Throughout my years in practice, I have come up with a list of questions that I get asked almost daily about what chiropractic is and how it works. This month we are going to dig into a question I get asked almost everyday.
What Are You Adjusting and Why?
It is pretty common knowledge that you go to a chiropractor to get your joints adjusted. What most people don’t know is how their chiropractor decides what joints to adjust and the effects it has on your body when you don’t adjust them at all!
Chiropractors are trained to look for “Vertebral Subluxation Complexes” or VSC for short. This is a term to describe a whole cascade of events that happen when a joint in your back (or arms, or legs, or hands, or feet!) aren’t moving the right way. So let’s dig in…
When a joint, let’s say in your back, isn’t moving the right way it affects how that part of your body moves (ie. biomechanics). Our brains are designed to look for signals from our joints saying “yes we are moving – all good here!” When an area isn’t moving the right way it sends a BAD signal to the brain. This bad signal is ‘nerve hyperactivity’. This nerve signal will affect proprioception (how your brain knows where you are in space), nociception (PAIN – what normally makes you think about your chiropractor), emotions and immunity.
This nerve will also trigger the muscles to spasm, leading to more pain and discomfort. This lack of motion also affects the tissue in your joints. Research shows that degenerative changes at the tissue level (the first steps of arthritis) happen within 4 weeks of the spine not moving the right way. All of these changes lead to increased inflammation which leads to more pain.
Let’s Get You Moving Again!
My goal as your chiropractor is to find all of the areas that are not moving well and get them moving again! By putting good motion back into the body, adjustments can help pain levels almost immediately, but we can do so much more for your overall wellness.
- Stopping degeneration before it starts
- Decreasing inflammation
- Improving immunity
- And most importantly, giving GOOD signals to your brain.
