Chiropractic Treatment & High Blood Pressure
Each year large numbers of people seek medical attention for complications resulting from high blood pressure. What isn’t so well known is that chiropractic care can be effective in treating these problems through procedures that make adjustments to the head, face, and total body.
The technical name for high blood pressure is “essential hypertension” and there are varying theories that describe how this disease develops, but it remains unclear what exactly is at the bottom of it. For this reason many in the medical community label high blood pressure as a disease that cannot be completely cured, only managed.
High blood pressure first became notable in the 1940’s where it was given the term “the silent killer” because it was thought to be the cause of heart attacks. This has been subsequently disproven over the following decades, however, as medications that ease hyper tension have been shown to be ineffective in stopping heart attacks.
By the 1950’s some doctors of the human skeleton, or osteopaths, were using techniques that manipulated the cranium, face, and body that effectively reduced high blood pressure for months at a time between the treatments. These techniques fell into obscurity, however, when medications like beta blockers and diuretics were discovered.
High blood pressure is defined as a blood pressure rating that is higher than 145/90, and must be confirmed on three different visits to a physician. Once this has been established the disease can be subdivided into two different classes of essential hypertension or pulmonary hypertension, with the first being an overall high pressure in the body and the last referring to an abnormality of the heart.
Factors that contribute to high blood pressure include dietary intake of large amounts of sodium and emotional stress experienced through day to day living. Medications are the typical solution for most physicians treating high blood pressure, but increasing attention is being placed on manipulative therapy.
Manipulative therapy for hyper tension can be described as a doctor using their hands to move the patients body in various ways to relieve the pressure in the body. The main goal is to remove tension from muscles, especially relaxing the muscles around the head, neck, and face. The mandibular joint or joint connecting the lower jaw to the upper jaw, which is compromised in cases of the condition known as TMJ, is usually an indicator of high blood pressure. In fact by treating any abnormalities in the movement of the jaw joints, high blood pressure is decreased.
Used under Creative Commons Licensing courtesy of Medisave UK