B. How the Nervous System Functions
C. Physical Damage Associated With Stress
As modern day stresses mount, medical scientists' concern with the toll taken on human physiology grows. Further, experts in the field have fought and/or argued over the therapeutic value of many of the "unorthodox" treatments people are seeking out to deal with the resulting aches and pains, including acupuncture, chiropractic, and other types of holistic approaches. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the effects of stress on human neurophysiology and how chiropractic treatment practiced, and is related to these effects. Included in the research will be introductory information on both neurophysiology and chiropractic.
"Physiology" is a branch of biology that deals with the functions and activities of life, while "neurophysiology" refers
specifically to the nervous system. This system is the machinery that allows humans to perceive, react, and remember (2:24). Consisting of the brain and spinal cord, the nervous system sends information along the system, transforms it and then sends it on again. How this takes place has always been of great interest to scientists. David H. Hubel, author of Eye, Brain, and Vision, writes: "Many parts of the central nervous system are organized in successive platelike stages. A cell in one stage receives many excitatory and inhibitory inputs from the previous stage and sends outputs to many cells at the next stage. The primary input to the nervous system is from receptors in the eyes, ears, skin and so on, which translate outside information such as light, heat, or sound into electrical nerve signals. The output is contraction of muscles or secretions from gland cells" (2:24). A nerve consists of fibers bound together with connective tissue and in the human body there are twelve pairs of cranial nerves and thirty-one pairs of spinal nerves. It is through this system and the reactions taking p...