Over twenty million people in the United States have diabetes mellitus, half of which are undiagnosed. In both human and economic terms, it is one of our nation’s most costly health conditions.
Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, blindness in adults, and amputations. It is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and birth defects, shortens average life expectancy by up to 15 years, and costs the nation in excess of $100 billion annually in health- related expenditures.
At present, more than one of every ten health-care dollars and about one of every four Medicare dollars are spent on people with diabetes
Over the next decade, these numbers will grow as the number of people afflicted by diabetes continues to increase at an accelerating rate.
At present, there is no method to prevent or cure diabetes, and available treatment have only limited success in controlling its devastating consequences.
The facts about diabetes leave no doubt about its seriousness. It is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, currently, an estimated 18 million people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with diabetes – a six fold increase over the past four decades.
Center for Disease Control
Type 1 diabetes is due to destruction of the beta cells of the pancreas by an autoimmune reaction (an attack on these cells by the body’s immune system that normally works to fend off infections).
Type 2 diabetes results from a combination of chronic resistance to the biological action of insulin and the body’s inability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin to overcome the resistance
Diabetes insipidous is a disorder of water metabolism resulting from a deficiency of the hormone vasopressin and has no relationship to diabetes mellitus.
Traditional Approach to Diabetes
The objective of diabetes treatment is to normalize blood sugar levels. In type I this is achieved with insulin injections, diet and exercise.
The individual may receive insulin in a single dose, mixed dose, split-dose, or multiple-dose regimen. A diabetic with kidney failure may require dialysis or a kidney transplant.
A person with retinal abnormalities may undergo a procedure called photocoagulation, in which a laser or xenon arc light is used to cause condensation of protein material in the eye. Blood vessel disease may require vascular surgery.
Stem Cells have the potential todevelop into any tissue or organ in the body and yet cannot develop into a full human being. Moreover, these cells could be engineered in such a way that people who receive them might not need highly toxic immunosuppressive drugs, which prevent the body from rejecting “foreign” tissuecurrently an obstacle to successful islet transplantation
“Recent observations have suggested that common infections during the first year of life have a protective effect. A study of 58 insulin-dependent children was matched with 172 non-diabetic children. Analysis of both groups showed that respiratory infections had the most marked protective effect later in life. Infections during the first year may protect by modifying the lymphomatic response to subsequent immunological challenge. A link with decreasing early exposure to common infectious disease could account for the rise in the incidence of diabetes over the past 30 years”
Archives of Diseases in Childhood
Recent advances in the fields of molecular biology and neuro-endocrinology have revealed that insulin deficiency may be due to a breakdown in the communication and signaling mechanisms associated with the central nervous system and metabolism.
“Intracellular and intercellular are the basic mechanisms for the regulation of all cells. Disturbances in cell signaling are central to disturbances in insulin secretion and action, which lead to diabetes and to both microand macrovascular complications.”
American Diabetes Association
“Insulin receptors and insulin signaling proteins are widely distributed throughout the central nervous system. New evidence now indicates that insulin participates in the central nervous system control of food intake and body weight, and the stage is now set for studies to determine if impaired central nervous system signaling contributes to the pathogenesis of two common metabolic diseases, obesity and type-2 diabetes.”
Science Week
The central nervous system in the master control system in the body and every single function reflects it's activity.
Nerve impulses travel from the brain, down the spinal cord and out through nerves to all parts of the body. Nerve
impulses than to the brain through return pathways.
There are in excess of one hundred billion neurons or nerve cells in the human central nervous system and the number of possible interconnections between all of these cells isgreater than the total number of know atoms in the universe.
Recent research has clearly shown that even activity that occurs at the cellular and molecular levels are controlled and coordinated by the central nervous system.
The nervous system does much more than transmit sensory information to the brain or control motor functions. It actually controls the peripheral organs, including its biomolecular environment. The central nervous system is involved in all disease conditions as the cns not only processes incoming physical and chemical information from the body, it actually controls
organs and cells to maintain health and homeostasis.
Medical Hypothesis
Metabolism: The sum of all physical and chemical changes that take place within an organism; all energy and material transformations that occur within living cells.
Tabers Medical Dictionary
The limbic system is the area of the brain that maintains homeostasis and the hypothalamus is perhaps the
most important part of the limbic system. It is the “brain of the brain” and is without question the single most intricate and complicated part of the brain. The hypothalamus controls homeostasis in the brain by way of feedback loops. The
combined neurological and endocrine function of the hypothalamus allows it to play a prominent role in the regulation of
numerous bodily functions including the control of metabolism.
This input into the hypothalamus allows it to regulate and integrate heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, digestion, emotional responses, behavior, sex drive, body temperature, appetite, sleep cycles, blood sugar levels, metabolism, and much more.
When the hypothalamus senses any type of imbalance, it corrects it by one of two ways.
