We experience the world through our nervous system.

At this very second, your body is executing billions (some say trillions) of functions that you don't even have to think about. In the time it took you to read that last sentence, billions of things happened inside of your body. Pretty amazing...right?

We like to look at the nervous system in three distinct parts: the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves that run to every cell, tissue and organ in your body. Without these three integral parts of your nervous system, you could not survive.

The nervous system is what makes those billions of functions happen without a hitch. Most of these things do not take your conscious thought. Things like heart rate, internal temperature, immune response, balance and even the blinking of your eye lids. There is simply too much going on at one time within your body for you to have to "think" about everything that happens.

We all recognize the importance of the brain. We have sensory information coming at us at all times through things like hearing, touch, taste, smell and vision. Every piece of that information is making its way to your brain, being processed and the appropriate response is then sent out to the body. If I throw a ball at you, you see it, that visual message goes to the brain, the brain processes that information and then the appropriate response of you ducking or catching the ball occurs.

The process with the ball above might only take a fraction of a second, but billions of things happened within your body to compensate. It is absolutely incredible how fast your nervous system is able to respond.

Even while you are sitting still, your nervous system is dealing with tons of information. You're probably not thinking about where your feet are right now, but your brain knows where they are in space. You also don't have to look at them with your eyes to figure it out (you probably just thought about it). Whether you're thinking about the position of your feet or not, your brain is keeping tabs. If you suddenly need to jump out of your seat, well, your brain has you covered.

Every bit of this information is being processed through your nervous system. While the brain is vitally important, it cannot do anything without the spinal cord. The spinal cord is your information super highway. It is directing messages to their intended destinations.

You might be surprised to learn that this flood of information can be disrupted. Your spinal cord is protected by the bones of your spine, but your spinal bones can move due to strains and stresses. When spinal bones move out of position (called a subluxation), they can place pressure on the nerves and restrict the flow of information to and from the body and brain. When your body is executing billions of functions, you might see why this is a problem.

This is where "neural efficiency" comes into play. As a chiropractor, it is my job to find subluxations within the spinal bones and restore neural efficiency by adjusting that bone back into position. When we rid the spine of subluxations, we restore neural efficiency. With billions of messages being passed around your body each second, neural efficiency is vitally important.

If you would like to learn more about chiropractic, please give us a call Spoelstra Family Chiropractic at (208) 667-7434 or visit us on the Web at www.CDAHealth.com.