Proprioception: The ability to sense stimuli arising within the body regarding position, motion, and equilibrium. Brain-receives and interprets information from all body inputs and crafts the proper response.
- Vestibular organs in the inner ear send information about rotation, acceleration, and position.
- Eyes send visual information.
- Stretch receptors in skin, muscles, and joints send information about the position of body parts.
Sensation and movement. The peripheral nerves are pathways that lead to the superhighway system of the spinal cord, which in turn sends all of its information to the brain for processing, interpretation, creation of thought, …, . These pathways contain many forms of nerves fibers. One of them is motor nerves which send command signals to and from the brain. Another is sensory nerve fibers that relay sensation messages.
Sensory nerve fibers are the most sensitive and subject to insult. Think of the pain you experience when you hit your funny bone! You hurt and feel the sensation of pain, but you can still move your arm, or you have your legs crossed for too long and your leg goes “asleep.” You can still move it but can’t feel it.
Sensation is crucial for fluid and precise movement. Skeletal muscles, the muscles that support and move bones. Muscle spindles are sensory fibers located within the skeletal muscles that tell the brain what the muscle is doing. Your tendons and joints also have nerve sensory fibers that tell the brain what is going on. Imagine million and millions of bits of information being uploaded to the brain every second, so it can make an intelligent decision about the movement or position of the body at any given moment. This is how we are able to touch our nose with our eyes closed or feed ourselves blind. We know where our nose or mouth is because our brain has a neurologic map of our body and can coordinate all positions of the body.
This is why proprioception is considered your sixth sense in addition to sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. I like to think of proprioception as your body’s continual awareness of where you are, what you are doing, and the ability to do it without looking.
Of all of the senses, we know the least about proprioception. It is so darn complex. For example, researcher have discovered a very specific type of nerve sensory fiber in the facet joint of the spine that has a direct impact on regional organ function. The facet is the part of the vertebrae that determines the plane of motion of the vertebrae (see picture above).
I am going to go deep here on anatomy, physiology, and theory. Stick with it and you will learn something amazing about yourself.
When these specialized nerve fibers are not firing as they should, they send aberrant information to the brain about ORGAN function. What? Yes, it is true. This confirms another way that the body’s position, even at a microlevel from the facet position, can impact your health and wellbeing. Chiropractic has been saying this since 1895 long before the advent of the advanced instrumentation we have access to today. The thermograph and EMG tests I preform in the office are actually testing two of the different components of these nerve fibers.
The thermograph is testing how the sensory nerves are controlling your organs. Is that important? YES!!! There so many forms of input to sensory control from the body to the brain and from the brain to the body. Earlier, we established that sensory nerves are the most sensitive to pressure and negative input. Now, imagine what happens when you are subluxated? One of the symptoms of a subluxation is the lack of normal position of vertebrae. That dis-relationship will only add to a sequalae of problems in organ function. Everything from common problems like headaches, digestive problems, asthma, and allergies that chiropractors often see in their practice members, to more advanced problems like cancers, autoimmune problems, and chronic diseases all can be impacted by chiropractic adjustments. No, I am not saying chiropractic is a treatment for any disease. It isn’t in any way and should never be used as such.I am saying that a byproduct of a chiropractic adjustment, the brain will have better neurologic input and output from the reduction of the subluxation complex and in turn have a greater ability to heal, regulate, and control all of your organs, glands, and tissues.
This is exactly what chiropractic depends on for success – improved neurologic function and the body’s innate ability to heal and regulate itself.
Some of you have had poor posture for so long that your brain has created a new, faulty map of your body. This means you have bad proprioceptive responses and carry your body poorly. That can range from scoliosis to unlevel pelvis, to anterior head carriage (you crane your neck forward). Sometimes this is a result of physical trauma. Maybe you were in a car accident years ago and you “healed” in a subluxated neurologic state. Or you work behind a computer every day for years and years and your body has accommodated to that form of physical stress.
Other times it can be a result of toxins or biochemical stressors that lead to your subluxated state. I once had a patient, Jack, who only drank coffee, Mountain Dew, and Budweiser; a thermos of coffee in the morning, a 6 pack of Mountain Dew during the day, and a 6 pack of Bud at night. When I first saw him, it had been over six years since he had drunk a glass of water! That was a severe biochemical stress on his body. Every subluxated vertebrae he had innervated the organs responsible for detoxification. In fact, his subluxated regions were so bad that I had to use the instrument to adjust him for his first two months because they were so painful. Jack eventually head and learned to drink water! Think about what forms of biochemical stress you could be exposed to each day. Processed foods, medications, airborne toxins, and even products you apply to your skin.
The last form of stressor I will reference is emotional stressors. I will simply introduce it here and devote an entire newsletter to it soon. The short version is that emotional stressors impact your posture, hormone levels, and attitude. All of those things can cause insidious subluxation patterns that have a cascade of impact on your wellbeing.
Each of these stressors, physical, biochemical, and emotional, contribute to potential proprioceptive insult on your nervous system in a myriad of ways. Sometimes adjustments have an immediate impact and the patient changes instantly. Most of the time, it is a long process of undoing the impact of chronic subluxations on a person’s health status, proprioception, and neurologic control.