You probably know that your spine is made up of 24 stacked bones called vertebrae. And you probably know that these bones are essential for movement and upright posture. But what you may not know is that your vertebrae also act as a hollow pipeline for the spinal cord -- the bundle of nerves that connects your brain with almost every tissue and organ in your body.
Nerves branch out from the cord through holes between the vertebrae. Depending on where they exit, those different nerves relay messages to different parts of the body, controlling their function and health. Some that exit in your lower spine, for example, relay messages to leg muscles that allow you to walk.
Wherever they exit, improperly functioning nerves can cause problems in the areas of the body they control. Many chiropractors believe that because nerves exit between vertebrae, problems with vertebrae called subluxations can cause such dysfunction.
A subluxation occurs when vertebrae move out of position, lose motion or get stuck. It may affect the nerves between them the way twisting a hose affects the flow of water within. Injury, bad posture, muscular imbalance, emotional stress and chemical stress may contribute to subluxations and nerve interference. The health conditions people experience with these problems will then depend on which nerves are affected.
Problem areas
In identifying problem areas, chiropractors group vertebrae by section and refer to the 7 in the neck as the cervical spine, the 12 in the mid back as the thoracic spine, the 5 in the low back as the lumbar spine and the 5 in the tailbone, which are fused, as the sacrum. They then use the prefixes C, T, L and S along with numbers to identify which vertebrae and nerves are affected. If your chiropractor were referring to the nerve between the bottom of your cervical spine and the top of your thoracic spine, for example, he or she would be referring to the nerve between C7 and T1.
If you came to your chiropractor with problems potentially related to nerve interference, he or she might look for subluxations near nerves that relay messages to the affected body part. If there are any, your chiropractor can use spinal manipulative therapy and other chiropractic techniques to restore function and help your body heal itself.
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