If you have never had experience with a chiropractor, you may be curious about what we do, how we do it, and what our goals are. Simply, most people associate chiropractic care with back pain relief. This is fair because chiropractic has been shown in research, and case studies to be quite successful in caring for back pain.
The truth is that the relief things, such as neck pain, low back pain, headaches, sciatica, and pain radiating to the extremities are just the external victories. It’s obviously great for people who are suffering to feel better and as chiropractors we are excited to get to participate in helping people find pain relief. Yet, that being the case, it sells chiropractic a little bit short of its true goals and purposes.
Our philosophy in a nutshell is this: we view the body as an intelligent system, that has a God given ability to heal, function, and maintain itself. Think of it like this: you don’t have to tell your heart to beat or your lungs to breath (thankfully, that’s done for you!), these automatic functions, like so many others in our body, run smoothly (generally) without a conscious thought. The simple act of just waking up, getting out of bed, and taking a deep breath requires a magnificent symphony of bones, muscles, and neurology (in a gross over simplification)! Never forget how miraculous you are on a daily basis. All of these controls and functions of the body are operated by your nervous system (your brain, spinal cord, and a complex network of nerves). Your brain is the control center of both the nerve system and the body overall, it sends messages/information down the spinal cord, out the spinal nerves (which are the nerves that bud off the spinal cord), to every cell, tissue, and organ in the body. Conversely, everything that takes directions from the brain sends information back to the brain via the same pathway (a big feedback loop). Chiropractors trust in this idea to help people function better. If there is dysfunction in the spine then this information superhighway that controls everything, could function at a lesser level and ultimately lead to lesser health. When this manifests as pain (and frankly, you can have issues long before pain develops) we don’t view the pain as a problem but as your body’s check engine light. It is information indicating an issue. Remember pain isn’t the problem, it is a side effect of a problem. Example: if you have headaches, taking a pain reliever may shut down the throbbing, but what caused the headache? Is it dehydration, do you need an eye exam, is it stress, a sinus infection, or an issue in the spinal bones of your neck? Basically, turning off the check engine light without addressing a cause, is not an answer.
Ultimately, chiropractic follows a really simple idea: the body heals itself. We do not adjust to relieve pain or treat or diagnose a symptom/problem. We seek misalignments in the spinal vertebrae, gently adjust them back into place and allow the body to heal. Address the misalignment or dysfunction in the spine, allow the body’s information superhighway, the nervous system, to do its job and get out of the way, essentially. When this happens there is no limit, in my opinion, of how successful an individual can be. So does chiropractic work to help back pain, headaches, etc? Absolutely. Yet, people go to chiropractors for things like ear infections, asthma, allergies, low immunity, fatigue, and digestion problems. We see success happen in these cases on a daily basis, too. The thing to remember is that the body in all of these cases does the healing, not the chiropractor or chiropractic. I do not have a specific adjustment that I employ for any of those aforementioned problems and we are not even attempting to “fix” those types of issues. We adjust or correct the spinal misalignment and this hopefully allows the nervous system and the innate intelligence housed there to work more effectively. You see, when the body’s inborn healing takes off, via a better functioning nervous system, the body can create health in all kinds scenarios (even unexpected ones). Obviously, everyone’s results will vary, but a healthy spine is always preferable to a spine that is breaking down. If you have questions about your health, find your local chiropractor and see if chiropractic is right for you. Chiropractic, because the body heals itself!