How does Chiropractic Work?
Traditional symptom-treating is expensive and unattractive. Chiropractic works by restoring your body’s natural abilty to be healthy. When under the proper control of your nervous system, all cells, tissues, and organs are designed to resist disease and illness. The chiropractic approach is to locate and remove interferences (subluxations, misaligned vertebrae) to the nervous system. With improved spinal health and function, comes improved nervous system health and function. The goal of chiropractic is to remove any nerve interferences through specific adjustments.
Chiropractic works because you are a self-healing, self-regulating organism controlled by your nervous system. Millions of instructions flow from your brain, down the spinal cord, and out to every organ and tissue. Signals sent back to the brain confirm if your body is working right. Improper motion or position of the moving bones of the spine can interfere with this vital exchange by irritating nerves and compromising the function of affected organs and tissues. Specific spinal adjustments can help improve mind/body communications. Health often returns with improved nervous system control of the body. Q: Isn’t it just a “placebo effect’?” A: Placebos depend on the power of suggestion. Harnessing the power of the mind can enhance the healing process. Yet, many benefit from chiropractic care in which the power of suggestion isn’t possible, such as newborns, infants, and even family pets.
In 1895 Daniel David Palmer, a magnetic healer who was proficient in human anatomy, postulated the idea that the normal function of the nerves exiting from the spinal cord through openings in the spinal column could be adversely affected if the spinal vertebrae were not properly aligned. He called this nerve interference and went on to devise ways to find the location of the nerve pressure and methods to reduce it. The corrective action taken by Dr. Palmer to realign a particular vertebra was termed an adjustment. Simply stated, the brain controls every function in the body by sending messages through the spinal cord to every organ, tissue and cell in the body. For example, the hand cannot grip and the pancreas cannot secrete digestive enzymes if a nerve doesn’t tell them what to do. If the messages or nerve impulses between the brain and muscles or organs are impeded, then abnormal function will result. Often times, the body’s way of signaling nerve impediment or malfunction is to pro
Today’s chiropractic doctor looks for the underlying nervous system involvements that can be the cause of many health problems. Chiropractic works by restoring your body’s own inborn ability to be healthy. When under the proper control of your nervous system, all the cells, tissues and organs of your body are designed to resist disease and ill health. The chiropractic approach to better health is to locate and help remove interferences to your natural state of being healthy. A common location of interference to the nervous system is the 24 moving bones of the spinal column. A loss of normal motion or position of these bones can irritate or impair the function of the nervous system. This can disrupt the transmission of controlling nerve impulses. With improved spinal function there is often improved nervous system function. Your chiropractic physician can help remove interferences that may be impairing normal health. Since the primary focus of your care is improved nervous system functi
Chiropractors understand that the human body has the innate ability and desire to heal itself if given the chance. Unfortunately there are times where the body needs assistance. With injuries, whether they be large one time injuries (such as auto accidents, sports injuries or lifting injuries at work) or repetitive trauma (such as carpal tunnel syndrome, poor posture or overuse injuries) scar tissue can form restricting normal joint function. Muscles, tendons and ligaments can also adapt to the problematic area, resulting in greater problems, perhaps even pain. If the nerves that pass between the vertebrae are under even small amounts of pressure decreased function of the nerve, and whatever organs they innervate, can be the result. Chiropractors work to discover where the vertebrae of the spine and joints of the body suffer from abnormal motion and position. Once these poorly functioning joints and vertebrae are located, chiropractic “adjustments” are applied to correct the malfunctio
