Question
Hello,
I just received a call from my 23 year old son who says that he has had increased numbness in his fingers over the last two days-first one hand, now going over to the other hand. It started with a sharp pain in his arm yesterday. What can I tell him?
Thank you very much,
Susan
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Answer
Dear Susan,

Thank you for your question.  Yours is a question similar to others I have heard from people who are investigating chiropractic.  In order to answer it properly, though, I'll first need to give you some background on the chiropractic profession.

There are two branches or schools of thought in chiropractic.  Briefly, they are differentiated by whether they deal with the limited therapeutic approach for aches and pains (commonly termed "mixed" chiropractic because it represents a mixture of a chiropractor with a non-chiropractic matter) or a non-therapeutic approach to optimum body performance (termed "straight" chiropractic because there is no mixing of chiropractic with anything else).  My expertise is in non-therapeutic straight chiropractic.

Therapeutic "mixed" chiropractic is the more traditional approach based on a split from the founding principles of chiropractic about a century ago.

Non-therapeutic "straight" chiropractic is the more modern of the two.  It deals with a particular, common situation called a vertebral subluxation. The spine is made of many bone segments which house and protect the spinal cord and the smaller spinal nerve branches that come off the spinal cord and exit between the bones.  These nerve pathways carry information or messages between the brain and the cells of the body.  These messages are essential for the life of the cells.  Without brain messages, the cells immediately begin the process of dying; i.e., they can no longer function the way they should to maintain life.

Because the bones are moveable, they can misalign in such a way as to interfere with the messages and, ultimately, the ability of the person to function at their best or express their optimum potential.  People with vertebral subluxations are not able to get all they can out of life.

Vertebral subluxations can be caused by a wide variety of factors, what we'll generally call stresses.  These stresses can be physical (such as sleeping posture and mattress condition, the birth process, sneezing, falling down, etc.), mental / emotional (in its many forms, probably the most familiar use of the word stress), or chemical (such as pollution, drugs, etc.), which are, unfortunately, regular parts of daily living for all age groups.  In short, a vertebral subluxation can occur for a multitude of reasons.

Tragically, vertebral subluxations are rarely obvious to the individual they affect.  They usually have no symptoms.  The reason is that most of what goes on inside you happens without your awareness.  As an example, try to "feel" your liver.  What's it doing right now?  You can't know, so you can't know if it's functioning at its best or something less.  To complicate things, nerve pathways that carry messages of control (termed "motor" nerves) have no way of transmitting ache or pain messages, so your body function may be far from perfect and you'd not have any alerting signal whatsoever.  The branching of the nerve pathways is complex and extensive, making it exceedingly difficult to predict or determine exactly how the person will be affected, i.e., even whether there will be numbness or some other functional impairment without a symptom.  In order to know if someone has a vertebral subluxation, it is necessary to have that person's spine checked by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor using a method of "analysis."  When a vertebral subluxation is detected this way, it is obviously important to correct it as soon as possible.

Since vertebral subluxations are caused by so many different things, people choose to go and bring their children to a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor on a regular basis to enjoy the most time free of the life-robbing effects of vertebral subluxation. There's a saying that straight chiropractic is not about your back, it's not about your pain, it's about your life.  Each person has a unique potential in life.  With vertebral subluxation, it's impossible to realize that potential.

A key question to ask for your purposes, then, is, would someone experiencing numbness in the fingers be better off with vertebral subluxation / nerve interference or free of subluxation / with the nerve channels open?  It is easy to see that having all the available nerve messages getting through is better than only some of them getting through, regardless of the person's physical state otherwise.  

You need to understand very clearly that the practice objectives of therapeutic mixed chiropractic and non-therapeutic straight chiropractic are quite different, as described above.  What I can tell you must not be interpreted from the mixed viewpoint.  It would be irresponsible for me or anyone else to guess about your son's situation through this type of interaction but, more significantly, as a therapeutic concern, it is not part of non-therapeutic straight chiropractic.  It is not pertinent to the matter of whether your son would benefit from being free of vertebral subluxations.

So, the short answer is to tell your son that being checked for vertebral subluxation by a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor and having any that are found corrected will be of benefit.  How that will be experienced is the unknown.  It's not intended to be a treatment for numbness of the fingers nor arm pain as you described any more than it is intended to sharpen his sense of humor!  Consider, though, that every aspect of human performance is potentially affected by vertebral subluxation ?negatively by its presence and positively by its correction.  The obvious conclusion is that your son ?and you, as a spine-owner as well, for that matter! - would make a wise choice to be checked for vertebral subluxations, even if he elects to also have therapeutic attention for his numbness.

As I mentioned earlier, not all chiropractors adhere to this and it is important that you be able to distinguish which ones do if your son is going to seek this type of service.  If you are interested in finding out how to locate a non-therapeutic straight chiropractor in his area, please contact me at this site again.  You may also visit www.gschiro.com, a site that represents non-therapeutic straight chiropractic on a state level in New Jersey.  

Susan, It has been my pleasure to provide you with some information.  I hope you

Sincerely,
James W. Healey, D.C.