Asthma is a very widespread condition across the US. It’s actually pretty widespread across many different age groups as well, such as into early childhood, all the way into late adulthood. What happens in asthma is the airways actually become constricted and they can also become inflamed, as well as produce a lot of extra mucous. So obviously you could think that that would be causing a lot of different breathing problems, especially during certain times where there are triggers that could cause this to get worse, such as stress, exercise, pollutants in the air, smoke, even cold air can cause this to even get worse and cause different asthma attacks.
When you think of asthma, it does bring up the question of what controls these airways to constrict and dilate like that? What controls the lungs and how the airways that fill up the lungs constrict and dilate is actually the nervous system. Actually, even more specifically in the nervous system are the respiratory centers within the nervous system, and the respiratory centers are actually located in the brainstem. The brainstem is actually protected by the top two bones in the neck, which we have right here, the atlas and the axis. What happens is there can actually be a subluxation there or a misalignment that is causing pressure at the brainstem affecting those respiratory centers, which are trying to send communication and messages to the airways of the lungs to properly dilate and constrict when they’re supposed to. So that you can be able to adapt to many different situations and those stressors that we talked about earlier.
Using the medical route, a lot of times, patients who have asthma and who are struggling with asthma and breathing problems are going to be given some medications as well as the most common which is an inhaler. What these do is temporarily stimulate the airways so that they can dilate. But what happens is when these areas are constricted like that, inflamed with the extra mucus and different things like that and a patient has an event where there’s extra stress to the system or the dilation of the airways isn’t taking place, that’s when the patient uses the inhaler in an event where they temporarily need some relief or pressure taken off of the airway so they can breathe again.
Well, in the upper cervical world, we have actually found that pressure here at the brainstem causes interference to the nervous system and the messages that go to these airways so that they can properly dilate and constrict the way they’re supposed to and so that they can adapt and function and heal the way that they were designed to do. There is hope other than just medications and inhalers and different things like that and we have seen amazing results within the upper cervical world through chiropractic care. When we actually just remove the interference from the respiratory centers right here at the brainstem, removing that interference so that the brain can communicate properly with the lungs so that they can adapt, function, and heal the way that they’re supposed to.