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Geneva Chiropractic Clinic - Dr. Cecilia Duffy, 1953 S Broadway, Geneva, OH (2025)

08/20/2025

Yesterday’s post discussed all the different types of post-graduate degrees that chiropractors can achieve with the point being made that chiropractors are not just for back pain, we manage a wide variety of human ailments.

The state of Ohio law governing me states that I am a chiropractic physician responsible for diagnosing and treating conditions of the human body. It is a very broad and liberal law, and I am grateful that I can use the tools I was taught to do just that.

I mentioned yesterday that I have a postgraduate degree in applied kinesiology. What does this mean? Applied Kinesiology or AK for short, is a system of manual muscle testing for the purpose of assisting in the diagnosis of the patient. As part of the AK system, I have learned some unique ways to address illness and pain, and AK has made me a much better general doctor.

I explain to my patients the difference between a GP and a specialist. A GP knows a little bit about a lot of topics, whereas a specialist knows a lot about a specific topic. We need both. The GP acts as the gate keeper to help to figure out what is happening to the patient and then either care for the patient themselves or funnel on to a specialist.

I advertise myself as being in the general practice of chiropractic. I always refer to myself as a GP and have taught my patients that they can see me for anything. My job is to be compassionate with their health conditions, listen to them, run appropriate tests to diagnose what is wrong and then decide if I can manage that health condition, if they require referral to a specialist, or co-management between a specialist and myself.

I am going to list for you one typical day of patient complaints that I experienced:

Fatigue/malaise/brain fog; right knee pain; menstrual irregularities; depression; constipation; neck pain; malnutrition; back pain; knee pain; migraines; chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic Lyme disease; anxiety and abdominal pain; neck pain; PTSD with chronic spinal pain; diarrhea and vomiting; concussion; vertigo; wellness check; sinusitis; eating disorder. As you can see from this list from one day – I am all over the place with what comes in to see me.

Examples of patients where I will refer to specialists:
*A bad back pain patient that is clearly a herniated disc – I will send to a chiropractor who does spinal decompression therapy.
*I manage a lot of thyroid issues and Hashimoto. I will co-manage with an endocrinologist when the thyroid ultrasound that I order has some large cysts on them that require a biopsy.
*If a patient is in with an upper respiratory or lower respiratory infection, a urinary tract infection, a skin infection, basically any infection that requires an antibiotic, I will examine them, adjust them, give them appropriate immune boosting supplements and then have them go on to urgent care to obtain the antibiotic. They also are sent home with a probiotic and instructions on how to take it to buffer the effect the antibiotic will have on their gut microbes.
*Patients with abdominal pain with a positive ultrasound or CT scan indicating something pathological, like gall stones, diverticulitis, etc., these are sent to the gastroenterologist.
*Skin lesions, moles, etc., that I think need a biopsy are referred on to the dermatologist.

08/19/2025

Do you think that chiropractors are only back doctors? That all we treat are maladies relating to back pain? Not so. While we are very good at back pain, no doubt of that as proven in studies, it is not the only thing we focus on.

Chiropractic as a profession was founded in 1895 as an alternative to medical practice of the time. Chiropractors did not come into being to treat back pain, we were designed to treat the human body and assist the body so that it could heal itself from maladies. All maladies. The first chiropractic adjustment made a deaf man hear again.

Like medical or osteopathic physicians, chiropractic physicians are trained in aspects of the whole human body. Due to this, you will see many different types of specialties in the practice of chiropractic. Us chiros have similar paths that we can take in our education to pursue a certain type of patient or treatment protocol. In chiropractic, you can take post-graduate classes and attain diplomate status. What is a diplomate? That is the term that chiros use to designate that you have reached the highest education in a specialty. In my case, I am a DC = Doctor of Chiropractic and a DIBAK = Diplomate in Applied Kinesiology. You can throw in my undergrad degree if you like, BS = Bachelor of Science, Human Biology.

Here is a list of chiropractic post-grad specialties: applied kinesiology, family practice, radiology (reading x-rays, MRI, CT, ultrasounds, etc.), orthopedics, neurology, internal medicine, psychology, pediatrics, women’s health, geriatrics, nutrition, acupuncture, pain management, rehabilitation, sports medicine, clinical research, anatomy, occupational health, forensic professionals, neuromuscular medicine, electrodiagnosis, philosophical chiropractic standards and Gonstead.

