I was just driving home and noticed a man of about fifty dressed in shorts and singlet walking up his driveway.   Being a posture buff I noticed immediately he was grossly sloped downwards on one shoulder and had a Dowager’s Hump, a very kyphotic or forward rolled rib cage, chest and neck.   From this stooped forward posture he craned his face and head up in a bird like manner and with more energy expenditure than the healthy human design should have to use, he pushed himself up the slope.

He reminded me of a youngster brought to my clinic for evaluation and treatment a few weeks ago.   The mother of the very happy, intelligent and well rounded young man, no pun intended, was tired of poking her finger into his back and thought there might be some growth issue that a chiropractor could deal with.   She was concerned.

Bravo for her.   She was right, and I thought she had just the right timing too so that the youngster wouldn’t have to grow up to be our “driveway guy”.

Having been to her medical clinic and then even on to a physiotherapist she was not happy about her son’s posture and future growth potential.   She voiced her concerns about braces and the “you’ll have to live with it attitudes” of the therapists.   She is not alone, all of us have had the old finger in between the shoulder blades and the “stand up straight” command from some elder or parent.

As with all of our patients we initially watch postures as a patient walks up and down the hallway and we get a glimpse of any irregularities in their gait, hand and leg swing and carriage as well as the head and pelvis co-ordinations.   We then chat about it before examination.

Maybe it’s the forty years of watching posture closely that leads to the knee jerk observations, for in just a few steps the fixations and subluxations of the stressed boney frame become strikingly evident.   The yogi says “you are as young as your spine is supple.”

Bodies are what they are.   The human body is not what someone may wish it to be or someone in their error tells you it is.   It is what it is and it does what it does for a reason.  

The human body is a partnership of parts working in concord, working towards “one heart,“ united for one purpose.   Our body is an eating machine; from the womb to the tomb, we eat.   Eating well is our body’s primary purpose. We hunt, gather and eat and we are good at it.   Or at least we got here because we were good at it.

Think of it like this, our hands by design hold on and bring in articles of potential food for us to see clearly, up close.   We smell and lick and then decide whether we should allow the materials to get gulped down or whether we should push them aside and grab hold of another batch of potential.  

That’s right.   Our hands hold on and bring in food for our health, for us to eat, then digest and make blood sugars with.   This primary goal is due to the fact that our brains and nerves and cells all use sugars for extracting energy.   It’s not the only source of energy for the cells but it is for the nerves and brains for we have to feed the “Krebs citric acid cycle” and that’s what we are pretty good at.

When our brain senses a drop in blood sugars we get the alarm-button-of-hunger pushed.   We begin to get agitated and feel a great need to eat.  

Our hands hold on and bring in food.   And along with the rest of the body helping, we got so good at this that we had enough sugars in a constant supply within our blood to develop the largest brain to body ratio of any species.   And we got the smallest gut to brain ratio as well.

This large sugar need for our brains and nerves through a small gut means we need concentrated forms of high yield foods.   Fats and proteins meet this need.   With our hands we can grasp and hold on to small mammals or use tools to bludgeon and reach out with to gather rich sources of calories.

Furthermore we can use fire to predigest foods, accessing calories that other animals are restricted from.

Aiding and abetting this hand to mouth and gut system are all of our parts.   The legs push us down the trails, the chest wall splints to power up our neck, shoulders and arms, and our segmented spine and supple axial skeleton allows us to stand upright and use less energy to do more work.

Now back to the Dowager’s Hump.   By design our head and our pelvis line up and move in harmony, in concord when we are healthy.   They communicate to each other to understand upright posture in relationship to space, to gravity.

The head senses the pitch, roll and yaw signals necessary to lead our segmented spine in a serpentine manner.   The head co-ordinates via the brainstem, the nerve firing and sedating necessary to attain and maintain through working muscles, the fluid gravity-oriented-movement we use while chasing and gathering food.   We are the only creature that stands upright constantly and we are the only mammal that can run all day if we choose to.

