https://www.researchgate.net/publication/380154147_The_Effects_of_Chiropractic_Spinal_Adjustment_on_EEG_in_Adults_with_Alzheimer's_and_Parkinson's_Disease_A_Pilot_Randomised_Cross-over_Trial
This research article caught my attention recently, as I have been dealing with loved ones in various stages of neurodegenerative progressive diseases (Alzheimer's disease especially). It's a small pilot study testing the effect on brain waves from a single chiropractic adjustment on a sample population of patients with diagnosed Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Both of those diseases share common neurodegenerative pathological mechanisms. It also brought some bittersweet memories of a loved one who passed away a decade ago from Huntington's disease, another albeit genetically transmitted form of neurodegeneration. I was attending neurology appointment for this patient with a well-known Huntington specialist who was also a medical neurogenetic researcher. When she found out I was a chiropractor, she was really excited. She was noticing that a lot of her patients who were receiving chiropractic care seem to have slower progression of diseases, and she was very interested in seeing some formal research in that area. That type of research is notoriously difficult to conduct much less fund, so I was quite elated to find out that our colleague Dr. Heidi Haavik from down under in New Zealand had managed to line up a pilot study, hopefully opening the door to a larger scale research.
This particular pilot study showed some rather surprising effect on brain waves of patients with neurodegenerative diseases following a single chiropractic adjustment, showing some improvement in the normal electrical excitability and conductivity in some key areas of the brain. Anyone who's ever dealt with patients with those terrible diseases know that maintaining quality of life and cognitive function as long as possible is usually important, and that any available tools in the toolbox should be available to those patients and their families. I look forward to see what the next 5 years of research in that area brings about and how it may impact our ability to more routinely treat, and hopefully help, these lovely folks.
