Our brains have the amazing ability to adapt, change and learn a vast array of things. It’s called neuroplasticity. We have the ability to adapt to different environments like animals. Our brains take information about the environment around us and co-ordinate action to best survive and thrive in it. The most amazing thing is our brains are constantly learning and refining how our bodies work to become more efficient at functioning. This is the foundation of learning.
An example would be learning how to ride a bike. When we first jump onto a bike we need training wheels because of brains haven’t learnt how to control the muscles of our trunk to balance ourselves while pedalling. When we first attempt to ride a bike it takes a while to get our legs to pedal, our hands to steer and our trunk to keep balanced. Eventually we better at doing all these tasks that we can take off the training wheels and step the challenge up another level. With practice we’re able to do all of these complex tasks without even thinking about it. That’s how our brains learn.
Our habits mould our brains. Like learning how to ride a bike, we are constantly doing the same tasks and forcing our brains to become better at practicing those habits. Now our brains will adapt to anything we do repetitively. It learns good habits as well as bad habits. It doesn’t have the ability to filter out what is good or bad for us until we associate the habit with being good or bad. This means if you sit the whole day, our brains will adapt how our joints, ligaments and muscles work to get great at sitting. We now know that sitting is twice as damaging to our health than smoking. So, if our bodies have already adapted to a poor way of functioning and is non congruent with good health, we have to consciously make the effort of changing our pattern of behaviour to teach our body something new. We must teach it something that is more constructive for us in the long run. And it needs constant repetition in the early stages to offset the destructive learnt pattern.
So if you find yourself stuck in a rut of pain, dysfunction and generally feeling not your best, the best place to start make changes is your nervous system and brain. It’s time we start firing up those old pathways that used to work to keep you body stable and it’s best. The best news is that you can start making changes today. And chiropractic is a fantastic starting point to fast tracking those results!
Till next time.
Look after your body and it’ll look after you!