In this episode, we are answering the most commonly asked question… What do you do to keep your body and mind healthy! The answer is simple. Discover why chiropractic adjustments are a vital part to support your immune system.
Table Of Contents
- Support Your Immune System: An Introduction
- Optimizing How The Body Works
- Aligning Your Spine And Spirit
- Chiropractic Adjustment As The Reset Button
- Support Your Immune System: Closing Thoughts
Support Your Immune System: An Introduction
Dr. Bryan: Welcome back to the Wellness Connection. I’m Dr. Bryan Joseph and I am joined today by Dr. Jason Hamed.
We are going to have a conversation today around the topic that I feel like we’ve shared with a lot of patients over the years. It branches off in a lot of different directions. This conversation and patients always have asked us questions around – Why do you have your kids get adjusted? What are some of the things that you guys do for your own bodies to keep yourself in good shape physically, spiritually and mentally?
It seems like every time that we get in these deeper conversations, the topic comes back to at the very core of what we do. What we recommend that most people do is making sure that you stay healthy and keep your central nervous system very healthy and vital. One of the ways that we believe is extremely vital in doing that is through chiropractic care.
A Stable Platform For Your Health
Dr. Bryan: What are some of the things that we know from a scientific and a common-sense helps standpoint that helps people stay healthy and why people that are using chiropractic care seem to be people that stay healthy through thick and thin times.
Dr. Jason: For so long, when you look at really the underpinning of our practice, it’s really been about how can we improve their overall health, help you get well, and then stay well. And it’s becoming a platform like a diving board platform.
Having a stable platform to build your health on is you have to make sure that your brain and your spinal cord, brain, and your body can communicate. If it doesn’t communicate the right way, you just don’t function the right way. That’s a huge impact on support your immune system, on your ability to handle stress, work, for your organs to work correctly. You cannot separate the two.
Dr. Bryan: During different times that are happening in the world, there’s a tremendous amount of people that are internalizing stress for financial, economic, maybe fear reasons. There’s a physiological response that happens when all of us start to internalize stress.
Just think about this. If I was to ask you a simple question, do you feel like your muscles will be tighter or looser at the time that you’re about to be freaked out? How do you think most people would answer?
Dr. Jason: Tighter.
Dr. Bryan: Undoubtedly. If we know that the body’s physiological response to some kind of bad stress or even some good stress is that it causes the muscle tissue to tighten up.
A body under stress is immuno-compromised
Dr. Bryan: Let’s go on to the next question. If the body is now fatigued and you’re put in a situation that’s slightly threatening, it’s worn down. It’s vulnerable, and mine is completely relaxed, has got energy and I feel vibrant. Who do you think is more likely to get that threat thrown at them?
Dr. Jason: The person who’s under tension and under stress before the new stress.
Dr. Bryan: Completely factual. How can we refute that? If support your immune system is compromised and your body is in stress mode all the time, then you wonder, how come these are the same people that tend to catch everything? That whenever the cold season comes up, they get it every time.
Optimizing How The Body Works
Dr. Jason: How can you optimize how well that body works?
Dr. Bryan: When you talk about host, oftentimes people reference the soil and the seed. If you have a bunch of seeds that you want to plant cucumbers or flowers or tomatoes in your backyard and the soil that you plant them in is toxic, or it’s not nutrient-dense or rich, the likelihood of those seeds flowering into proper plants is very slim. But when you have soil that’s extremely rich, nutrient-dense, it’s healthy, it’s vibrant, and you put a seed in there, what happens?
Dr. Jason: It blooms.
Dr. Bryan: Right. So if our bodies are really the soil and these threats like these viruses and these colds and these bacterias are the seeds, in essence, if you have a fertile, fertile soil on your body and you’re able to fight things off properly, the likelihood of that penetration is a lot less.
Dr. Jason: This is a great example because we didn’t makeup what a plant needs to grow. It’s not like Dr. Bryan is like B or E, all of the above. It’s not like we just said, “Hey, let’s have a podcast show today. And let’s just make up what the natural laws for a plant are to grow.” We didn’t make it up. There are specific needs that a plant has to grow. Well, guess what folks? The human body, it’s the exact same way.
Nature leaves clues to support your immune system
Dr. Jason: We like to say nature leaves clues. If nature tells us what a plant needs to grow, then we have to take and deduce that the human being in all of our studies and all of our researches over decades or thousands and thousands of years between Chinese medicine 2,000 years ago to the best research today. and out of the fanciest institutions shows us, you have certain needs that need to be met in the human body. And if you don’t meet them, then you’re going to have a problem.
A lot of that has to do with again how nerves function and how that relates to movement. It’s a beautiful harmony. I’m not here to say that working on your alignment, getting adjusted and getting your body to move correctly is this panacea cure-all for everything. But I’m telling you right now, if we’re talking about what a plant needs to grow, you can’t grow a plant without sunlight, period.
The same thing happens here. If you have a body that is not getting proper nerve communication and is not able to move, it is not going to thrive in a stress-filled or even an unstress-filled environment, period. You need movement. You have to get a nerve communication.
