The Tribune

BY THE BAHAMAS

ASSOCIATION OF

CHIROPRACTIC

FOR MOST of us chest pain is pretty serious stuff, and indeed it may be a prime indicator of a disease process that is best rapidly identified and dealt with.

However, most chest pain may not be immediate “serious stuff”, but many of us in our panic and knee-jerk reactions to pain, spend a lot of time and money in the wrong office getting a wait-and-see diagnosis.

Then after an arduous course of EKGs, X-rays, physical exams and a plethora of other avenues of investigation – “just to make sure” – we are left alone to wait and see.

So if you get over the obstacles in the doctor’s office and comply with all the tests and referrals, and the chest pain persists, especially for more than several days, what do you do about it now? Drugs, of course, are the treatment of choice for most of us.

Drugs that tend to stupefy us and knock out the awareness of pain are sold daily by the boxcar loads.

But most chest pain isn’t a heart or lung problem at all. Most chest pain is due to physiologic bone and muscle pain.

Muscles and bones are designed to function in a very precise and peculiar manner. When they cannot fulfill that function, when they cannot express their abilities to be healthy and do their work, we often feel the result of the restrictions as pain.

Think of our chest wall like this with me. Think of a bell jar; remember them from high school labs?

A bell jar (the chest wall) is placed over the heart, aorta, the lungs and the esophagus. Then the bottom of the jar is sealed with a complex muscle sheet called the diaphragm. The walls of the chest are lashed together with muscles running from the spine to the ribs and the ribs to themselves.

These muscles are called intercostals, pectorals, deltoids, and serratus to name a few.

Our job with the chest wall is that of breathing. But even as important is another job, that of making a strong stable base for us to do work from.

Healthy bodies do work. By design inside our chest we have our lungs. When we wish to do work with our arms, neck and trunk we may inhale deeply, close our mouth and larynx, hold the air in and bear down to create a greater pressure inside than that of the environment around us.

This action stiffens the bell and allows a platform for our extensions such as the arms and neck to have a secure base to perform work from.

Sounds simple enough doesn’t it?

And it is for most of us so long as all of the parts are contributing to this essential function as their design intended. But many of us alter the original design. Then when we attempt to do our work we may feel the result of a slight incorrect shifting of the parts and the subsequent binding and jamming of the joints and the strain, the pain.

There are 24 ribs, 12 on each side (male and female are the same). The ribs originate from the twelve thoracic vertebral bodies and their discs. The ribs then reach around and down to the front of our chest to join up to the edge of a cartilage plate.

The plate then joins an edge of a flat bone on the very front of our chest, the sternum.

The seams from the ribs as they join the edges of the cartilage plate and the plate to the edge of the flat bone are prone to respond to shifts in position and may become very painful if the ribs are stressed as they reach around the wall from the spine.

The ribs of our body have a multitude of connective joints that allow them to move as we exhale and inhale and splint our chest walls to do work. In fact, in our mid-back we have about 100 joints enhancing the movement of the ribs and their thoracic vertebrae. Ideally, these 100 joints would always be exact in their positions and in their range of motion (ROM).

However, our bell jar chest cage is not unlike a wicker basket with its vertebrae, ribs and flat front cartilage and bones.

Now imagine that we take the wicker basket and twist and distort it’s symmetry. Imagine the forces that are applied to the parts as they join to form our chest at the front, run along our sides and at the joints in the back.

Suppose in our zeal to get “healthy” we recently picked up some small weights and tossed them around allowing the arms and the shoulder holding muscles to pull sharply on the ribs, where they originate, causing the rib joints to subluxate (dysfunction). Perhaps an accident, in the car or a fall or a strain from reaching, pulling, pushing or carrying something, may have stressed and distorted the cage. All of this can create the chest pain.

Left alone the compromised chest wall often leads to shoulder, neck and arm pain along with limb weakness and loss of function. Even hand pain may ensue.

Only chiropractic doctors are specialists on assessing whether your chest pain is as a result of dysfunction in your skeletal and muscular structure. If you are experiencing such type pain call a chiropractor today.