Low back pain can be a symptom of constipation. Many people aren’t aware that chiropractic adjustments are a natural way to care for constipation issues.
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Transcription
Hey, it’s Dr. Troy. The Vancouver chiropractor.
I want to talk about constipation.
It is a very common issue, I always say all movement is good movement, even a bowel movement.
Constipation is the opposite of having a good bowel movement.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen patients who come in with low back pain and I’ll ask him, how is your bowel function? They’ll tell me they’re constipated, so it’s a very common complaint that many people don’t think chiropractic can help with.
I’ve had a lot of children recently who are in motor vehicle accidents whose mom tells us, hey they’re constipated since the collision or since the fall, they fell off the couch. So it’s very common to see this.
Now, a couple of things can happen.
If we look neurologically we know the autonomic nervous system is what regulates your bowel function your elimination, your breathing. so we look to the autonomic nervous system to see if there is an imbalance. What causes the imbalance? it’s usually related to some sort of spinal joint dysfunction.
There are other things that can cause constipation as well but this is typically what I see present in my office that responds very well to what we do.
So, if we look here at the autonomic nervous system chart we can see at the top here if we look at the nerve this is called the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve comes right off the upper cervical brain stem area and travels down, innervates the lungs, integrates the stomach, innervates the bowels. So if there’s compression or irritation on the vagus nerve that can affect the functionality of the bowels and your elimination.
So how do we check for that? Well, we do an examination. We will look to see is the vagus nerve irritated due to spinal joint dysfunction. We can feel it, we can x-ray it.
We also have a lower branch here that come off the sacrum and this is very common in children if they fall, they injure their sacrum. We also know these five vertebrae in the sacrum aren’t fused until you’re out of your teenage years from between 18 and 24, those bones start to fuse. So these are miss-alignable vertebra in the low back.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen children where you adjust them a few times and their constipation clears up.
So chiropractic is a science and art of detecting where there’s an interference in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
If you know somebody who’s suffering, they’re constipated, you’re constipated, you’ve got low back pain, even neck pain, headaches, those could be factors that help us determine is there an imbalance in your autonomic central nerve system which regulates and controls your elimination system.
If you’re interested in finding out how this works more call our office, schedule a free consultation (360) 260-6903.
