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The March 7, 2005 Medical News Today reported on a study that shows that chiropractic helps body physiology and DNA repair.   The study, published in the February 18, 2005 scientific periodical, the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, (JVSR), was a collaboration between chiropractors and researchers at the University of Lund in Sweden. In this study researchers found that chiropractic care could influence basic physiological processes affecting oxidative stress and DNA repair.

The article noted that serum thiols are primary antioxidants. Higher antioxidant levels can serve as a way of measuring human health status and DNA repair enzyme activity, which has been shown to correlate with lifespan and aging.  In this study researchers measured serum thiol levels in 21 patients, some of these with a variety of health issues or pain, who had undergone short-term chiropractic care.  Researchers also evaluated a group of 25 asymptomatic patients who had undergone long-term chiropractic care. These results were then compared to a control group of 30 people who had not received any chiropractic care.

The study results showed that, as the researchers expected, patients who were in pain had the lowest antioxidant levels.  However, those patients who were under longer term chiropractic care had statistically significant higher antioxidant levels than both the short term patients with pain, as well as those without pain who did not receive chiropractic care.

One of the authors, Dr. Christopher Kent, explained, “Going through life, we experience physical, chemical, and emotional stress. These stresses affect the function of the nervous system. We hypothesized that these disturbances in nerve function could affect oxidative stress and DNA repair on a cellular level.”  Kent continued, "Oxidative stress, metabolically generating free radicals, is now a broadly accepted theory of how we age and develop disease.”