Immunity and Chiropractic
by Joseph Strauss

   Skeptics of chiropractic questions how chiropractic can help the immune system in the absence of scientific studies.  One could also question how physicians for the last 100 years could say to drink fluids and rest if you have the flu.  Does it drown bacteria?   Does lying down cause a virus to die?  Of course not.  Clearly rest and fluids do not affect microorganisms.  They are intended to help the sick person's body, specifically his or her immune system.  This helps the body fight the microorganisms and their effect.  Doctors have found through common sense and experience that the ability to fight off microorganism (the immune system) is improved by resting and drinking fluids.  No one has to do studies.  It is a self-evident fact.  (Actually when you are sick you really do not feel like doing anything else but lying down.  That is the innate intelligence of your body saying "rest").  No one is about to suggest that doctors stop making that recommendation until  a Harvard Medical School research program can be completed in which 1,000 people with the flu will be allowed to drink fluids and rest and 1,000 others with the flu will be made to walk around while deprived of fluids.
   
    Chiropractic is based upon the same logic.  If there is an interference in the  nerve system, the immune system, which is intricately linked to it, will not function properly or at least not as well as it should.  If you shut down the nerve system completely (death), the immune system will not work at all.   Therefore, if you interfere with its function, the immune system will work at less then 100%.  It is not necessary to do studies.  It would be ridiculous to demand that physicians do the study  outlined above to prove the validity of rest and fluids for the flu.  It is just as ridiculous to do research to prove that chiropractic helps the immune system work better.  It is a self-evident fact. 

    If the nerve system works better, every system in the body works better, including the immune system.  Notice that chiropractors do not claim that chiropractic cures the flu, the common cold or anything else.  We just maintain that if there is an interference in the nerve system, the immune system will not work as well as it should and if that interference is removed, the immune system will work better.   How much better?  Well, we do not know.  But then we really do not know how much benefit fluid and rest are for the immune system.  All these individually or together could be the difference between getting well from the flu or not.  The point is we just do not know.  There are a lot of things about health, the human body, proper function and human potential that we do not know.  In fact, there is probably more we don not know than what we do know.   That is one of the beautiful things about chiropractic .  We do not have to wait until we have proven data from research studies.  We can know that   chiropractic is good based on logic, common sense and self-evident facts.   That is how physicians knew that rest and liquids help people fight the flu.   That is how we know chiropractic will enable the immune system and every other system in the body, for that matter, to work better.