Epigenetics–Taking the Helplessness out of Disease

Have you ever heard anyone tell you that “bad knees run in my family,” or “my grandpa died of a heart attack, my dad has high blood pressure, so it’s only a matter of time before I’m the same way–it’s genetic?”  Although there is a portion of one’s health that is controlled and decided by genetic factors, there is a whole new branch of scientific study dedicated to the study of how environmental exposures to stress and our lifestyle choices can “turn off,” or “turn on” these genes.

Please do not misinterpret this to mean that there are no such things as genetic disorders: clearly there are.  That does not change the fact that there are protein structures on the outside of every gene that can potentially inhibit the expression of that gene.  If only we could identify what could be done to utilize the “epigenes” as gatekeepers to inhibit injury and cellular dysfunction.

Chiropractic is known to increase the body’s ability to function as it was intended to function. The body is designed with both disease-killing and injury-healing mechanisms that allow it to put down cancerous cells and regenerate healthy tissue in the wake of injury or sickness.  Why, then, do these systems not work to their optimum ability 100% of the time?

The brain is the master controller of each system of the body.  By itself, the brain is useless, however.  It needs and uses millions of cells to carry out its will by instructing stomach cells to digest, heart cells to contract in rhythm, and bone cells to calcify in the presence of increased biomechanical stress.  Likewise, the cells of the body are useless without a brain to send instructions.  Without the brain, cells start to divide uncontrollably, and begin to interfere and shunt off the valuable resources of other cells to feed their nonsensical need to grow and expand.  A brain that is unable to communicate to a properly functioning body is said to be paralyzed–nothing wrong with an arm or leg, but the brain simply cannot will it to function.  At the other end of the spectrum, a body that is unable to respond to a healthy brain is said to be cancerous in nature.

Chiropractic not only helps the body to heal from current injuries, such as those injuries causing neck pain, back pain, headaches, tingling, numbness, sciatic pain, frozen shoulder etc., but also is shown to increase the effectiveness of brain-body communication, thus helping the body function more fluidly.  From an epigenetic perspective, if we could influence the brain’s ability to engage epigenetic proteins that allow “killer genes” to remain dormant, we could unlock the key to preventing many lifestyle-related diseases such as the #1 and #2 causes of death in America: heart disease and cancer.  Chiropractic is essential to taking this nation out of the dark ages of symptoms-treatment, and into the next generation of disease prevention and health maintenance.