As you can see from this extensive list of post-graduate specialties, chiropractic covers a wide range of diagnosing and treating the human condition.

More about my practice tomorrow.

08/18/2025

ALERT, INCOMING - YET ANOTHER FAKE BUTTER ATTEMPT.

Recent news advertising excitement over another fake butter that "tastes just like butter but without the cows, plants, farmland or energy waste." This fake butter is literally made from the elements carbon and hydrogen combined with lecithin, an emulsifier to smooth out the waxiness, natural flavors and colors. I don't need any studies showing that it is good for this or that or how wonderful it is for the planet. I will never say it is ok to eat a frankenfood. Humans have not evolved on eating frankenfoods; these fake foods have been added to our diets only over the past 100 years or so.

Let's break this down:
1. You may be thinking, but Dr. Duffy, carbon and hydrogen are natural elements. Yes indeed, our entire earth is made up of various combinations of carbon and hydrogen, along with a lot of other natural elements. But there is a huge difference between carbon and hydrogen combined within nature vs. a laboratory combination.
2. Fats in nature are not just chemical bonds of carbon and hydrogen, there are also other nutrients contained within those fats, nutrients like vitamins and minerals. These vitamins and minerals are not going to be in the frankenfood fake butter.
3. Natural flavors? This could mean a lot of different things. The list of chemicals that are allowed to be referred to as natural flavors is long. The biggest reason I tell patients to avoid products labeled with natural flavors is that it is simply a euphemism for monosodium glutamate (MSG). See past posts for why this chemical is so bad for you. I don't know that this fake butter has MSG, but I don't know that it doesn't, because the term natural flavors is too ambiguous.
4. Natural colors? Same as above for natural flavors - not sure what exactly they are using because the category of natural colors is so broad, I cannot know if it is a safe or unsafe version.

The simplest answer as to why I will not ever recommend a frankenfood like this fake butter is that it did not arise naturally from the earth. Whether you think God placed us here, or you are an evolutionist, or somewhere in between, all can agree that we have continued to survive through thousands of years eating food as it exists in nature. As. It. Exists. In. Nature.

Take the naturally occurring food, butter, that this frankenfood is supposed to replace. On the plus side for butter:
1. Occurs in nature, it is the fat from cow milk.
2. It contains the fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K as well as vitamin B12, and trace minerals like iodine and selenium. Yes it is in small amounts, but it is naturally present.
3. Contains truly natural flavors and colors! LOL.

The Big Food Industries have tried over and over again to sell us on man-made fake foods as being better for us than food occurring in nature. We are smarter than this. Haven't we learned our lessons from the past yet? Margarine came in around the 1880's made from beef fat, seed oils started in the 1930's, with seed oil margarines replacing beef fat margarine soon after. Today these seed oil margarines are advertised as plant spreads, as though putting the term "plant" in it makes it somehow healthy.

Other frankenfoods to avoid:
Margarines, plant spreads
Artificial sweeteners like Splenda, NutraSweet, the "pink" stuff
Any food that contains preservatives or chemicals that you cannot pronounce

IF WE DO NOT BUY IT, THEY WILL NOT MAKE IT. Ask if your favorite restaurants use real butter or fake butters. Refuse to buy any meal made with fake butters. VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLARS. JUST SAY NO.

DON'T FALL FOR IT.

08/16/2025

Today marks 39 years of practicing chiropractic for me. Here is the oath I took upon my graduation.

“I do hereby affirm before God and those assembled witnesses that I will keep this oath and stipulation:

To hold in esteem and respect those who taught me this Chiropractic healing art; to follow the methods of treatment which according to my ability and judgement I consider for the benefit of my patients; to abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous; to stand ready at all times to serve my fellow man without distinction of race, creed or color.

With purity I will pass my life and practice my art; I will at all times consider the patients under my care of supreme importance; I will not spare myself in rendering them the help which I have been taught to give by my Alma Mater; I will keep inviolate all things revealed to me as a physician.

While I continue to keep this oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the Chiropractic healing art, respected by men at all times.”

08/14/2025

I’ve explained to some patients how I make my own bone broth and thought I would share it here.

Why do I drink bone broth? For the extra collagen protein that it contains. Could I just take a collagen powder or supplement? Sure. But I take a ton of supplements as it is, and it is so much less expensive to make my own bone broth. I have it down pat and it is not time consuming.

I drink 8 ounces of bone broth once a day using it to take my other supplements.

Here is how I do it.

