Focus on chiropractic care!

While we’ve examined various health, nutrition and exercise-based topics in the last few months (even taking on the basics of back pain back in October), we haven’t spent as much time as we could simply focusing on what chiropractic care is at its core--what it comprises, why it works, and how exactly it helps to relieve pain that other therapies may not be able to. Like massage, chiropractic care is beneficial largely because it is so non-invasive--unlike surgeries and many other techniques of intervention, chiropractic care can be undertaken with high benefits and few side effects. Let’s take a look at some key points that make up why this is the case!

The core practice of chiropractic care is manual therapy (or “adjustment”), which uses manipulation of joints and muscles (and, most often, the spine) to relieve ailments in the back as well as the extremities. There are several specific means by which manual therapy is used in chiropractic, including spinal traction, decompression and mobilization, but most often, a chiropractor will use some combination of techniques to meet a patient’s specific needs and to cater to his or her ailment.

Adjustments target those vertebrae in the spine which may be out of alignment, behaving abnormally or putting pressure on nerves--all causes of pain, stiffness and discomfort. Such conditions can develop into more difficult ailments like herniated discs or sciatica, but by manually manipulating these vertebrae, chiropractors hope to reduce the “subluxation” (the vertebral abnormality) and increase factors like range of motion and normal function while decreasing pain and irritability. Because adjustments are so-called “high velocity, low amplitude” manipulations, they often cause an audible release of the gas that’s built up in the joints. This is the “cracking” sound you often hear during chiropractic sessions, and can result in minor temporary discomfort (but in reality it isn’t too far off from the sounds some of us make when cracking our knuckles).

In addition to adjustments, chiropractors make use of many techniques to relieve or relax the muscles including electrical stimulation and massage (a technique so valuable we dedicated a whole other blog post to it a few weeks back)! These enable the patient to cool off and be well enough for adjustments or other manipulation techniques to be administered. Typically (although as stated above, much depends on the specifics of the case), chiropractors will apply these therapies as part of a program developed with the patient, often over a period of weeks. This will result in consistent and steady relief of spinal ailments that arise both from specific injuries (like the aftermath of an auto accident) and from generalized conditions. All in all, there’s no denying that chiropractic care is capable of having a tremendous effect on people that are hurting, and at a time when so many people turn to costly and riskier treatments such as surgery, that’s definitely a good thing!