Let’s talk about chiropractic care!

What is it exactly? The most straight forward answer is it is a completely different way of enhancing your health.  Instead of looking for what is wrong and masking symptoms, chiropractors help to improve the function of the body so it can express ideal potential.  During a chiropractic adjustment the main goal is to relieve nerve pressure caused by subluxations (misalignments of the spine).  Most people would only think to go to a chiropractor if something traumatic happened, such as a back injury at work, a car accident, or a major migraine that will not subside. However, it offers a lot more than just relieving pain. Chiropractic care can help everyone from all walks of life to live happy, energetic, and vital lives!

A lot of times chiropractic and chiropractors are treated like the ugly duckling of the medical community, and it’s sad that most of the time they are a last resort when truly it should have been the first choice.  What chiropractors do is very important: they adjust the spine to relieve interference to the nerves that affect surrounding tissue.  By doing this, it unleashes the nervous system and allows the body to use its own innate intelligence to heal and function optimally.  Many times it’s explained simply as “turning on the power.” When a subluxation happens, whether it be from stress, chemical sources, day to day posture, or traumatic injury, it interferes with the ability of the body to adapt to its environment.  If it’s left there, not only are specific nerve functions dramatically decreased (it only takes pressure the equivalent of the weight of a dime to reduce nerve function by 40-60%), but also the surrounding tissue gets inflamed.  Leave it there even longer and your body will begin to adapt to the poor mechanics and start laying down bony spurs.  So when someone begins to see a chiropractor for the first time and keeps going on a regular basis, they are amazed by the ‘magical’ things that begin to happen to their body.  All by simply, turning on the power. So here are five things you may not have known about chiropractic!

1. You don’t always feel a subluxation.

Did you know that less than 10% of your nervous system is made up of the nerves that perceives pain?  The other 90% has important information to send back and forth to your brain. It does have an entire body to run after all! This means something very dangerous for people who have subluxations: you often have them without even realizing it.  Of course this also means that by the time you actually do feel pain from a subluxation, it has often been there for many years and the damage has gotten pretty severe. So it’s fairly risky to think that you don’t need to get your spine checked just  because you aren’t feeling any pain. A simple spine screening with a chiropractor can help catch these subluxations earlier rather than later!

2. Chiropractic’s Roots in Hearing Loss!

The first chiropractic adjustment is a landmark event in the history of the chiropractic profession.  On September 18, 1895, in Davenport, Iowa Daniel David Palmer, a self-taught healer and the founder of chiropractic, performed the adjustment on Harvey Lillard, a janitor who had suffered from partial hearing loss for 17 years. Palmer claimed that he discovered a lump on Lillard’s back and he believed it to be a misalignment of the spine, or a “subluxation.” Based on his research in the human body DD Palmer believed that this misalignment was the cause of Lillard’s hearing impairment. DD Palmer performed a manual adjustment to realign the vertebra. According to Palmer the adjustment significantly restored Lillard’s hearing and started the study of chiropractic care and its focus on spinal health as a way to improve health. This day laid the foundation for chiropractic philosophy which centers on the idea that spinal health is integral to overall wellness by maintaining the proper function of the nervous system. 

3. Chiropractic and your mental health.

There has been some new research that some mental illnesses can be caused or worsened by chronic inflammation.  There is evidence that chiropractic care can help to reduce inflammation in the body, this means that seeing a chiropractor on a regular basis could help you not only feel better physically, but emotionally as well! In fact, in 2010,  a case study was published about a 49 year old female who had a history of depression. They collected data throughout the duration of her chiropractic care and it showed significant improvement in her physical, mental, and social well being!  This meant that as they corrected her vertebral subluxations, it greatly improved her quality of life naturally without any medications.

4. Chiropractic and digestive issues.

Today there seems to be a growing number of people struggling with digestive problems.  Frequently people get diagnosed with broad terms such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), with no foreseeable cause or aid to help alleviate it.  Many chiropractic patients have noticed significant improvement in their digestive problems, like IBS, after seeing a chiropractor for several months.  This is simply because there are many nerves that branch out from the mid and lower back that play a very important role in transmitting information for your digestive tract.  If there are subluxations there, then your digestive tract just isn’t running at 100%. If you suffer from digestive problems, make sure you get a screening with a chiropractor to make sure the problem isn’t simply subluxations in your back inhibiting the nerve flow!

5. Kids benefit from Chiropractic, too!

Most people don’t realize that we can experience our first subluxations at birth!  Giving birth is pretty traumatic on both the mother’s body and the child’s. So afterwards, it’s the perfect time to get checked out! Think about how hard a doctor pulls on a baby’s delicate neck, even during a normal delivery. Chiropractors have special tools and and techniques to adjust children and babies to make sure their growing bodies have the best chance to reach their full potential.  There have even been several case studies on how Chiropractic has aided children with chronic ear infections, for example.  This is because there are specific subluxations that happen in the neck (possibly at birth)can put pressure on the drainage tubes, or eustachian tubes, for the ears. There is also evidence that misalignments in the neck may alter the function of the immune system. 

There is a specific case of a 23-month-old female with chronic otitis media (or COM).  COM is simply a term used to describe the damage that happens to the inner ear from long term inflammation and infections. This can even include a perforated ear drum. Unfortunately, she had traditional medical treatment with no relief in her symptoms.  This included many treatments of a broad range of antibiotics, and even placing a tube into her ear. Just three days after her first chiropractic adjustment (at the C-1 vertebrae at the base of the skull) her ear drainage and pain were noticeably reduced. She was soon free of all symptoms, meaning removing the subluxation allowed for the nerves to control the drainage in her ears and for her body to naturally heal itself.  If your child gets a lot of ear infections, make sure to get them checked at a chiropractor before doing all those costly surgeries.  It could be a subluxation causing the problem.  

There are many more things that chiropractic may help with, so we hope that if you don’t have a chiropractor this inspires you to seek one out.  Everyone can benefit from having a healthy nervous system; it’s the master control system of our body!

For a complimentary spinal health screening call our office at 970-377-3557.