Hi all,

I found something very interesting in a book (Medical Acupuncture by J.
Filshie and A. White, Churchill Livingstone 1998, ISBN 0443049769). In
the chapter on segmental acupuncture they discussed what they called
secondary segmental relations. 

These secondary segmental relations arise due to the anatomy and
physiology of the lateral horn, which is responsible for sympathetic
innervation. The lateral horn is divided in three parts and the part
called the lateral column has some very interesting features.

The lateral column has the following connections, where effects on one
segment affects the other and that goes both ways.

CNS             ANS (L)
C8-T2           C1-C2
T2-T4           C3-C4
T5-T6           C5-C6
T7-T9           C7-C8
T10-T11         L3-L4
T12-L2          L5-S2

This may be a part of the explanation to why one often sees distal
effects of mobilisations of the spine.

Another part may be the fact that the whole nervous system acts like one
continuing tissue, i e pull in one end and you get movements (even if
small in distal parts) all over the place.

Considering this, one conclusion is that a restriction in the mobility
of the nervous system likely causes not only local, but widespread
effects throughout the body.

Most therapists have no problem accepting that e.g. pressure on a nerve
root, let's say S1, causes pain in the distal parts of the leg. But what
if that pressure occurs due to decreased mobility of the nevous system,
which in turn occurs due to a hypomobile cervical segment? So in order
to decrease the pain in the distal leg we would need to do something
about that hypomobile cervical segment. This idea seems to be much
harder to accept.

At first glance some things seems unlikely at best and outrageous at
worst, but when you start looking a bit closer you might (absolutely not
always) find something very different than you expected. Possibly what
you find even make sense.

My point is, which David Butler and Bob Elvey started to address more
than 10 years, that the dynamics of the nervous system is an area we
need to look closer on. It is of course not the end all be all, but it
merrits more attention. Maybe it is time to shift our paradigm from a
"mechano-electrical" one to a "electro-mechnical" one, where we shift
our attention slightly more to the dynamics of the nervous system.

New information about the anatomy and physiology still arises. One
interesting fact is for example the small "muscle-dura bridge" they have
found between occiput-atlas and atlas-axis. You can find more
information on this on the following links:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/vhp_conf/hack2/hack2.htm
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ChiropractieJasperse/cervha.htm
http://hal.bim.msu.edu/Research/AOA/intro.html

Hopefully this kind of information brings us a step closer to a better
understanding of why certain treatments affect the body the way they do.

All the best,

David Felhendler, PT


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