What is Chiropractic?

There is a perception that chiropractic care is all about pain in the back and neck, but there is less correlation with long term health and wellness. The perception of pain relief is not a false one by any means, but chiropractic care is so much more. It’s about strengthening your body’s internal tools for health and wellness.

How does chiropractic care strengthen your body? Well, first we must examine the philosophy behind chiropractic care. That philosophy centers around your nervous system.

Your nervous system is a vital tool that your body uses to communicate messages from your brain to every cell, organ, and tissue in your body and vice versa. This system coordinates every single action going on in your body. Whether it’s breathing, your heartbeat, temperature regulation, digestion, moving you pinky toe, reacting to pain, or smiling, this system controls it all. It does so through millions of messages being sent from your brain, through your spinal cord, and out through over 12 miles of nerves that connect everything together. Without it, you could not function.

Think of your nervous system as a giant super highway. We’ll call the brain our starting point and we will fictitiously start driving through the superhighway. Our duty will be to deliver a message to the heart. We depart the brain through the brain stem and enter the spinal cord. The spinal cord is like the autobahn. We’ll be traveling at high speeds and looking for the right exit to reach our destination. When we see our exit, we pull off and continue on the back roads of our nervous system to the heart. Once at the heart, we will deliver our message to increase heart rate.

Now, imagine the same scenario, but at the exit off the spinal cord, there is a ten car pile up. Some cars are making it through, but not everyone can merge in time to make it to the back road nerves. Perhaps our message will not make it to the heart in time, or at all. The ten car pile up is much like a term your chiropractor will use. That term is a subluxation.

You have 24 bones making up your spine and they protect and house your spinal cord. These bones are stacked on top of one another like a tower of blocks and your nerves exit through small holes between them. A subluxation is when one or more of your spinal bones move out of place to compensate for stress or instability in your body. This can be brought on by a number of things including physical activity or trauma. However, you may or may not to feel that you have a subluxation. They are not always painful and can persist for long periods of time.

A subluxation is the equivalent of the 10 car pile up on your nervous system super highway. It puts pressure on the nerves that exit between your spinal bones and restricts their ability to send messages to your cells, organs, and tissues. You chiropractor is trained to analyze and apply an adjustment to get your spinal bones back in line. This adjustment allows the nerves to function properly and the messages to get to their intended target.

Although it is a simple philosophy, it is extremely important. We cannot expect our body to function at all if the brain cannot communicate all of the necessary messages. The resulting interference of a subluxation can lead to a whole host of problems for the body far beyond pain in the neck or back. Subluxations do, however, cause degeneration in the spinal bones that will later lead to pain. This is why it is important to know if subluxations are reducing your ability to function.

So whether you have pain or not, chiropractic care could be the key to improving your overall health and wellness.