1. I use an Instant Pot. The max fill line of the inside of my pot holds 16 cups. There are all different sizes available. I believe my device is the smallest one they make.
2. Purchase your soup bones. I use NaKyrsie Butchers in Geneva. He bags up five pounds of beef bones for stock and they are available frozen. A patient pointed me towards chicken feet available at my local WalMart.
3. My Instant Pot can hold HALF of the 5-pound bag of bones and 4 of the chicken feet. So, for each 5-pound bag of beef bones that costs approximately $8, I get two pots of broth. For each 1-pound container of chicken feet that costs approximately $3.50, I get three pots of broth. Half of the beef bones plus 4 chicken feet gives me 14-16 days of bone broth. Pretty economical.
5. If you want it to taste good, here’s where you can add salt, pepper, spices, onions, carrots, celery, etc. Anything that is normally used to make stock taste good. I do not do this. I am in this just for the collagen and so I only use the bones and water. But you do you. However, you can get it down.
6. I set the Soup/Broth button and the Start button. It goes for several hours, not sure of the exact time because I put it together and then leave for work. It’s all done when I come home.
7. I use tongs to pull the large bones out, place them on a plate to cool down and then throw them away. I use a large glass bowl and place my colander inside the bowl to strain the bone broth of the bigger detritus.
8. I lay out 8-ounce Ball jars and fill them with a measuring cup. These are left to cool to room temperature. Once there, lids go on and in the freezer they go.
9. How do you know you have good bone broth? When it is refrigerated, it has the good wiggle jiggle, like Jello. The more the wiggle jiggle, the more the collagen.
10. When I pull one jar out of the refrigerator in the morning to slightly heat up to remove the wiggle jiggle and use it to take my morning supplements, I pull another one from the freezer into the refrigerator to thaw over the next 24 hours for the next morning.
11. When you are ready to use it, there will be a fat layer at the top. Just pop that off with a spoon before you heat it to drink.

08/13/2025

Do taking supplements ever upset your stomach and you shy away from taking them? Do you burp up your fish oils? Supplements that I prescribe are all made from food, but they are super condensed. This can sometimes make it a little harder to digest and upset the belly, mostly nausea that passes quickly. Here are some strategies that I use with my patients that are having trouble tolerating supplements:

1. If morning supplements make you nauseous, take them at lunch or dinner.
2. Unless you’ve been instructed to take a supplement on an empty stomach, take them with meals. Take the supplements FIRST and then eat and get the food on top of them to push them through first.
3. If you burp fish oils, you may need to be checked for a digestive enzyme need. If that’s not the issue, try taking the fish oil first and then eating your meal. If that still bothers, store the fish oils in the freezer and take them frozen. They will thaw a little further down the intestinal tract away from your stomach to avoid burping them up.

08/12/2025

Today marks my beautiful daughter’s birthday! Paige recently graduated from Michigan State University where she received her Doctor of Musical Arts, Vocal Performance. She is now Dr. Paige Heidrich! We have another Dr. Heidrich in the family.

She wrote her dissertation on the wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda, and her life. F. Scott as you may recall wrote “The Great Gatsby.” Zelda was an accomplished artist in her own right, but the times (1920’s) were not great for women and their independence. For the performance portion of her dissertation, she applied for and received a grant from MSU’s doctoral dissertation department that allowed her to bring a three-year project to fruition. She produced, directed and starred in a new one act opera about Zelda and Scott Fitgerald. No one has ever done this for their doctorate at MSU! She set a new bar. She just spent 5 weeks in Hawaii assistant directing an opera production.

Paige and her husband, Nathan, live in MI while Nathan is completing the final year of his doctorate in tuba performance at the University of Michigan.

Happy birthday to Paige! And many more!

08/11/2025

Another post on the downside of alcohol intake.

1. The brain uses chemicals called neurotransmitters, NT for short. These NTs are released at the end of one nerve and stimulate the end of another nerve. Each NT is a message for the nerve to respond in a certain way. Some NTs are excitatory and some are inhibitory, meaning that some rev up the nerve and some slow the nerve. Each NT then exerts a specific sensation to the nerve.

Alcohol can cross the blood brain barrier and affect the brain through NT activity. Obviously, you know this since too much alcohol makes you feel drunk, and the drunk feeling is mediated by the brain.

