Crohn’s disease involves the inflammation of a person’s bowels. It can affect parts of the gastrointestinal tract and typical symptoms include abdominal pain, bloody diarrhea, fever and weight loss. The cause of Crohn’s is unknown, but it’s thought to be a genetically inherited disease, especially for people with a Jewish background. With Crohn’s, the inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract becomes chronic. The body’s immune system starts attacking this system. It’s considered an autoimmune disease.
Did you know, for some reason, that people who smoke tobacco are twice as likely to develop Crohn’s than nonsmokers? Perhaps smoking tobacco triggers something in the brain and/or body that “sets it off.” To diagnose a person, doctors typically do a biopsy and look at the bowel wall. Medical imaging helps in this regard, as well as a patient describing their pain and related problems. You’d think there’d be some medications or surgical procedures to “cure” Crohn’s disease, but there aren’t any known cures. Some people try quitting smoking. Others utilize a combo of corticosteroid and the medication methotrexate to help treat it. In some cases, Crohn’s leads to bowel cancer and then some sort of surgery may be inevitable in order to remove bowel obstructions/cancers.
With Crohn’s, the disease tends to show up in males and females about equally, usually in their teens or twenties. Specifically, the inflammation tends to occur at the terminal ileum of the small intestine.
Note that Crohn’s involves inflammation– and a chiropractor’s main job is to help the body heal itself to the point where the problematic inflammation lessens and eventually goes away.
Certain parts of the spine correspond to certain functions of the body, such as the digestive system or immune system. With that in mind, if the brain is not able to relay the right signals to the right parts of the body through the nervous system because the spine is misaligned, could chiropractic care help someone with Crohn’s? It is conceivable.
Digestive problems have a strong neurological component. When structures in the thoracolumbar spine are compromised, spinal misalignments could be causing problems with a person’s intestines and bowels. Think of it this way: the inflammation one experiences may be due to pressure on nerves that can be relieved by a chiropractor’s hands-on care of certain parts of the spine and body. Your chiropractor works to adjust the body so it can transmit messages from your brain to your digestive system in a normal way, without any “road blocks” (inflammation/pressure) along the way.
If you or someone you know seems to have Crohn’s disease, consider 12 consecutive weeks of chiropractic care. It may help improve your bowel function to the point where you’ll feel much better.