Aligning Your Spine And Spirit
Dr. Bryan: Let’s bridge that gap a little bit because now I’m going back to the earlier or the opening of this discussion. We were talking about why we ourselves, even when we don’t hurt, or even when we aren’t sick, why we choose to have ourselves and our children regularly adjusted. It really goes back to that part where I’m talking about how much stress do we want the host or the soil to hold on to.
We know that there’s literally a reset button that’s available. You’re carrying all the stress. You’re tightening up your muscles, fatiguing yourself, and yet there is the power within your own body to reset everything by basically reducing all the stress and getting motion back in the spine. Aligning the spine and the spirit and getting your brain to communicate properly to your body. That’s why we practice regularly delivering those services to ourselves and to our children, because we know it’s that important.
Dr. Jason: Let’s keep it really simple. I like to tell patients, it’s like a garden hose. Think of your brain like the well, and then your spinal cord that comes out of your brain like the garden hose coming off the well. If I kink the garden hose, do I get more or less water flowing through it?
Dr. Bryan: Less.
Dr. Jason: If your spine is getting you all tense and tight, that’s built up over years, putting you in a tight position. The slips, falls, injuries, accident, sitting in a work desk for eight hours a day. Or if your kids are going to school, they’re sitting at a school desk and they’re wearing backpacks that are way too heavy for them.
Reducing tension to support your immune system
Dr. Jason: In our culture in general, we’re looking down at computer screens or iPhones way too much. What happens is your spine bends to accommodate to the stress and it gets stuck. Now, you’ve kinked the spinal cord. Kinking the garden hose. Now the brain can’t communicate to what it’s supposed to, organs, muscles, tissues, and even organs that help regulate, stimulate and support your immune system.
Simply put, I just try to unkink my garden hose and make sure my kid’s garden hose, is unkinked so they just work better.
Dr. Bryan: Another thing that you made me think of when you’re saying that is tension builds up in body from stress. Muscles get tight and then somebody goes to perform just a regular activity like going to golf. And we’ve talked about this on other episodes. I think it might’ve been like mobility and flexibility.
When you carry tension, you’re more vulnerable to having a compromised immune system and actually getting sick easier. If you have a tremendous amount of tension in the muscles around your neck, your shoulders and your back. Then you go swing a golf club or you go shoot baskets in the backyard with your kids, and you’re moving your body in a way where you’ve lost some of the flexibility that your muscles are designed to have because you’re holding onto so much tension.
Now you start ripping some of the tissue in your body that doesn’t necessarily usually get asked to move and be stretched because the muscles are supposed to be the ones that are stretching. But now they’re so tight. And ultimately, what does that mean to you? That means ouch, that means pain.
Chiropractic Adjustment As The Reset Button
Dr. Bryan: We’ve talked about in other episodes that there are certainly other ways that you reduce stress such as meditation as a reset for you. People use yoga. Some people get massages or do some forms of exercise. But inevitably, there’s a reason why some of the wealthiest and probably the most well-known people in the world that can afford any type of health care that they want not only through meditation, massage, exercise, and yoga but by getting a chiropractic adjustment.
That’s why we’re encouraging you to take advantage of having that reset button hit in your own life, because you might not be able to see it as often as we get the chance to see it.
Dr. Jason’s mom
Dr. Jason: In about five years ago, my mom moved out from New York to be with our family here in Missouri. She would get some care. She’d get some adjustments periodically when I’d go back home to visit, or I would make sure that she got a periodic checkup when she was out in New York.
But again, she’s running her life. We’re looking for the alignment and misalignments and taking x-rays and analysis and things of that nature. And I go over her x-rays with her, telling the same thing I would tell anyone else, because I just think that’s integrity.
I said, “Mom, here’s what you got. Here’s what you need to do. I need to see this many times per week. And then we’re going to go to this many times per week, and I’m going to take new tests, et cetera.” Long story made short, My mom has now continued to have consistent care because she wasn’t feeling really bad. But I just said, “Mom, here’s what you got going on. Let’s let’s take care of it.”
She said to me, I’ll never forget this, and I’ve shared this with patients now. And my mom blessed me with this so much. She goes, “Honey, I didn’t realize how bad I felt until I stopped feeling bad.”
That’s what was really discussed with my mom. At the time she was 65 when she told me. She’s going to be 70 this year. 65, and really for the first time in her life had a consistent, regular outlined protocol of care that actually address some of her challenges versus just covering them up.
Support Your Immune System: Closing Thoughts
Dr. Bryan: The reason we always get on these podcasts for you is very simple. You know this. We’re trying to help you get well and stay well and try to share some of the information that we have access to that may benefit you and your family. We’re hoping that you’re able to grab something out of this episode that may be implementable, may be understandable, and may be helpful to you and those that you love.
You can find this episode if you want to go back and read it, or if you want to share it with somebody else and find out where exactly it is, it’ll be on our website, the wellnessconnection.com/e61.
We ourselves do make sure that we get adjusted every week. Even if we’re feeling perfectly fine, we minimally get our bodies reset every week. Our kids minimally get their bodies reset every two weeks. I know what’s right under our nose, so it’s a little bit more convenient. But I would tell you, even if it’s not under your nose, I don’t know that I would actually tell anybody to go longer than a month without resetting their body. Until next time. I hope you’re doing well.