Alcohol increases the effect of GABA, a NT that is a calmer downer of the brain and nerves. You’ve felt this when you drink, you feel more calm and less anxious, more relaxed. But then as you drink more alcohol, you start to stimulate the NTs Dopamine and Endorphins to be released. Dopamine is the NT that makes you feel good and happy. It is also released with sugar intake, social media consumption and other addictive behaviors. It is this Dopamine release that causes one to become an alcoholic.

2. Alcohol increases sexual desire but inhibits sexual performance. As the Bard put it, “…it provokes and unprovokes. It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”
(Shakespeare, “Macbeth” Act 2, Scene 3).

3. Alcohol shrinks the brain’s size by killing brain cells. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are a possible result.

4. Alcohol shuts down the receptors on the brain cells for another NT called Glutamate. Glutamate keeps us awake and alert. When you drink alcohol, the Glutamate is blocked from the brain cells to keep you awake and alert and you become forgetful. You know this already – have you heard about people drinking so much alcohol too quickly causing them to black out and not remember what happened? The issue is that Glutamate is essential for our brain function, so when alcohol is being consumed, the brain compensates by making more Glutamate receptors on the fly. This is why people can drink steadily throughout the night and not black out, the brain is keeping up with the steady intake of alcohol by making more and more Glutamate receptors as a compensation to keep the person alert and awake. It is a self-preservation mechanism. The downside to this is when you stop drinking alcohol for the night, the alcohol levels fall faster than the brain can readjust the number of Glutamate receptors. This gives you the hangover and “hangziety,” the anxiousness, rapid heart rate and general yuckiness one feels when coming off the alcohol. This happens because now there is too much Glutamate in the brain! It takes some time for the brain to reduce the number of Glutamate receptors and catch up, hence the distressing side effects of the day after. Too much Glutamate is what KILLS YOUR BRAIN CELLS.

5. If you use straight alcohol on a cut or in hand sanitizer, it kills bacteria and viruses. Kills them. How does it do that? The alcohol breaks down the cell wall of these single celled organisms/germs and kills them. What do you think happens to your mouth and throat and stomach when alcohol encounters the tissues of those organs? It is also going to break down the cells that line the tissues of the mouth, throat, esophagus and stomach. What happens when your cells break down? DNA can become damaged and form into cancer. We know this with the multiple studies I have posted here in the past about mouth and throat cancers being one of seven cancers that are at a higher risk of occurring with alcohol consumption. Adding smoking in with alcohol drastically increases your risk of mouth and throat cancer.

6. Alcohol is a cause of high blood pressure and strokes. In heavy alcohol consumption, the heart swells and enlarges, called cardiomyopathy.

7. Neuropathy is caused by alcohol consumption mostly due to malnutrition and lack of vitamins that keep the nerves healthy. Neuropathy is that painful numbness and tingling that can occur mainly in the feet and legs.

08/07/2025

Patients who see me or other applied kinesiologists have most likely experienced, as part of their physical treatment, a form of manipulation or adjustment of the cranial bones.

What? You may be thinking that the head is like a bone helmet that protects the brain. How can we adjust solid bone?

The bones of the skull are made up of individual bones that connect at joints called sutures, just like your knee, hip, wrist, etc. In the picture see the squiggly lines on the skull? These are the joint lines/sutures where bones meet. There’s not a lot of gross movement, but the skull bones move, nonetheless.

How the does the skull move? Without the audience knowing the intimate anatomy of the skull, it is hard to describe it in detail, so I’ll keep it broad and simple. Pretend like you have a balloon inside the skull where the brain would sit and that balloon is filled with air such that it is conforming to the inside of the skull. There is a pump still attached to the balloon, maybe think of the pump sticking out of the eye socket; just go with it! Now visualize that you are going to pump more air into the balloon and can you imagine that the skull will expand all the way around wherever the balloon is contacting it from the inside? Just like the balloon itself expands and gets a little bigger when we blow more air into it, the skull very, very slightly expands. The expansion occurs at the sutures. Then imagine letting some of the air out of the balloon and the skull expansion returns to its baseline.

This sort of skull movement goes on all the time! There are two influences that make the skull expand and return to baseline.
1. There is an inherent movement going on all the time, around 6-12 expansion/returns per minute. This is due to the pumping effects of cerebrospinal fluid, the liquid that bathes your brain. The cerebrospinal fluid is constantly moving in response to the beating of the arteries in the brain; that moves the cerebrospinal fluid along its path. That movement of cerebrospinal fluid causes the skull to expand and return to baseline.
2. Diaphragmatic breathing is the second thing that influences this skull movement. Taking a deep breath in makes the skull expand and breathing out returns the skull to baseline.

