The hip bone’s connected to the…neck bone
Remember that childhood song? Yes, the parts of the body are indeed connected. Your leg pain might be coming from your neck. A chiropractic adjustment of your hips might help your carpal tunnel wrist pain. And not only are your bones interconnected, so are other parts of the body connected to your skeletal system and organs.
Here are some of the amazing connections between parts of the body that one wouldn’t think are linked in any way.
Your overweight and your stiff neck might be connected
Your weight and metabolism – the rate at which calories are burned for fuel or stored as fat – are regulated in large part by a gland in your neck, the thyroid. If your neck is out of alignment – which can cause neck pain or stiffness, or it might not cause any discomfort – nerves and blood supply to the thyroid can be blocked. This in turn can result in low thyroid function, with symptoms that include overweight, fatigue, and thinning hair.
Your neck can link to other health problems
Almost any health problem can be connected to your neck, for that matter. A major cause of chronic health conditions is malnutrition. You can be malnourished even if your diet is great, since you might not be able to digest and use many of the nutrients. How does this relate to your neck? The vagus nerve runs from the brain through the neck and to the digestive organs. If your neck is out of place, the vagus nerve can be compressed enough to restrict optimal digestive function. The result is malnutrition, which in turn can contribute to almost any health issue.
Your teeth are connected to your shoulder
If you have a dental abscess or root canal treatment, you might have shoulder or hip pain. Such pain, especially if it comes on with no known injury or underlying problem with the shoulder or hip joint, can be due to infection from your teeth or jaw.
Your kidneys are connected to your teeth
If you have a kidney infection and kidney pain, you might want to see…your dentist? Yes, you read that right. Many cases of kidney infection come from outside the body – bacteria enter the bladder, causing a urinary tract infection (UTI), which is pretty unmistakable and painful. If not treated, the infection can gradually travel to the kidneys. But what if you have a kidney infection without a UTI? Where does the infection come from? In these cases, the infection is often from the teeth, and you might have a dental infection even without pain. A properly done tooth extraction, then, can help clear up a chronic kidney infection.
Your hip is connected to your wrist, sort of
If you have wrist pain, usually called carpal tunnel syndrome, the problem might not be in your wrist, but in your hips. Many people with carpal tunnel syndrome have had wrist operations that didn’t do much good, because that wasn’t where the actual problem was located. Sometimes when the hips are out of alignment, the back and neck are also out, and the pain can be felt in the wrist. There are a number of cases where a hip adjustment helped with wrist pain.
Constipated?
The nerves and blood supply from the lower back serve the lower pelvic organs. If your back is out of alignment, compression of these nerves and vessels can cause your digestive organs to work improperly, and one of the results of this is constipation. However, these nerves work in both directions. If you are constipated due to, say, lack of dietary fiber or sufficient water, this can be felt as back pain.
And the list goes on…
There are too many correlations between the parts of the body – correlations that most people wouldn’t even think of – to list here. Since nerves from the neck serve the arms and hands, neck problems can cause numbness and weakness in your hands. Or a jaw that isn’t properly adjusted can cause chronic headache. And the list goes on.
Help in diagnosis
Odd symptoms and correlations can help with diagnosing what’s really going on. For example, if your gallbladder, which helps to digest fats, isn’t working optimally, you might have pain in your trapezius muscles, between your shoulder blades. The T5 nerve travels between the spine at that point and the gallbladder. A knowledgeable practitioner can look at your upper back pain and the next thing you know you’re getting a gallbladder flush and finally digesting your oils properly.
CAM can help
We have a chiropractor and an osteopath on staff at CAM. They can help to assess and correct any structural problems that may be underlying your health issues. Other practitioners at CAM are trained to identify structural problems, and to also see the correlations between where the symptom is and where the actual causative problem might be located.
