What is the chiropractic adjustment?
Chiropractic medicine is a type of medicine where a trained diagnostic clinician uses their hands and specialized tools to determine and correct interference to the nervous system. This interference can be inflammation, toxins in the body, muscle tightness, postural changes, and many more types.
The most common place to find this interference of the nervous system is in the spine. The spine acts like a water way with many branching canals. These canals flow and send signals to the distant places of the body. When the canal is blocked with debris, or forced to maneuver around a new boulder, it isn’t flowing with the same power, intensity, and ease as before this blockage.
Instead of water, our body uses the brain, spinal column, and peripheral nerves to send electrical signals to control the body. When we have tight muscles, or bad posture, we cause irritation along the nerve highways in the area which decrease the ability to send signals. The chiropractic word for this interference is subluxation. A subluxation can be felt by a trained provider but is also visible on x-ray imaging.
The decreased ability to send signals can present itself in many ways. Commonly, people do not address dysfunction until they have pain, but before that there may have been other signs like decreased range of motion, stiffness, inability to pick up the grandkids, or get out of bed quickly. All of these are signs of something off in the body before its check engine light (pain) turns on.
Once the subluxation is corrected, using either hands or specialized tools to apply a controlled thrust to a specific joint, the body can begin the process of self-healing. Often times this is in conjunction with physical therapy exercises. Chiropractors spend years learning anatomy, radiographic imaging, motion palpation, orthopedic tests, and pathology to have the qualifications to perform a chiropractic adjustment.
Just like a car we drive our bodies every day and create wear and tear. To keep the car working at its best, we need to get the tires rotated and aligned, as well as the oil changed. Chiropractic is the check-up your body needs to work at its best. A happy spine is an aligned spine and remember that life truly does take adjustments.