What is the Insight Millenium Spinal Scanner?
The Insight Millenium is an electronic neurological testing station and gives us a better understanding of the function of your nervous system. There are 3 parts to the test: analysis of the motor nerves, the autonomic nervous system and heart rate variability testing. Surface electromyography (SEMG), part of the motor nerve analysis, was originally designed to measure changes in spinal muscle activity in astronauts.
The spinal scanner measure the function of your central nervous system which controls everything in your body. The central nervous system consists of 3 different nerve pathways (motor nerves, autonomic nerves and sensory nerves). When you are out of alignment (subluxation), any of these 3 nerve pathways can be disturbed and in turn affect how you are feeling. You may be surprised when you hear that the Sensory portion of the nervous system (what allows you to feel/sense pain) is only 10% of your nervous system. There’s another 90% that you cannot feel! This is the main reason we employ the following scans.
The Sensory Nerves
Sensory nerves controls your ability to sense and perceive pain. Sensory nerves only make up 10% of all your nerves in your central nervous system. Keep in mind that even though pain is a good indicator that something is wrong, a lack of pain may not mean that we are totally healthy.
The Motor Nerves (Static Surface sEMG Scan)
Motor nerves control your movement and posture and when disturbed can lead to muscles becoming waker, stronger, tighter or fatigued on one side of your spine as compared to the other. Subluxations in your spine cause irritation to nearby motor nerves and affect the amount of electrical current (in microvolts) to your muscles. The Spinal Electromyogram (SEMG) detects patterns where the muscles are working too hard to support the spine and the ones that are weak and not supporting the spine, creating asymmetry. Remember that this entire process occurs without any sensation of pain to you!
The Autonomic Nervous System (Rolling Thermal Scan)
The autonomic nervous system controls your blood vessels, organs and glands (hormones). Our normal body temperature is 98.6 F (37 C) and therefore the temperature on each side of our spine should also be the same. A person may have disturbances in the Autonomic Nervous System and experience no pain at all. By measuring skin temperature variations, we can monitor autonomic function.
Your skin is the largest organ in your body. The blood vessels under the skin work as the body’s thermostat. They expand to release heat and contract to retain heat, controlling the body’s temperature. When there is stress on your body’s Autonomic Nervous System this process can be disturbed. This results in an imbalanced temperature reading along the spine.
Heart Rate Variability (Pulse Wave Profiler Assessment)
The PWP Assessment consisted of monitoring your heart rate variability for five minutes. By monitoring your heart rate variability (HRV), we can observe how the autonomic nervous system controls the heart muscle for this period. When we think of the autonomic nervous system being at rest, we mean in a non-aroused state. The autonomic nervous system can become aroused through either physical or emotional activity. The goal of the five-minute heart rate variability assessment is to keep the autonomic nervous system in a non-aroused state.
Heart Rate Variability (HRV) testing is a simple and accurate test that uses complex mathematical calculations to analyze the rates and rhythms of the resting heart beat pattern. The data can be evaluated to reveal the intricate balance between the Sympathetic (S) Nervous System and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PS).
The Pulse Wave Profiler (PWP) is research-grade equipment that allows the staff or doctors to quickly assess the effect that long-term stress is having on the general state of your well-being. Conversely, a PWP scan is an ideal way to monitor the overall improvements accomplished while under chiropractic care. It is a technology that allows the clinician to measure and discuss the vital changes while working towards wellness care.
This technology can now help monitor progression in your treatment plan and make it a little easier for you to understand the health of your spine.
Call 902.492.2102 or email info@maritimechiropractic.ca for more information. An amazing team of health care professionals at Maritime Chiropractic & Wellness are waiting to provide you with the most innovative health care services Halifax has to offer.