Chiropractic Adjustment and Asthma Treatment

Chiropractic Adjustment

When a patient receives a chiropractic adjustment, that adjustment stimulates what are known as mechanoreceptors. These receptors send their information to the cortex where it is interpreted. During the adjustment there is also stimulation of "A" fibers. These fibers deal with the patient's proprioception mechanism. "A" fibers can have a dampening affect on pain in the spinal cord. "As these "A" fibers enter the cord, they are known to release an inhibiting neurotransmitter (GABA) at the cord level which actually reduces the conduction along pain fibers entering the cord as well as along the receiving tracts (spinothalamic) (Christy)." The "A" fibers stimulate the periaqueductal gray area of the brain which will send signals back down into the cord and it to will release GABA at that cord level. An easy way to see this process at work would be to recognize a common reaction when one is injured. The first thing one does is to rub the injured site. This rubbing stimulates the mechanoreceptors and proprioceptors to send their signal to the brain. It just so happens that their signal is much faster than a pain signal. The "A" fibers signal gets to the brain first and overrides the pain signal. That is why when one rubs an area that is hurt, the pain decreases.

In treating asthmatic patients, the purpose of chiropractic spinal manipulative therapy (high velocity, low amplitude) is to increase the motion of the thoracic cage, mobilize the ribs, enhance arterial supply and lymphatic return, and to affect nervous system activity. This is all done in the hopes of reducing the symptomatology of the patient.

There is little research done on the chiropractic adjustment and how it affects an asthmatic. One of the reasons for this is that giving people mock adjustments is very difficult to do. It has been shown that people may get better just by using touch alone as opposed to a chiropractic adjustment. This can be a reason why the double blind study results are a little different in these studies. All of the papers read for this paper were peer-reviewed journals. The results from eight studies indicate that chiropractic care showed improvements in subjective measures, and to a lesser degree, objective findings.

The author will explain that it is not the intent of this paper to say that either the chiropractic adjustment or the nutritional support will replace rescue medication for asthma. That being said, the reader must understand that in all of the studies asthmatics were being treated with medication and had chiropractic adjustments added to the treatment. The focus of this paper is to study how patients' symptoms are affected by chiropractic, not the overall lung function. This does not mean that lung function was not assessed. One must understand that when a patient is already taking B-agonist medication, the lungs are functioning as well as they can. The chiropractic adjustment is used to reduce the inflammatory process and increase the movement of the thoracic spine which will increase the movements of the ribs. This will make it easier for the patient to breathe. This is why most of these patients claim subjective relief versus objective relief. These studies were subjected to a checklist called the Down's and Black checklist. This checklist is used to measure the quality of the studies that met the selection criteria assessed by the authors using a 27-item scoring checklist. The scoring checklist is considered valid and reliable for assessing randomized and nonrandomized studies. The system was modified to allow the scoring of nonrandomized studies.