Chiropractic And Injury Prevention

As research performed in the last few decades has shown, Chiropractic is known to change & improve various aspects of nervous system function, including motor control, brain reaction times, and brain cognitive processing (the speed with which our brain processes information).

So, it makes sense that if any of these areas are lacking then you should be at greater risk for injury, especially when we are talking low back injuries (due to how important brain control is over the vitally important spinal muscles).

We know that if you can’t activate your trunk and core muscles before rapidly moving an arm, this can potentially result in a strain or sprain of the low back. This is known as the feed forward mechanism - if our spine doesn't first stabilize properly before we move our limbs then we greatly increase our risk of injury at the spinal level. These injuries usually start as microscopic injuries that we don't even notice but like everything else they continue to build up until they create major injuries.

It goes without saying that we need our brain to communicate clearly and quickly with all of our postural muscles to maintain balance, prevent falls and prevent injuries of our spines (many studies show that impaired spinal function equals poor postural control). This goes for the neck too. It’s been well documented that the information that our brains receive from our necks is very important for our brain’s ability to help maintain balance and control our posture.

So if everything works perfectly, your brain is very aware of what is going on within your spine due to the messages it receives from all of the joints and deep spinal muscles. But for people with low back pain, their brains can no longer rely on that information - it’s either not making it to the brain or they can’t process it properly. In these cases, their brains switch to rely on information coming from their legs for their postural control strategy. So instead of sensing that they’re off balance due to their spine tilting (very micro movements), they instead rely on what’s happening at the ankles, knees, and hips in trying to maintain balance and prevent falling.

This is not a good thing as it takes far greater "faulty" movements from the legs to alert the brain to a balance issue than it does from the tiny spinal muscles.

It’s also important to note that you don’t have to have back pain present for your brain to be struggling to maintain balance and prevent falls or injuries. For example, we know that the older we get, the less our brain filters outside noise and therefore struggles to integrate all of the sensory information correctly compared to younger adults. This increased background sensory noise is obviously not a good thing. When we have irritations at the spine affecting that nervous system communication, then this could quite possibly result in less sensory noise being filtered and therefore make you more prone to injury.

So where does Chiropractic come in? Well the research is showing that every time you receive a Chiropractic adjustment, your brain gains better control over all of those deep spinal muscles and core muscles. Better brain control over these muscles has to lead to faster firing times and therefore less chance of injury.

There has actually been an interesting study performed that shows an improvement in the "feed forward mechanism" times we mentioned above in young athletes after a chiropractic adjustment. They study had 90 young men who had zero low back symptoms. They found that approximately 20 of the 90 men were not able to pre-activate their core and abdominal muscles before performing a rapid arm movement. After only 2 chiropractic adjustments there was a 40% increase in pre-activation time in these participants. That’s a huge overall average improvement!

So what’s the take home message? Don’t wait until you’re in pain to get adjusted by your Chiropractor and to work on core exercises. Instead, start using both as a preventative measure – get checked by your chiropractor more routinely, and make sure you incorporate exercise that activates your core and postural muscles at least a couple of times per week!