Your Digestive System
Your digestive system is a long tube that begins at your mouth and ends at your anus. It has one purpose: to break down your food and extract energy and nutrients from it. Your digestive organs, esophagus, stomach, intestines, and others are modifications of this tube.
Your Esophagus & Stomach
After you chew your food it travels down the esophagus (Latin for “I swallow”) to your stomach where one of the most powerful acids found in nature---hydrochloric acid (HCL)—dissolves your food. HCL is so strong that if it were ever to escape from the stomach, it could dissolve your heart, lungs, liver, veins, arteries, and every other organ in your body! You’d eat yourself alive! What keeps the acid from escaping? A thick layer of mucus that covers your stomach’s inner walls.
Dyspepsia & Ulcers
Chronic stomachache, also called nervous stomach or dyspepsia, is a common stomach condition. Another is an ulcer, which occurs when the powerful acids and digestive juices start to eat through the stomach and intestines---a very painful condition.
Heartburn/Gastritis/Pyloric stenosis
Heartburn occurs when food reverses course and jumps from the stomach up to the esophagus. Gastritis is a term used to describe inflammation of the stomach walls. Pyloric stenosis is a tightening or shrinking of the pyloric valve that connects the duodenum and the stomach. The stomach can also develop both benign and malignant tumors.
The Medical Approach
Digestive troubles are often poorly understood. As one major medical text has stated:
The major symptoms of (digestive) tract disease are dysphagia, heartburn, abdominal pain, bleeding, nausea, and vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation. All these symptoms arise from disordered function, butÂ…our knowledge of normal alimentary tract function is so incomplete(1).
Medical care is often directed at treating symptoms with drugs, but treating symptoms alone, apart from the risk of the side effects, can lead you into the false belief that your problem is gone merely because your symptoms are gone. It’s not unusual to hear of people “living on” over-the-counter remedies or prescription drugs for years. As general rule it is always best to avoid medical drug therapy and surgery as much as possible and investigate first and foremost more natural forms of health care.
The Chiropractic Approach
Every organ in your digestive system---mouth, tongue, throat, esophagus, pyloric valve, stomach, intestines, glands, pancreas, and others---needs a healthy nerve supply from your spine.
The chiropractor analyzes your spinal column for the vertebral subluxation complex, a condition that damages nerves and can interfere with proper communication between your brain and internal organs, including those of the digestive system. The vertebral subluxation complex can interfere with your body function and lower your resistance to disease.
Correction of the Subluxation
With a spinal adjustment your doctor of chiropractic will correct or relieve your vertebral subluxation complex. Remember that the chiropractic purpose is to relieve spinal pressure on all your nerves, including those that go to the digestive system.
Water
According to F. Batmanghelidj, M. D. most people do not drink enough water. As we age, we often satisfy our thirst with soda, coffee, juices, and teas which, although they may remove our thirst, do not hydrate us and therefore most adults are to a greater or lesser degree dehydrated. And as people age, they become more dehydrated and begin to have health problems. When Dr. Batmanghelidj put many of his patients on a water drinking regimen (about 8 oz. an hour over a period of many days) he observed a beneficial effect on various digestive problems, including ulcers, constipation, colitis, and dyspepsia(2).
The Spine & Digestion
Over a century of chiropractic clinical observations have shown that correction of vertebral subluxations can have a dramatic beneficial effect on some people with a wide variety of problems with their alimentary canal, including: dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), “abdominal nausea”(3), digestive pains, “pseudo-ulcers”(4), dyspepsia and epigastric distress”(5), duodenal ulcers(6), stomach ulcers, gastritis, colitis, and spastic constipation(7-10).
In Conclusion
The digestive system can weaken, work improperly and fall prey to a multitude of diseases. The job of the chiropractor is to ensure that the stomach and the rest of the digestive system (as well as all the other organs of the body) are receiving an unobstructed nerve supply. This promotes body harmony, enhanced ability to cope with stress and improved resistance to disease.
Remember that if the nerves are impinged upon by vertebral subluxations, no amount of drugs will relieve the pressure. A chiropractic spinal adjustment is what your body needs.
Postscript
You can always benefit from a healthy spine no matter what disease or condition you have. It is as important for healing as proper nutrition. A doctor of chiropractic will remove your vertebral subluxation complex to help you better tune into your natural innate healing ability (your internal healer) for better physical, mental, and emotional healing. That is the goal of your doctor of chiropractic: to strengthen your inner healing ability. Are you, your family, or friends carrying the vertebral subluxation complex in your spines? Only a chiropractic spinal checkup can tell. A healthy spine can improve your life—see your chiropractor for periodic spinal checkups.
References
1. Harvey, A. Mc. Diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. In A McHarvey (Ed.), The principles and practice of medicine (22nd ed.). Norwalk, CT/ San Mateo, CA. Appleton & Lange, 1988, p. 781
2. Batmanghelidj,F. Your body’s many cries for water—Falls Church, VA: Global Health Solutions,1992
3. Masarsky,C.S. & Weber, M.(Eds) Neurological Fitness,1993,2(4)
4. Lewit, K. Manipulative therapy in rehabilitation of the locomotor systems—London and Boston: Butterworths,1985, Extracts p. 339
5. Grieve, M. Mobilisation of the spine (4th ed.). London/New York: Churchil Livingstone, 1984,pp 22-23.
6. Maigne, R. (Orthopedic medicine—A new approach to vertebral manipulations—WT Liberson, Ed. And trans.) Springfield, Ill:Charles C. Thomas, 1972
7. Robuck, SV—Osteopathic management of gastric and duodenal ulcers. Journal of the American Osteopathic Association, 1947,I(9)
8. DeBoer, KF, Schutz, M & McKnight, M.E.---Acute effects of spinal manipulation on gastrointestinal myoelectric activity in conscious rabbits.—Manuelle Medicine, 1988,3, pp 85-94
9. Ussher, NT—Spinal curvatures—Visceral disturbances in relation thereto.—California and Western Medical Journal, 1933,38(16)
10. Pikalov,AA & Kharin, VV---Use of spinal manipulative therapy in the treatment of duodenal ulcer: A pilot study—JMPT, 1994,17,pp310-313