Patients that have had some cranial adjustments done, do you recall that sometimes I or your other doc will do the adjustment while you breathe in and out? We use diaphragmatic breathing to facilitate the movement of the cranial bone that we are adjusting.

08/06/2025

Let’s make the immune system more understandable: Part 7

We throw around the phrase “immune system” with ease when discussing or thinking about our health, but how much do you really understand what is going on in it? This is the final post in this series.

The gut has a huge number of good bacteria that we call the microbiome. If we did not have the microbiome, we would die. We have a positive parasitic relationship with the microbiome – they need us to live, and we need them to live. When you look at all the cells of the human body and the microbiome, the microbiome vastly outnumbers our body’s cells. These bacteria send messages through our Vagus nerve back up to the brain to inform our brain how things are going in the gut.

If you think about it, the gut is not “inside” of us. It’s in the body but technically is not “inside.” What do I mean by this? Food enters your mouth and is swallowed into a tube to your stomach that proceeds into the intestine and then the waste (p**p) exits the a**s. It’s one long tube that is open at both ends to the outside world. Same with your respiratory tract – it is a tube that leads from the nose and mouth to the lungs – air moves in and out of this passageway, technically, not “inside” of us, it is exposed to the outside.

Both the gut and the air passageways have a lot of immune tissue associated with it. Makes sense. Since these are exposed to the external world with all its bacteria, viruses, yeasts, etc., the body has immune tissue and white blood cells lined all along the tracts to handle any incoming pathogens. It’s a beautiful system.

Here are two another interesting things about the immune system.

1. Inside the gut there are collections of immune tissue called the Peyer’s Patches, mainly in the small intestine. These are like lymph nodes in the intestines. They contain white blood cells at the ready to handle any bad bacteria that need to be killed. These bad bacteria can come into the intestine from swallowing in bad/spoiled food, putting dirty objects in your mouth, etc. There is another interesting way that the Peyer’s Patches work. When you breathe in a pathogen and it gets mixed up in the mucous secretions of the throat or airways, you tend to cough it and swallow it. We all make about a cup a day of mucous in our airways that is catching the pathogens and then we cough it or clear our throat and swallow it. When the pathogens get to the intestine, the white blood cells in the Peyer’s Patches will kill them. Cool, huh?

2. Remember that you have one adenoid in the center behind your nose in the upper throat and two tonsils on each side of the back of the throat. The T and A as they are referred to are also lymphatic tissue that is full of white blood cells ready to handle any bad pathogens that are breathed in or come by in spoiled food or by putting a dirty finger or glass or utensil in your mouth.

08/05/2025

Let’s make the immune system more understandable: Part 6

We throw around the phrase “immune system” with ease when discussing or thinking about our health, but how much do you really understand what is going on in it? I am going to post a series on simplifying the understanding of the immune system.

Last time, part of the discussion was about the Adaptive immune system, that part of the immune system that makes antibodies. A little deeper dive into antibodies to round out this series.

Antibodies made by the Adaptive immune system (specific white blood cells/WBC) are also called Immunoglobulins. We call it Ig for short. There are five classes of Immunoglobulins Ig.

1. IgA. These antibodies are produced by WBC that line the mucous membranes. Some of you patients have had saliva testing done by me for hormones. Saliva is one of the products of the mucous membrane of the mouth and it contains IgA. I can measure the amount of IgA in a patient’s saliva to see how healthy this part of their immune system is. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If a pathogen comes into contact with our mouth through food, sticking a dirty finger in the mouth, breathing in a pathogen, etc., the IgA is a first line of protection to start to neutralize the pathogen. This is one reason why we can live around other people where we are sharing our germs all the time and we don’t always get sick. The IgA in our saliva, combined with the Innate immune system (see last post) can kill off a germ before it ever makes us sick.

2. IgE. You’ve definitely heard of IgE. This is the allergy immunoglobulin, but the really bad allergy Ig. This is the peanut allergy or bee sting allergy that can kill a person Ig. Unfortunately, the body can make a mistake and think that something like peanuts or bees stings are going to harm a person and the immune system learns to make antibodies/IgE against peanuts/bees in an attempt to “kill” the peanuts/bees. The problem here is that the IgE binds to the peanut or bee venom and produces a catastrophic inflammatory reaction that can cause so much swelling that the poor person cannot breathe and it can kill them. These are important to discern so that the person can carry an epi-pen with them at all times to counteract the over reactive inflammation from the immune system.

