Is chiropractic effective?
For many conditions, YES! Chiropractic helps to address postural and structural imbalances that can accumulate in our bodies over time or by a sudden injury. Chiropractic addresses these issues by restoring movement to joints that may have become painful or stiff due to a lack of mobility. For your body to remain healthy, your joints must function properly as well. By restoring spinal function with chiropractic adjustments, proper function can be restored to the joints in the spine, thus allowing optimal body function and improved health. Likewise, by restoring function to joints in the extremities, we can improve overall function and decrease pain.
Why should I see a Chiropractor?
Seeing a chiropractor is not only for back pain and neck pain; Dr. Smith also treats shoulders, elbows, wrists, fingers, hips, knees, ankles, feet and toes. Chiropractic care is an excellent way to keep your body at its peak performance through adjustments, targeted work on associated muscles, nutrition and overall wellness. In addition, chiropractic and functional medicine have been shown to help the symptoms associated with a wide range of conditions including fibromyalgia, diabetes, arthritis and many other chronic conditions.
What is a spinal adjustment?
When a vertebral joint becomes stuck or the joint has lost its range of motion, this is referred to in the chiropractic profession as a spinal misalignment. Spinal misalignments can be caused by a wide range of issues ranging from poor posture, sleeping "wrong", a minor slip or bump, a car crash or any sudden trauma. When a vertebral joint is "misaligned", it can begin to affect everything around it including causing an unnatural pull and pressure on adjacent muscles. This pull and pressure comes with a price...often pain, stiffness or a decreased range of motion.
How does chiropractic care work?
Chiropractic is an overall way of looking at the human body. By restoring function to joints that are painful and aren't moving properly, we can help restore lost function. Imagine a loose hinge on a door - the more you move that door (open and close), the more wear and tear you put on that loose hinge. If we adjust that hinge by tightening it, the hinge itself will work better but the whole door will function better as well. When this system is not functioning at its peak, the overall performance of the human body is lacking.
In the chiropractic world, drugs and medicine are not utilized as a form of treating a patient. While supplementation and nutrition are almost always a part of the bigger picture, drugs and prescriptions can be viewed as band-aids to treat symptoms rather than going to the source and treating the real problem.
While it's often perceived that the chiropractor is solely here to treat back and neck pain, this is simply a small piece of what the profession really is capable of handling. Chiropractors not only treat soft and hard tissue problems such as sciatica and joint pain, but are largely called on to deal with more significant issues. Some of these issues include fibromyalgia, allergies, insomnia, headaches and many more.
What is a chiropractic adjustment? Is it safe?
Adjustments, or manipulation as they're sometimes referred to is the minor movement of vertebrae in the spine. The objective of this movement is to realign vertebrae that have moved out of place for a number of reasons ranging from normal daily activity to trauma such as a car accident.
When these vertebrae are out of place, it has an overall systemic effect from muscular to the central nervous system. Without proper alignment and flow of all nerves and systems in the body from the brain, we can't function at our peak.
An adjustment is often a pressure from the chiropractor utilizing the hands or an instrument to move a vertebrae back into place. This happens with a quick movement and is often without discomfort. You may hear a noise that sounds like you're cracking your knuckles referred to as joint cavitation. It is the release of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen from the joint.
What can I expect from my visit to a chiropractor?
Going to the Chiropractor is a new experience for many of us. Maybe we've heard through a friend or have done some research online. It's possible that you are just fed up with living in pain and it's time to do something about it. In either case, your first visit to the chiropractor will really be about getting to know the chiropractor and discussing your history, current condition and goals.
What results can I expect from treatment?
Chiropractic is based on the idea of removing imbalances both structural and postural in an effort to allow our body to heal itself. For this to happen the network of nerves and signals from your brain, down your spinal cord, to the network of nerves must be allowed to flow freely without any interruption. Chiropractors have the ability and skill to remove these interruptions or misalignments and allow the body to perform as it was meant to.
If you've ever been in a car accident, played a sport, fell down or just bumped into something too hard, it's very possible that you are not functioning at your best due to a misalignment. While there are many potential mechanical or structural causes for misalignment, there are also chemical reasons. For instance, if you smoke or drink excessively or even just have a poor diet, the chemical issues in your body can eventually cause underlying conditions and disease to appear.
Allowing a chiropractor to get you back on track both chemically and structurally will bring your body back to the proper state it should be in to perform at its peak.