeling that some long distance runners strive for because our heads would literally be lighter. This would also help our posture because a lighter head would be easier to keep upright. Less forward head leaning with the reduction in weight makes for a better posture.

Well I hope you get the big idea that having a smaller brain is not a good thing or should I say avoiding pain is a good thing! I have found that the best way to avoid ache is to be proactive about your health. When my patients ask me how often they should come in to get adjusted I recommend at least one time per month to get checked and adjusted. I personally try to get adjusted once per week and I believe that it helps prevent a lot of problems with my health that I would have otherwise developed.

So here is my official position on how often you need to be coming in to get adjusted. If you do not have acute pain due to some unfortunate incident you should be coming in once per month. I look forward to seeing you and helping you maintain your hat size for the duration of your life. New Century Spine Centers is located in San Diego in Mission Valley and can be reached at 619-630-9153.

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