Neurophysiology is a big word!

What’s chiropractic about?
A literal translation from its Greek root words would be chiro- (hand) praktikos (practical/practiced) and more loosely, a better translation is ‘done by hand’. Past that, it’s a little complicated to answer simply, as there are many different methods that are employed by different practitioners.
But I can tell you very succinctly what I do, in my own practice, and the most applicable term, is ‘neurophysiology.’

It’s a big word, and it sounds flash, but it basically means ‘how nerves work’; the processes that happen within and between different nerves, both in the brain and the nerves in all the other tissues that make up the human body.
I can recall many instances where people exclaim, “Oh, I never mentioned my foot/knee/elbow/hand/finger issue to you before because I didn’t think you did that!” to which I often reply “Well, if there’s joints there, and there’s nerves there, I’m into it- anywhere from your toes to your nose.”
And that’s mostly true, because yes, I’m part of a profession which is known to the general public as people who work with joints, although there are still many people who think only of backs in relation to chiropractic. For me personally, with a background in massage, it was never just about joints even, I recognise that there are nerve endings in all of your tissues that can have helpful, and unhelpful, input into your nervous system, and I think ignoring nerves anywhere is missing a part of the picture: it’s about how the whole person functions, and that involves a lot of things working together nicely.

Why do I use chiropractic techniques? To effect change in nerve function in the joints, where you have nerve endings that measure joint position and tension, a type of mechanoreceptor.
Why do I use myofascial techniques, and stretching? To effect change in nerve function in soft tissues, where there are stretch and tension receptors, again classed as mechanoreceptors.
Why do I use dermoneuromodulation, and cranial as well as visceral techniques? You can probably guess they’re having an effect on mechanoreceptors- ruffini and pacini corpuscles, sensing vibration, pressure, tension.

Mechanoreceptors are involved in perception, both interoception and exteroception. Interoceptors tell us about our internal environment and exteroceptors tell us about the external environment. Their input is interpreted and modulated by parts of the central nervous system, in the spine and the brain itself. That’s where the impact lands. Changes in nerve function, changes in neurophysiology! A broad range of skills is useful in working with the body, using as many as you can master to work on different tissue types and the nerve endings contained within.

You can change neurophysiology in ways other than through touch, that’s just the bit which I personally have the most experience with, and find is missing from a lot of modalities, unfortunately. Experienced touch, from hands that have felt lots of tissues, is something I think that has huge therapeutic value, as does touch in general. There is a saying that touch is healing. Any caring contact is going to have effects on pain, as well as anxiety, aiding relaxation, and comfort.

One very good way to change neurophysiology from the top down, by using the central nervous system, is exercise. People generally think that exercise is about changing tissues, changing muscles. But the most important tissue in the changes which happen through exercise, is the grey matter, the stuff between your ears. It’s the brain that changes the most with exercise- it’s harder to see than the external/bodily changes, certainly, and though those changes are important too, the more important thing is to change the brain, to change neurophysiology. But, that’s a whole different post, as are the neurophysiological benefits of meditation and mindfulness, and talking therapy, and postural awareness, and diet, and just breathing, even.

So, that’s why I work with my hands, on the physical body. To change not only the physical body and how it feels, but to change those things via all the nerves we can use, to create a shift in neurophysiology, and get the brain and the body working together better.
While I think it’s valuable that we recognise the huge involvement of the nervous system in shifting how things feel and how things function, the exact changes in neurophysiology aren’t necessary to understand. If you want to know, I’ll get to that shortly. To most people, the rather inexact and overly simplistic explanations chiros have used for decades and decades makes sense: Turning the power back on. Improving alignment.
And I understand, through my own personal experiences, how that feels. When you go and see someone, and all of a sudden something that just didn’t work, now engages properly. Something that just didn’t move, now goes. Something that hurt, just doesn’t. It’s tempting to stick to vast oversimplifications, but educating patients about what’s happening in their bodies is (you guessed it) another way of affecting neurophysiology. If you can think about your pain differently, if you can experience your body differently, important stuff changes.

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably interested enough for me to get to some geeky stuff, like the reason I go to all this trouble in explaining the workings of the nervous system, and why I explain it the way I do?
Hopefully, generally, I explain it in terms that people understand, and I guess I do an OK job with that as when I ask patients if it makes sense, they say it does!
Largely, it comes down to the fact that through my continuing education in the human body, I have an understanding of how we work that doesn’t match up with the old “flick the switch” “power ON!” explanations.
When changes happen in the function of the sensory fibres of peripheral nerves (them’s the ones in the body) as a result of altered mechanoreceptor input, there’s a shift in what is termed ‘ascending modulation’ and how that information is reported to the brain. This involves inhibition of nerve function, so that less information is being fired to the brainstem and into the thalamus, a deep part of the brain that regulates many things including alertness and consciousness, as well as what’s sent to the cortex, in the outer layers where motor signals are generated and sensory input is interpreted. The cortex itself runs on both inhibitory and excitatory pathways, and can further alter neurophysiology elsewhere in the central nervous system, at the level of the spinal cord, via descending modulation.
So a description of what I do that’d be more accurate again than ‘changing neurophysiology’ would be ‘affecting ascending and descending modulation’ but if I’d started this post with that, nobody would have read the first few lines, let alone got this far. The fact is, that while it feels like things turn on, or free up, or realign, what we’re actually doing is encouraging inhibition of nerve function. We’re turning things down and helping make things clearer, by decreasing the background noise, particularly where the background noise becomes bad enough that it amps up the problematic input from nerves which were already a bit noisy.

And doing that, in turn, makes the relationship between the nervous system and bits of the body that felt stuck or out, change, and it sure feels like it moves better. Because it does move better. But I didn’t do that. Your nervous system does it.
Was the joint not moving? Nope the nervous system had it on lockdown. Now the e-brake is off.
Did I put it back in? Nope, I gave the nervous system some good input, but the nervous system is now happy with what the joint’s telling it.
Am I saying bones never, ever do bad stuff and it’s always the nervous system? Nope, joints definitely get messed up too! And working on that stuff is important, although I’ve learnt that harder isn’t always better with messy joints or messy neurophysiology.

I understand why chiros still lean on those simplistic phrases, in many respects it's easier to ‘keep it simple stupid’ as it saves both the patient and the practitioner a chunk of effort and brain space, but the factual inaccuracies kind of irritate me- I want to make things clearer for people, and help them understand what’s actually happening, in their bodies and their nervous systems, rather than me seem like some healer with magical powers. I’m good at what I do, but it’s your body that makes all the really cool changes!