LiveWell Chiropractic

Henry Winsor, a medical doctor from the Philadelphia, PA area, was intrigued by patients who returned to health using chiropractic or osteopathic spinal care. He wondered how these patients got better without drugs or surgery, so he planned a unique experiment: he would dissect human and animal cadavers and see if there was a relationship between the health of the spine and any diseased organs he found.

The University of Pennsylvania gave Dr. Winsor permission to carry out his experiments. In a series of three studies, he dissected a total of 75 human and 22 cat cadavers, finding 221 diseased organs. But was there a relationship between those diseased organs and the condition of the spine? Dr. Winsor wrote:

“[Of the 221 diseased organs] 212 were observed to belong to the same sympathetic [nerve] segments as the vertebrae in curvature… These figures cannot be expected to exactly coincide…for an organ may receive sympathetic filaments from several spinal segments.”

In other words, Dr. Winsor found a nearly 100% correlation between “minor curvatures” of the spine and disease of the internal organs! Meaning that each of the locations of distorted spinal curvature, or “subluxation,” housed the nerve that served the organ in distress. When the subluxation compromised the nerve supply to the organ, it became diseased.

For example, in Dr. Winsor’s study, all twenty cases of heart conditions had misalignment in the upper five thoracic vertebrae. All twenty-six cases of lung disease were misaligned in the upper thoracic. All thirteen cases of liver disease had spinal misalignments in the mid thoracic. All seventeen cases of kidney disease had misalignments in the lower thoracic vertebrae. All eight cases of prostate and bladder conditions were misaligned in the lumbar vertebrae. These are just a small sampling of the correlations found.

Dr. Winsor’s insights and research have been expanded on by scientists in many disciplines, and this field is one of the fastest-growing and most exciting areas of research in the healthcare sciences. Chiropractors and traditional osteopaths continue to observe patients recovering from nearly every disease known under spinal care.

The nerves connecting your internal organs to your spine must remain free of spinal stress in order to function properly. If these nerved are constricted because of spinal misalignment, your health will suffer. You may not develop disease symptoms right away, because most often the organ is slowly weakened by the diminished nerve supply. Why wait until you have a heart, lung, kidney, or liver problem before you get your spine checked for subluxations that could be causing nerve stress? Come see Dr. French at Livewell Family Chiropractic Center for a personalized care plan.

Reference:
1. Winsor H. Sympathetic segmental disturbances---II. The evidence of the association, in dissected cadavers, of visceral disease with vertebrae deformities of the same sympathetic segments. Medical Times. November 1921;49:267-271.