Vancouver Disc Centers Presents the Influence of the Brain/Spine Connection in Back Pain
The brain and the spine. They’re connected. They are connected more deeply than any of us realize as we go about our daily lives. Vancouver Disc Centers keeps this connection in mind as we treat our Vancouver back pain sufferers’ spines and pay attention to their stories of pain and ways of coping. Vancouver chiropractic care at Vancouver Disc Centers respects the brain and spine connection and implement gentle, safe chiropractic services including spinal manipulation to ease pain affecting both.
BRAIN CHANGES IN Vancouver BACK PAIN
Pain changes the brain. A person in pain feels it. Special tests today can reveal it. BOLD (blood oxygen level dependent) responses were analyzed after stimulating lumbar spinous processes with manipulation and exhibited activity in the secondary somatosensory cortex, cerebellum and other brain areas. (1) Motor cortex stimulation triggers a spinal anti-inflammatory response to reduce pain. (2) Depression, anxiety, cognitive deficits often come with chronic constriction of the sciatic nerve due to its effect on the medial prefrontal cortex. (3) Spinal manipulation may be a means to address 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 Vancouver chiropractor’s mind spinning a bit! What a topic! Without having to understand all these terms and measurements shared in the study, know that the study shared that the brain, even the adult brain, is malleable. Sure, the young developing brain is most impressionable, but with the proper input, the older, adult brain can change. The researchers in this study took measurements before and after stimulation and compared their size on MRI. They noticed a difference. More research should be done, but they did describe that long term experience establishes cortical organization while occasional, new and different stimulation can induce cortical reorganization of the adult brain. Such changes have been discovered in musicians, Braille readers, and persons after spinal manipulation and stroke rehab. (4) This understanding of the brain informs the Vancouver chiropractic treatment plan!
BRAIN CHANGES WITH CHRONIC PAIN
Just how is the chiropractic treatment plan affected with such knowledge of the brain? Let’s start by looking at the brain with chronic pain. The two brain regions that encode the intensity of painful stimuli and add to the overall experience of chronic pain are the primary somatosensory cortex and posterior insular cortex. (5) The cortex of the brain was shown to be thinner in chronic low back pain patients. Post-treatment, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is thicker. To the researchers, this indicated that treating chronic pain can reestablish normal brain functions. (6) Vancouver Disc Centers treats Vancouver back pain patients all day long. It’s amazing to imagine that treatment might affect more than the pain response alone!
CONTACT Vancouver Disc Centers
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, describes in more depth how the cells of the body are constantly remodeling and adjusting to their ever-changing mechanical environment, and how chiropractic may help.
Schedule a non-surgical Vancouver chiropractic care appointment with Vancouver Disc Centers for your pain, brain, and spine! The connection is there between pain and the brain. Vancouver Disc Centers can get in the center of those two and help you obtain some Vancouver pain relief.
