Why did the chiropractor cross the road? To get to the other spine! I know not my best joke over. Dad joke, what would life be without them?
If you have ever visited my office, you would see that I put a “joke of the week” on my white board. This serves a couple of purposes. The simplest one being that it relaxes people. Not just my patients, but myself as well. It is hard to be stressed or anxious when you are laughing. The real reason I put a joke on the board is because of your brain. Wait, what? Jokes effect our brain? Yes. And in a very specific way.
Our brains are super complex. There is not enough time to go into all aspects of the complexity of the brain, but for our purposes here I want to focus on the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is found at the front of the brain. It’s a very advanced part, and basically is the part of the brain that makes you, you. The prefrontal cortex can be divided into the left and the right. As babies we develop the right before the left. The left prefrontal cortex is what we call the “logical brain”. It is an expert in math, language, and science. It’s the detail-oriented part of the brain. Our western society is very much a left brain dominated culture. The right prefrontal cortex is the “creative or artistic brain”. It is the side responsible for art, music, and humor. There is a lot more involved in this, and it can be quite complicated and confusing, but that’s the general delineation.
The right prefrontal cortex is also highly involved in posture. So, in a society that is driving us “left-sided”, we need as much encouragement to the right, not only to keep you “balanced”, but to help improve your posture. It makes sense when you think about it.
Poor posture is not something that you are born with. It is a learned behavior. Well, where are all these learned patterns and behaviors stored? In the brain of course. So, if as a chiropractor, I am working on correcting your posture, does it not make sense to work on the brain as well? Definitely.
The way that I like to explain it to my patients: with every adjustment we are correcting the interference in your nervous system so that the information and power in your brain can reach every cell, tissue and organ in your body. We are also stimulating the brain with every adjustment, because it is the most powerful way to effectively stimulate your brain. Adding the joke of the day, also helped move your brain from being left prefrontal cortex dominant to being more “balanced”. So, we are correcting your spine from above down inside out, as well as from left to right.
So, the answer to the joke “why did the chiropractor cross the road?” The true answer would be “To help fix your brain!”.
Yours in health
Dr. Joshua Nikkanen
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