Armour Up: How Your Spine Protects Your Brain
- Broadmoor Chiropractic Massage Naturopathy
- Jan 31
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 7
Inside your body, your spine plays a vital role. It is your body’s natural suit of armour, an intricate network of bones, joints, and soft tissues that helps protect one of your most important systems: your central nervous system.
In your central nervous system, your spinal cord carries messages between your brain and your body. Movements, sensations, and even automatic functions like changing your heart rate, balance or posture depend on this incredible connection. When your spine is functioning well, it allows your brain and body to communicate with ease.
Spinal Function and Brain Function
Research has shown that spinal movement can influence brain function, particularly how the brain integrates information and directs the body’s responses to internal and external environments. The brain is constantly changing through a process called neural plasticity, which is its ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience and sensory input.
When the spine is not moving well, the small muscles surrounding the spine and skull may not send clear proprioceptive signals to the brain. Proprioception is the brain’s sense of where the body is in space. Disrupted or inaccurate input can interfere with how the brain interprets sensory information and how it generates appropriate motor responses.
The process of interpreting sensory input and producing coordinated movement is known as sensorimotor integration. Proper feedback from the body to the brain is essential for this process, allowing the brain to create precise, efficient movements. This system supports everything from catching a ball to maintaining balance during a stumble, as spinal muscles automatically activate to protect, stabilize, and coordinate the body in everyday activities.
How Your Spine Protects You
Your spine is involved in three key roles:
Harmonious movement: When running or performing repetitive movements, your spine moves in sync to disperse forces evenly. If one area of the spine is not moving well, another area may begin to compensate. Compensation can be helpful in the short term, but over time it may contribute to strain, reduced function, or discomfort elsewhere in the body.
Protection: When lifting heavy objects, your spine stiffens to protect itself and the surrounding muscles. If your body is working optimally, your core is activated first, then you move your extremities. This process is fast and called feed-forward activation. Research suggests that when this activation is dysfunctional, individuals may be at greater risk for low back pain or future injury. Research also indicates that chiropractic care may improve this activation even in pain-free individuals, supporting its role in maintenance and preventive care.
Automatic response: Your spinal muscles respond instinctively during postural challenges, like slips or trips, helping you maintain balance and avoid injury. They also instinctively react to protect you due to reflexes, like your visual or auditory startle reflexes. For instance, if you sense something in your periphery, like a sound or sight, you will quickly turn your head with your upper spine.
When your spine is not functioning optimally, a situation chiropractors refer to as a subluxation or vertebral subluxation, your brain may struggle to integrate and respond to its environment. This can sometimes lead to pain, clumsiness, weak muscles, or reduced athletic performance. In other cases, it may silently affect your body’s ability to function at its best. Notably, chiropractors are the only healthcare professionals specifically trained to detect and correct subluxations, and evidence suggests this intervention can improve feedforward activation and sensorimotor integration.
Supporting Your Spine, Your Body's Armour
Regular chiropractic care helps ensure your spine is aligned and functioning properly, improving communication between your brain and body. This is not just about relieving discomfort. It is about helping your body move efficiently, respond accurately, and perform at its potential. This is one of the reasons many patients notice whole-body benefits of chiropractic care beyond just changes in pain or mobility.
Keep in mind, your nervous system is the first system to develop when you were a fetus, and little spines have armor as well! Because the spine and nervous system develop so early, many families seek age-appropriate chiropractic care for infants at our office to support spinal mobility and nervous system communication.
You can think of chiropractic care as a tune-up for your body’s suit of armour. By helping your spine move well, chiropractic care supports healthy nervous system communication, movement, and overall function. Supporting your spine and nervous system is key to long-term health, visit our chiropractor in Richmond to learn how we can help you function at your best.
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