Structure Dictates Function

During the history taking aspect of a patient’s initial exam we like to discuss past traumas that patients may have encountered in their life time up until that very day. Often people overlook or forget traumas that they may have withstood. I like to remind patients that they are in the same bodies they have been in their whole life, so those childhood and young adulthood injuries or stresses that may have seemed like no big deal accumulate to the current issue that has them sitting in front of me. A good analogy of the lasting effects of traumas is the life of a house.

Say you start off with a brand new house all shiny and just built. The first spring the house encounters, the cellar floods. This causes damage to the drywall in your finished basement. A few years later termites infest the frame of your deck compromising its structural integrity. Then after a decade or so the house starts to settle causing doors to stick and not allowing windows to fully open. Finally, after years of neglecting the exterior of the house, constant exposure to the sun and the elements has caused the paint to peel almost completely off. The house now has permanent damage. The accumulation of this damage throughout the lifetime of the house has become too overwhelming for you, the homeowner, to fix without help.

Now think of this house as your body:

• Brand new house – you as a baby
• Spring flood- you sustain a whiplash injury in a teenage car accident altering the structure of your spine
• Termite infestation- your wisdom teeth become infected causing the need for oral surgery
• House settling- natural aging of your body and the wear and tear of everyday life has caused the onset of osteoarthritis decreasing the range of motion in some of your joints
• Peeling paint- chronic exposure to the sun has caused irregular skin cell growth

It is easy to see how the structure of the house above parallels the structure of the body. Both suffer an accumulation of traumas that have a lasting effect on their ability to function properly. This analogy works nicely to illustrate the effects of physical traumas to the body but lacks the other two kinds of trauma humans face. These being emotional and chemical trauma. Physical, emotional, and chemical trauma can cause an insult to the structure of your body. This causes a decrease in your body’s ability to function properly. When this occurs your body will start to show various signs and symptoms such as pain and discomfort. These symptoms are secondary to the primary issue at hand which is structural dysfunction.

When you come the chiropractor with secondary conditions such as neck pain, headaches or digestive problems, understand that our primary focus is to correct the structural imbalances in your spine. As the structure of your body improves, so will the function and those secondary symptoms. It takes time for your body to heal, your misalignments have likely been in your spine for years, if not decades. Know that slow and steady wins the race. Make all of your appointments, follow our recommendations to support your care and commit to the process. It will be worth the investment!