Our friends with the rounded shoulders are unable to activate the back strength necessary to pull-themselves-upright.  

Remember, we are what we are, and every one of us theoretically has the potential to activate the back strengthening muscles.

But as we see with the humping of the ribs and spine of our friends, not all of us can access the use of the parts that activate the firing of the back strengthening and straightening systems.

Chiropractors believe that in order for us to be healthy then all of the parts must work.   The parts might not look good and they certainly might not feel good but when they work in concord, they provide nerve input and output that enhances the desires of the whole of the body.   

Our hump reducing back strength is a dual controlled system.   Upright posture and straight backed muscle activating signals are dictated through a long and rather narrow based triangular system of sensors.   The back strength sensors are the pelvis sacro-iliac joints at the base and the occiput at the apex. When we move, the brain is informed of the need to deactivate the paraspinal and erector spinal muscles when the joints of the triangle max out or over extend their 'range of motion' (ROM).

Effectively, when the end point of the ROM is achieved then shutting down the back strength stops us from over stressing.  

What seems to happen is that there comes a time in either the young boy’s or the elder man’s activities when a form of stress causes a loss of range of motion that is premature for a part, the joint.   The joint becomes subluxated.   Mostly there is a history of a hard fall on the butt.   Or maybe a head blow during sports or an auto accident.  

In the case of the rounding humping of the back the involved parts are the pelvis ileum and sacrum bones or the occiput or both, or rarely even all three.

The instructions to the brain and then back to the spinal muscles which should pull the back straight, fail with a premature limiting of the joint ROM.   The part didn’t work.   The subluxation of the pelvis or maybe the head or maybe both, denied the transfer of information describing the body’s immediate needs and the back muscle strength system failed in order to prevent injury.   Our back weakens and we’re supposed to end the task, to lie down.  

We often see subluxations of the head and the sacro-iliac joint (we’ve all heard of a slipped-sacro-iliac).   These unique massively interfering subluxation patterns frequently occur with a “failure to thrive” stressful response.   What failure to thrive means is that the blood supply throughout the body was not providing the fats, proteins and sugars necessary for the holding elements of the joints, the tendons, muscles and ligaments, to nourish.   We used and stressed and subluxated the joint due to the food deficient joints tissues.

There is then always background inflammation and the adrenal steroids exhaust from excessive demand to cool the body.   Steroid hormones from the adrenal cortex help to provide elasticity to the ligaments and tendons.  

Functioning adrenals nurture a state of suppleness or elasticity of the joint tissues providing a longer and smoother ROM of joints.   This state helps in preventing the premature shutdown of the back muscles.   It helps prevent subluxations and stressing, often stopping the forward humping of the chest, shoulder, neck and ribs.

Chiropractic diagnosis and then adjustments of the appropriate parts can usually restore the loss of joint motion, restoring unhealthy information emitting systems.   When young enough the kyphosis and scoliosis that rapidly develop can be stopped and reversed.   However therapy must include lifestyle instructions for the individual to reduce the inflammation that is unnecessarily sucking up the reserve hormones.

The young fellow’s diet is at fault.   He is attempting to thrive on “non foods.”   Burgers and Kentucky along with spicy and excessive sweets are literally killing him.   Stress on his inside gut surfaces at his early age is already shutting down his sugar making capacity and faulting digestion denies the fats and proteins to the cells as well.   We are what we eat!

When older like our “driveway guy” chiropractic adjustments may quickly activate the muscle systems through returning the boney parts to a better ROM, but the kyphosis and scoliosis are usually well grown into place.   The energy use will be better and the feeling of well being will return.   The associated headaches may diminish and over time with maintenance there will be postural enhancement.   His is a harder row to hoe.

But the “big idea” of chiropractic and the big reward will be seen in the young boy that I am now treating.   The tears of hope in his mothers eyes after the first major adjustment and the corresponding immediate posture improvement are my other rewards.   And after all these years I still privately am amazed at the miracles that our body will continually perform if we just safely and intelligently de-stress by removing accrued interferences.