Week 5

Manipulation: Passive maneuver during which a joint is quickly brought beyond its restricted physiologic range of movement and beyond its elastic barrier without exceeding the boundaries of anatomic integrity.

Adjustment #3: Any chiropractic manual procedure that uses force, leverage, direction, amplitude and velocity directed at specific joints or anatomic regions

Adjustments are typically by hand, and are specific; used by Chiropractors only. Manipulations are more physical and can include larger tools, and is more broad; used by Physical Therapists, Occupational Therapists, etc.

A pop sounds just means the joint space opened, it does not necessarily mean that there was a successful Adjustment; it could have just been a manipulation.

  • this can be helpful, but is not a long term way to help, and it doesn’t actually fix the issue the patient is having, so they have to keep coming back more often to feel that relief.

  • Everyone can do a manipulation. Only Chiros can do an Adjustment.

  • The intent of doing an Adjustment is to restore normal Physiological Activity

Wellness: Is the ongoing process of becoming self-aware and making choices that move you along a continuum of experiencing greater and greater states of feeling better or wellbeing.

  • Wellbeing: the experience that occurs as you move towards greater states of wellness

  • used too often to market products because people want to be well

  • You can feel well, even if you are not

    • “yet disease”: feeling well even though someone has a problem (like DDD), they don’t feel the issue yet.

  • Wellness is Multidimensional: All of these can individually effect a person’s overall health

    • Physical wellness

    • Intellectual wellness

    • Social wellness

    • Occupational wellness

    • Emotional wellness

    • Spiritual wellness

    • Environmental wellness


General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS): A built in system in the human body that takes over when something triggers it (an innate response)

  • Develops in 3-4 stages:

    • Stressor (alarm reaction)

      • You can do this consciously or not

    • Physiological adaptions (resistance)

      • Your body will keep adapting

    • Exhaustion (fatigue)

      • Your body has been adapting too long

    • Death

      • Starts with cell death, leads to organ death, then system death, finally organism death

  • What happens to you in that situation or that environment?

  • Homeostasis: the vitalistic ability of living things to maintain constancy of their internal make-up; balance

Stress:

  • Is the state manifested by a specific syndrome which consist of all the non-specifically induced changes within a biologic system

  • Stressors: Physical, chemical, mental. What is causing the stress.

  • Stress causes certain changes in the structural and chemical composition of the body

    • Some are SIGNS of damage, +

    • Some are MANIFESTATIONS of body adaptation, =

    • Together these develop GAS (General Adaptation Syndrome)

  • When you are under a stressor, your body will innately determine if that is a Stressor for you to react to, and this will be different from the person next to you.

    • A certain part of your brain will become active, firing on all cylinders, the stressor shocks that part of the brain

    • Sympathetic dominance: Sympathetic nervous system will become innately, highly active

    • Causes your body to react innately due to that response

      • This is your Fight-or-Flight response

    • Signal from Sympathetic nervous system are sent to Adrenal glands, causing them to release hormones to raise BP and HR so that Sympathetic signals can be sent to the rest of the body quickly, resulting in more hormones being released for other functions to be provoked, to carry out the fight-or-flight response

  • Stressors trick your brain and body into survival mode

Primary purpose of GAS is to buy you time to get rid of your stressors, so that you can live and survive

GAS: Always produces a TRIAD syndrome:

  • Adrenal cortex enlargement (stimulation)

  • Thymus shrinking/atropy (and lymph tissues)

  • Ulceration and bleeding in stomach and duodenum

Summary: GAS is defined as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand. It is recognized by evidence of adrenal stimulation, atrophy of lymphatic organs, gastrointestinal ulcers and loss of body weight. This is due to NEUROLOGICAL and HORMONAL responses whereby there is a direct effect of the stressor (alarm), an internal response which stimulates physiological adaptation or defense, and an innate response of inhibiting unnecessary or excessive defenses.

  • Stress is an abstraction; it has no independent existence. We can only see the combination of the stressor and the specific actions of the agent.

    • STRESSOR= Causative agent

    • STRESS= The resulting condition/a state of the body

Stress Response Summary: It must be emphasized that the physiological changes associated with the acute stress response are absolutely necessary for survival in a stressful environment. If you could not produce these changes you could not deal with stress and you would die. HOWEVER, we are not designed to be under chronic stress. What was designed to be helpful in an acute fight or flight situation is now being stimulated chronically for days, weeks, months, even years!

The physiological changes can be summarized as follows:

  • #1 - Increased cortisol (cortisol’s main job is to regulate Blood Sugar)

  • #2 - Increased catecholamines (Epinephrine, Norepinephrine)

  • #3 - Increased HR (due to #2)

  • #4 - Increased vasoconstriction

  • #5 - Increased BP (due to #2)

  • #6 - Increased blood glucose levels (due to #1)

  • #7 - Increase blood lipid levels (due to #2)

  • #8 - Increased blood cholesterol levels (increased LDL: decreased HDL) (due to #1)

  • #9 - Increased clotting factors

  • #10 - Increased protein degradation of muscle and connective tissue

  • #11 - Insulin resistance (due to #1 & #2)

  • #12 - Increased feelings of stress, fear, anxiety and depression (due to #2)

  • #13 - Decreased short term memory, ability to concentrate, and learn new material (due to #2)

  • #14 - Decreased serotonin levels; increased noradrenaline levels (due to #2)

  • #15 - Increased sensitivity of sensory systems including those for pain (due to #2)

  • #16 - Decreased cellular immunity (due to #1 & #2)

  • #17 - Decreased anabolic hormones (like growth hormone & testosterone, luteinizing hormone, etc.)

  • #18 - Bone loss, muscle fiber type changes

The normal physiology of your body is Anabolic physiology, under GAS you enter Catabolic physiology so you can eliminate the stressor and return to Anabolic


What happens when we put ourselves in a pathologically chronically stressful environment is that we force our body minds to adapt to this environment by producing a chronic stress response. This is not a disease and it is not pathological. The chronically stressful environment is pathological, NOT the body’s response to it. If we could not produce these changes we could not survive! Remember the analogy of what happens to the number of red blood cells at high altitude. That is adaptation to the environment, not pathology!!