Chiropractic Care for COPD

What Parts of the Body Are Innervated by Spinal Nerves?

You can see that if the nerves are compressed or injured, it will effect your breathing. If C3 and C4 nerve roots control breathing, and spinal manipulation decreases the compression on the cervical nerves, it makes sense that it would help. The longer a nerve is compressed, the more the damage becomes irreversible.

By decreasing the compression on a nerve, the area of the body that the nerve is pressing on will start to heal. When this is done repeatedly, the nerve can start to recover bit by bit. What that would mean to someone with COPD is that breathing function and abilities should improve.

6 Guidelines for Chiropractic Care of COPD

It may be worth trying chiropractic care to treat your COPD. When you do, here are a few guidelines:

1. Work with a chiropractor that manipulates the entire body, not only the upper cervical vertebrae.
2. Bring in as much of your medical record as possible on your first visit. The more your chiropractor understands about your condition, the more they will help you.
3. Ask your chiropractor about what lifestyle changes, if any, would be beneficial to you.
4. Discuss how long your initial trial should be before you start checking results. Ask about how to measure your results.
5. Remember that with time, your body will start improving. Some changes will be felt within the first few weeks, but you’ll need to allow time for the benefits to accumulate.
6. Ask your chiropractor if there are things you can do at home to improve your COPD.

What Happened When a COPD Patient Received Chiropractic Treatment?

There’s actually a case reported in medical journals of someone who was treated with chiropractic treatments and what happened to their COPD, which they had for over 20 years. The chiropractor used a combination of chiropractic manipulation, nutritional advice, traction of the spine and therapeutic exercises.

As a way of measuring to see whether improvement was made, the chiropractor measured forced vital capacity and forced expiratory volume in one second. This is the amount of air that could be used by the lungs was measured as well as how much air the patient could exhale. Both of these are good indicators of how well the lungs are functioning.

The chiropractor also measured the amount of coughing, patient fatigue, and the ease of breathing. There was an improvement in the coughing, forced vital capacity, forced expiratory volume in one second, fatigue and ease of breathing.