What is Chiropractic?

Benefits

Many research studies have concluded that chiropractic care is not only effective, but also helps significantly reduce health care costs.

History

Chiropractic, Allopathy, and Osteopathy make up the three branches of the healing arts. Where allopathic and osteopathic medicine include the use of drugs and surgery, Chiropractic utilizes unique treatments specifically targeting the human nervous system in ways not possible with drugs or surgery.

While chiropractors have helped millions of patients for over 100 years, the exact science of how and why a chiropractic adjustment worked was unknown until the later part of the twentieth century. Historically, this lack of a reasonable explanation understandable alienated chiropractic from the other healing professions.

The current of climate of cooperation of all of the healing arts is a reflection of the advancements in neuroscience, which aptly provides the following explanation of Chiropractic Manipulative Therapy.

How It Works

Your brain controls and responds to the needs of your body through the stimulation of a vast network of receptors. These receptors are sensitive to joint position, light, vibration, touch, heat, cold, smell, etc., and send their information to the brain through nerve fibers. These signals from receptors literally drive your nervous system and allow your brain to exercise control over your body.

Spinal joints contain the highest concentration of receptors of any joint in the body. Through the relentless pull of gravity on normal spinal joints, your brain receives an adequate amount of stimulation. However, when your spinal joints have been injured, fixated, or just don’t move properly, gravity no longer provides stimulation of the receptors within the spinal joints. Your central nervous system suffers from a lack of stimulation and information from the body. Even though the nerve fibers are intact, they cannot reach thresholds necessary for normal function because of inadequate stimulation. Your condition may be directly related to this form of nerve interference.

Another less common form of nerve interference is direct compression of a nerve, commonly called a ‘pinched nerve’. The doctor will explain your particular problem in detail.

 

Results

The ultimate purpose of a chiropractic adjustment is to normalize stimulation to your central nervous system through specific manipulations performed on your skeletal joints.

Chiropractic adjustments help restore the normal position, motion, and integrity of you skeletal joints. The net effects of this restoration are:

Normalizing central nervous function though powerful stimulations
Decreasing pain
Decreasing muscle spasm
Increasing normal joint motion
Increasing energy levels
Increasing circulation
Increasing metabolism