Coronavirus: What Does Chiropractic Have To Do With Coronavirus?
When most people think of chiropractic care their first thought is back pain and spinal adjustments. However, there are a number of additional benefits to chiropractic care, including benefits to the immune system.
During the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 that killed an estimated 500,000 Americans, the healthcare profession was desperately trying to find a way to treat its victims and stop the spread of the disease. One of the many treatments that patients sought was chiropractic care and data collected by the New York State health authorities reported that flu victims under chiropractic care had an estimated 0.25% death rate as compared to a 5% death rate of those who did not receive chiropractic care (https://www.psychology today.com/articles/200608/immune-boost-is-spinal-zap). This was the beginning of the chiropractic profession’s acceptance as a real healthcare profession.
As of April 1st 2020, more than 860,000 people have been infected in more than 170 countries, according to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering. There have been over 42,000 deaths globally. Just over 3,000 of those deaths have occurred in mainland China, where the coronavirus was first recorded in the city of Wuhan. Italy has been hardest hit, though, with over 12,400 fatalities, and Spain has seen more than 8,740 deaths. The US now has more confirmed cases than any other country – over 189,000. Many of those who have died had underlying health conditions, which the coronavirus complicated.
More than 178,000 people are recorded as having recovered from the coronavirus.
In my next few blogs, I will introduce you to a whole new way of thinking about how your body can heal itself, if put in the best possible condition to do it. Every human being has a spine that protects the spinal cord, which is part of our central nervous system. Our immune system and how it responds to infections depends upon its communication with the brain through our spinal cord (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11121511). If that communication between the immune system and the brain is hindered in any way, it can slow down or even stop our bodies’ abilities to respond to infections. As the Covid-19 pandemic becomes more of a reality for all of us, I will be documenting cases as I treat more and more people for this formidable illness. Not all of these cases will have a happy ending, but the statistics will speak for themselves when this is all over with.
As a disclaimer, I don’t pretend that chiropractic can heal everything or cure anything. But, when it comes to a serious disease and trying to find a way to defeat it, we should always try anything and everything. The nice thing about chiropractic is that even if its success is limited, it is rarely harmful, unlike medication and surgery.