Chiropractic Subluxation and Biologic Cascade Failure

Written by: James Demetrious, DC, DABCO

Diplomate, American Board of Chiropractic Orthopedists

A Premise

In Chiropractic, we concern ourselves with the restoration of health.

Awhile ago, I read (to the best of my ability), the work of a theoretical physicist named Per Bak who introduced the concept of structural criticality. Per Bak proposed that systems are subject to dynamic change that can be driven to critical states. He initially illustrated his hypothesis by describing the effect of dropping a grain of sand on a pile of sand and the complex effect of change on that system.

Insight Gained

A few years ago, a computer engineer sought my chiropractic care. During our consultation, he interrupted me and said that I should shut off the PC under my desk. He smelled the power supply burning. He indicated that failure of the power supply could lead to cascade failure of other systems within the PC.

Biologic Cascade Failure

For many years, I’ve considered structural criticality and cascade failure and its relationship to Chiropractic. We know that health is dependent upon the vital exchanges over cellular membranes via simple diffusion or active mechanisms. Cellular health is dependent upon movement.

Functional impairment produces degradative cascade failure of fluid dynamics, vascular supply/return, cellular influx/efflux, lymphatic drainage, inflammation, etc. These progressive changes are associated with impaired health.

Chiropractic

Chiropractic is a relatively simple, yet brilliant process. The chiropractic subluxation represents a system of biologic degradative effects on health. Chiropractors restore motion to the biologic system. We intervene by improving and facilitating homeostasis.

As BJ Palmer said so often in his classes, “Motion is life.”

© 2024 – James Demetrious, DC, DABCO. Open Access. Unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction is allowed in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit by citing the original author and source as follows: Demetrious J. Chiropractic subluxation and biologic cascade failure. https://postgraddc.com/chiropractic-subluxation-cascade-failure-demetrious-postgraddc/. 2024.