3. IgD: we know it exists, but it is in very low amounts, and we are not sure what it does. Rest assured, the body doesn’t willy-nilly make something unless it needs it, so eventually science will figure out its role, but for now, it’s there doing something good to help us.

4. IgM: antibodies that help to kill viruses.

5. IgG: another Ig that functions as antibodies to fight off viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc. There are four subtypes of IgG and I will discuss IgG4 since it is interesting.

IgG4: When you become allergic to a food (but not the bad IgE kind of allergy), you make higher amounts of IgG4 antibodies. Food allergies that are IgG4 mediated can give you different types of symptoms. Diarrhea, constipation, belly aches, headaches, joint pain, rashes, red face, and more. IgG4 is made specifically to try and put the fire out; the IgG4 is trying to reduce the immune system from inflaming when you eat the food that you are allergic to so that more damage won’t go on. In other words, IgG4 is repressive, it blocks the immune system from reacting to the food you are allergic to. I and other alternative practitioners use these IgG4 antibodies clinically by testing the blood for them. A blood panel of IgG4 antibodies are tested against various foods and we can find out what you are allergic to. We then have the patient stop that food for a period of time to help the immune system calm down. Many times the patient can go back on the food once the gut or immune issue has been corrected.

Us doctors can draw blood and measure any of these Ig antibodies to help diagnose if a patient is sick with an infection. For instance, Lyme disease is caused by a bacteria that is injected into us by a tick bite. If I see a bite mark and a rash on a person, I will order Lyme disease Ig right away because an antibiotic is needed ASAP to kill it. Lyme can go chronic very easily and be a lifelong issue for a person. The tests that are done are Lyme IgG and Lyme IgM testing. Another Ig test to help me diagnose a patient is for Mononucleosis/Mono. A panel is done to see if the patient is positive for Mono and where they are in the infection.

08/04/2025

Let’s make the immune system more understandable: Part 5

We throw around the phrase “immune system” with ease when discussing or thinking about our health, but how much do you really understand what is going on in it? I am going to post a series on simplifying the understanding of the immune system.

Today’s discussion of the immune system is a little harder to understand, so I will speak in simple terms.

We have two sides of our immune system – the Innate immune system and the Adaptive immune system. Very simply:

1. The Innate immune system is our generic, ready for action immunity. This part lives in the mucous membranes of the body. What are the mucous membranes? Parts of our bodies that are subjected to contact with pathogens and that make mucous. Your nose, mouth, throat, airways to your lungs, va**na, urethra, a**s. These are all tissues that are moist and making mucous to wash away the pathogens that we pick up each and every day, all day long. The mucous flushes the pathogens away – we swallow phlegm, we p**p, we p*e, etc. Along with the mucous that is made to flush out the pathogens, there are also white blood cells (WBC) that live in the mucous membranes. These are generic WBC, ready for action. When they sense a pathogen, a bacteria or virus that is not good for us, they activate and start eating the pathogens and secreting chemicals that do two things. One, chemicals that kill the pathogens and two, chemicals that tell other WBC to come to the mucous membrane right away to assist in taking care of the pathogen. This goes on very quickly, as soon as the WBC recognizes a pathogen as bad, it starts its work. This is going on all the time, 24/7.

2. The Adaptive immune system is the one that everyone became familiar with during COVID. The Adaptive side is the WBCs that make antibodies. This takes a longer time to respond. Once we have a pathogen in us, whether it makes us sick or not, eventually our Adaptive WBC will come into contact with the pathogen and learn how to code its DNA to make antibodies that will kill the pathogen. Here’s the weird thing. Everyone thinks antibodies are all that and a bag of chips, which in the big picture, they are, but they don’t do the heavy lifting in clearing most of the infection. That early work on the infection is done by the Innate immune system. It takes days for the Adaptive immune system to begin to make the antibodies. If the infection is still happening when the antibodies are finally made, they will assist with killing the pathogens. The good part about the Adaptive immune system is that the next time your body comes into contact with that same pathogen that you now have antibodies to, the Adaptive side will respond way faster with the antibodies to help you out.

Take a moment and thank your Innate and Adaptive immune system for the heavy lifting it does for you all the time in keeping you healthy.

Geneva Chiropractic Clinic - Dr. Cecilia Duffy

08/20/2025

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