Using Physiological Laws to Remodel Your Spine

The body responds to the forces placed on it. There are anatomical laws that support this statement. Wolff’s law, for instance, states that “bone in a healthy person or animal will adapt to the loads under which it is placed. If loading on a particular bone increases, the bone will remodel itself over time to become stronger to resist that sort of loading.”[1] Davis’ law refers instead to soft tissue and says that if tension is placed on ligaments or soft tissue, the tissue will elongate. If soft tissue remains in a relaxed state for a long enough time, it will shorten. Our techniques at Living Well Family Chiropractic, which include a traction system, act to stretch damaged (shortened) soft tissue and maintain proper function. Lastly, the Hueter-Volkmann Law states that “compression forces inhibit growth and tensile forces stimulate growth [of cartilage].”[2]

Keeping these laws in mind, it is easy to see how spinal degeneration can occur when the biomechanics of your body are faulty. And the longer you live with an unhealthy spine, the worse your overall health may become.

Our proprietary E.A.T. Program, which stands for “Exercise, Adjust, and Traction,” makes use of these physiological laws to remodel your spine. Exercise, of course, strengthens your muscles. Chiropractic adjustments reset muscle spindles, sensory organs found within your muscles. Muscle spindles are the only sensory organ in the body that can be reset. Adjustments also relieve muscle tension. Traction stretches your soft tissue by “creep,” a property of our tissue that allows it to be lengthened if force is kept on it over time.

Traction’s—and the entire E.A.T. Program’s—goal “is to create a deformation force that will return the spine and spinal tissues to normal alignment and resting length.”[3] Because of the elasticity of your ligaments, “a sustained force is necessary to get past the elastic range and into the permanent deformation range of plasticity.”[4] In other words, it takes a certain length of time in traction to undo the abnormal posture your body has gotten used to over months, years, or even decades.

While physical therapy is excellent for dealing with issues in extremity joints, muscles in the spine span across a range of greater than one or two vertebrae. Because of this structure, it is impossible to target the specific joint that’s causing issues through exercise alone. This is why physical therapy or physiotherapy alone is not the most effective approach when dealing with the spine; these therapies don’t remove the fixation or subluxation, but only create ways for the body to compensate.

Peer-reviewed protocols suggest that trying to perform a spinal correction with exercise alone or with chiropractic adjustments alone has a lower success rate than with 36 visits of our E.A.T. program. We want you, your spine, and the quality of your treatment to be above average, which is why we continue to use this program.

Check back next time for the 4 phases of spinal restoration we use at Living Well Family Chiropractic!

Working to Restore God’s Perfect Design In Yo

---

[1] Wolff J. The Law of Bone Remodeling. Berlin Heidelberg New York: Springer, 1986.

[2] Orthopedic Journal, Volume 11 Spring 1998, Pages 27-35

[3] Harrison DE, Harrison DD, and Haas JW. CBP Structural Rehabilitation of the Cervical Spine. Harrison Chiropractic Biophysics Seminars, Inc. 2002, Page 118

[4] Harrison DE, Harrison DD, and Haas JW. CBP Structural Rehabilitation of the Cervical Spine. Harrison Chiropractic Biophysics Seminars, Inc. 2002, Page 118