Aches and pains are signs that your body isn’t working right. Your brain, spinal cord and all your nerves control how your body works. Physical, chemical or emotional stresses can produce postural changes. Muscles contract, locking spinal joints which interferes with nerve signals. Disruption of nervous system control invites dysfunction and ill health. A precise adjustment at the right time and place helps the body right itself. Well-being can return as repeated visits restore nervous system performance. That’s why chiropractic has helped millions regardless of their health condition.
Chiropractic – is a natural healthcare discipline which does not use drugs or surgery and was founded on two truths. First, the human body is a self-healing and self-regulating organism. Second, the nervous system controls every part, gland and organ of your body – It’s the master controller of your body. From this we can deduce that if you interfere with nervous system function, you then interfere with the body’s ability to self-heal and self-regulate. Over time, this inevitably leads to dysfunction and ultimately disease. This is why chiropractic is so important – we remove the interference in the nervous system, via a specific chiropractic adjustment, allowing the body to heal and function as it was designed to.
Subluxation – is the body’s intelligent adaptation to physical, chemical or emotional stress (how you move, eat and think). It’s like a circuit breaker that gives us a huge warning sign that something’s not right. When you overload an electrical outlet, the fuse trips to protect the integrity of the electrical system and ultimately your house. This is exactly like a subluxation. Your body under intense short-term or chronic long-term physical, chemical or emotional stress subluxates to protect you. While this is brilliant in the short term, if left for extended periods this can eventually lead to illness and disease.
Adjustment – the goal of the chiropractic adjustment is to correct the spinal subluxations detected, with the intention of facilitating your body’s ability to right itself. It does not “put the bone back”. It adds energy to the spine which the body’s innate wisdom can use to right itself. Doctors don’t do the healing; you do the healing. What interrupts the healing is interference with the nervous system. Through the chiropractic adjustment the nervous system interference is released, allowing your brain and body to communicate as required.
Health – as defined by the World Health Organization – is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. This definition implies that you can have no symptoms yet still be unwell.
We are exposed to stressors every moment of our lives. Our body is designed to adapt to stress. Stress, when intense or chronic, can be detrimental to the body. In modern society, forms of stress abound and are chronically experienced. There are three main categories of stressors: physical, chemical and mental/emotional (how we move, eat and think).
Life’s events such as the birth process, accidents and falls as a child, office work, automobile accidents, sports injuries, home stress and other unhealthy lifestyle habits are just some of the factors that can cause subluxation. The joints of the spine misalign when these sorts of events occur, limiting range of motion. Limited spinal joint motion and/or misalignment results in interference of nerve signal between the brain and body.
The human body possesses a natural ability to heal and restore itself. This ability depends on a healthy nervous system which, if compromised, causes the whole body to suffer. Vital signals flow between the brain and the body by way of the spinal cord and the spinal nerves. These signals inform and direct the body as to when, where, and how it needs to heal itself. By interfering with the nerve signals, subluxations interfere with the essential brain-body connection, thereby compromising the normal function and healing of the body’s organs and tissues.
When subluxated, many people may notice symptoms which include pain, tenderness, swelling, tingling, numbness, or spasm around the joints of the spine, back, and neck. Many times these sensations extend further into the shoulders, arms and hands, around the rib cage, or into the hips and down the legs. Subluxations also lead to headaches, stomach and digestive problems, and loss of overall health. Symptoms are warning signs that your body is not functioning at 100%.
In many cases, you may not realize your spine is subluxated because you have not experienced any pain yet – but left undetected, subluxations can lead to a gradual deterioration of your health and well-being. This is why it is important to get checked by a chiropractor for subluxations, regardless of symptoms.