Why are are chiropractic adjustments important?
Did you know that your spinal chord and nerves are responsible for establishing the communication between your brain and your body? Your nervous system literally provides the life force to every single organ, bone, and muscle. Think about it. Have you ever wondered why people that break their neck can die? It is because the injury causes the spinal chord to sever– cutting off the life force to all of the organs and muscles in the body. Sometimes people don’t die when they break their neck but are instead paralyzed. This happens because the spinal chord is only partially severed. But that partial separation can cause the person to never walk again. Now imagine if somebody got whiplash and misaligned their vertabea to the point where the spinal chord or nerves become pinched. All you need is the the weight equal to a dime applied to a nerve to diminish its function up to 60%! In other words, the weight of a dime applied to their spinal chord can potentially reduce up to 60% of the life force going to every single cell in their body. This begins to cause the degeneration and death of these cells– and subsequently, the malfunction of the muscles and organs that rely on them. This is called disease. Chiropractic adjustments work to correct misalignments in the spine in order to alleviate interference on the spinal chord and nerves so that they can function at 100%. Healthy nerves, healthy body.
What are chiropractic Adjustments?
A chiropractic adjustment or manipulation is an action of applying force and velocity to the body in order to restore the proper alignment of joints. Many times when people are adjusted, they can hear a cracking or popping noise and assume that that is how they know it worked. However, this is simply the gas in-between the joint being released. Hearing a popping noise has nothing to do with the effectiveness of an adjustment. The real magic of the chiropractic adjustment relies on the chiropractors ability to identify how and where joints are misaligned and their technique to be able to apply the proper direction of force/velocity to realign those joints. Many chiropractors use different techniques including the use of instruments– but, the overall goal is the same: restore the function of the spinal chord an nerves.
How often should you get a chiropractic adjustment?
Here in Boulder, many of us are very active people. Whether you are a skier, biker, rock climber, or hiker, it is important to get semi-regular adjustments to correct the acute subluxations you might be getting from these activities. An acute subluxation happens when a person has recently suffered minor trauma to a joint that causes a misalignment. These misalignments can be caused by a number of different things including: whiplash, sleeping wrong, sitting with improper posture for extended periods of time, muscle strain/imbalance, sitting in car or airplane seats for extended periods of time, and the list goes on. So, when it comes to frequency, it depends on the person and what their body and habits are like.But the main idea is to get joint misalignments corrected before they begin to degenerate into a chronic subluxations.
What are the limitations of adjustments?
Chronic subluxations (long term misalignments) CANNOT be cured by chiropractic adjustments, but can only treated short term. This is due to the fact that when you wait too long to correct a misalignment, the muscles, tendons and ligaments surrounding the joint begin to adapt to an irregular position. Then, when a chiropractor adjusts that joint, it is only temporarily realigned before the soft tissue pulls the alignment back out again. This is why most people have heard that once you go to a chiropractor once, you always have to go to stay out of pain.This is because normal chiropractic can only temporarily treat subluxations and problems with posture like scoliosis or kyphosis.So what is the solution to chronic subluxations and postural distortions? I’ll address that in a second.
Where should you get adjusted for your specific needs?
When it comes to chiropractic techniques, there are a lot of options out there that will impact what type of adjustment you might get. Some of the techniques are better than others BUT the really important thing is that the chiropractor TAKES XRAYS before they treat you! I can’t stress this point enough. There are plenty of chiropractors out there that do not care to look at xrays before they adjust and we at Terry Chiropracic Boulder would like to tell you to RUN AWAY from those chiropractors. The spine can be misaligned in over 10,000,000 different ways– so adjusting without xrays is like trying to navigate out of a rain-forest in pitch darkness! In addition, it is important that the chiropractor you visit can show you REAL before and after xrays (not just pictures on the wall) that show clear improvements in posture. This will prove that the chiropractor you are dealing with can actually correct chronic subluxations and postural distortions (which are the real cause of most chronic back pain and disease).One of the only ways to correct chronic subluxations and postural distortions is through a technique called Chiropractic Biophysics where specialized equipment is used to reeducate muscles, tendons and ligaments in the spine. Dr. Terry is the only chiropractor in Boulder that practices this technique for the whole spine– so if you live in Boulder, you can schedule by clicking here. If you don’t live in the Boulder area, that’s okay– you can find a Doctor in your area that practices chiropractic biophysics by clicking here.And remember, if you are just looking for a quick “crack and go” (which is not recommended because it does not fix the root cause of many symptoms), make sure the chiropractor requires xrays first!