Spinal Cord and Nerve Interference
The spinal cord is both a cable and a switchboard. As a cable, it connects the brain with the rest of the nerves in the body. As a switchboard, it coordinates muscle movements, reflexes and other activities under its direct control.
The spinal cord is a direct extension of the brain, composed of the same kind of nerve cells, fibers and supporting glial cells as those of the brain.
The spinal cord is composed of 24 individual vertebra, stacked on top of one another. The spine is straight when viewed from the front or the rear. When viewed from the side, it forms a series of geometric curves or arcs. This arrangement of spinal curves is much stronger than a more rigid straight column.
When the spine is in its optimal structural position, the nervous system pathways are protected, and the integrity of nerve impulses traveling to and from the brain at an optimum level. This is when the nervous system can best achieve homeostasis and maintains its metabolism.
Because the vertebrae are moveable, they are also susceptible to various stresses and forces, which can cause them to lose their proper position. This condition is called a vertebral subluxation.
This is why metabolic disorders are often related to imbalances in the endocrine system.
Vertebral subluxations may be referred to or described in scientific literature by a variety of names including: spinal lesions, nerve dysfunction, nerve impingement, axillary nerve dysfunction, sciatica, dystrophic axon disorder, double crush phenomena, neuritis, dysponesis, neuropathy, nerve entrapment, as well many others.
“Research at the Still Institute showed that spinal lesions resulted in pathological changes in the blood, urine, and tissue fluids.
Spinal lesions of the atlas & axis (C1 & C2) were associated with abnormal function of the pituitary gland, resulting in abnormal
hormone secretions.”
Still Research Institute
“Nerves branch at specific levels of the spinal column, thus dysfunction of visceral organs may be associated with spinal nerve
dysfunction at certain branches or levels of the spine. Because of compensation, the primary level of spinal somatic dysfunction may be at a level different from the level of the nerve root innervating the dysfunctional organ or system.”
U.S. Medicare Policy
“Abnormalities of central afferent and efferent pathways have been revealed by evoked potential studies in diabetic patients. Central nervous system abnormalities are more frequent in patients with peripheral neuropathy, but evoked potential can be abnormal even in patients without neuropathy.”
Clinical Neuroscience
“A study of 46 insulin-dependent patients, who had had no indication of neurological pain, was compared with 46 age-matched control subjects. Spinal somatosensory evoked potentials were recorded from various segments of the spine. The study revealed that patients with juvenile diabetes without clinical evidence of neuropathy can have defects in spinal afferent transmission.”
Annals of Neurology
Oral glucose tolerance testing was performed on 201 subjects with spinal cord trauma. The dependent variables included the values from the oral glucose tolerance test, (glucose, insulin) and diagnostic classification (i.e. Diabetes Mellitus) along with impaired glucose tolerance. The study concluded that patients with the greatest levels of neurological deficit have increased risk of developing disorders of the metabolism.
SPINAL CORD
Chiropractic adjustments restore normal nerve function; improve spinal biomechanics, range of motion, reflex arcs, and posture, all of which are essential to proper metabolic balance. Doctors of Chiropractic have never claimed that they can “cure” diabetes and other related conditions, and not all cases of diabetes can be attributed to vertebral subluxations, but clinical and case study research has demonstrated that correcting subluxations can lead to an improvement and restoration of metabolic functions
Doctors of Chiropractic are experts in spinal structure and body mechanics.
Chiropractic adjustments are aimed at restoring and maintaining the structural integrity of the body by correcting spinal and postural distortions
Chiropractors emphasize the importance of posture to overall health, a concept that has been often overlooked in traditional methods of health care.
“The beginning of the disease process starts with postural distortions”
Dr. Hans Seyle, Nobel Laureate
POSTURE AND HEALTH
American Journal of Pain Management Posture and normal physiology are interrelated.
Posture affects and moderates every physiological function from breathing to hormonal production.
Abnormal posture is evident in patients with chronic and stress related illnesses.
Homeostasis and nervous system function are ultimately connected with posture.
Despite the considerable evidence that posture affects physiology and function, the significant influence of posture on health is not addressed by most physicians.
American Journal of Pain Management
A four-year DC degree courseaverages 4,485 hours, which is comparable with medical curriculums.
A Chiropractor must pass difficult state and national boards to obtain licensing. Chiropractors are licensed in all 50 states.
Chiropractic services are covered in most major health insurance programs, Medicare, Medicaid, as well as state and federal workman’s compensation programs.
Doctors of Chiropractic have been correcting vertebral subluxations in patients for over 100 years, resulting in the recovering and improvement of almost every known health problem. In 2014, more than one billion dollars was spent on diabetes research in the United States, none of which was spent on research related to Chiropractic. Given that recent findings in molecular and genetics research clearly shows that molecular signaling breakdown is a critical component of diabetes, Chiropractic must be explored and researched as a way of both preventing and improving Diabetes.
