Chiropractic care is practiced in different ways by different chiropractors. Each chiropractor brings their own philosophy and belief to how chiropractic care is performed, but several principles remain in most cases.
What Is Chiropractic?
Chiropractors start with the spine as their primary focus and they will use non-invasive techniques and therapies to improve its function and health. Chiropractors focus their attention on the spine to eliminate misalignments of vertebrae that may be causing pain, discomfort, or most importantly, pressure on the nervous system.
Since the nervous system controls all other systems in the body, maintaining healthy nerves becomes significantly important in maintaining a healthy person.
In our office, we primarily use our hands to feel along your spine and locate areas that are stuck, out of alignment, or both. We then perform a chiropractic adjustment using either our hands, some assistance from special tables, or a small hand-held instrument called an Activator.
In addition, we will do some work on the surrounding muscles to help them relax or to improve range of motion, helping your adjustment last longer. We also utilize some standard therapies to decrease spasm and inflammation while increase blood flow to areas that need it. If you’re experiencing inflammation, we may incorporate the use of an icepack before or at the end of your treatment.
We can adjust and treat some non-spine areas of the body as well. We have helped patients with jaw pain by adjusting their TMJ (jaw). Many patients come to us dealing with hip or shoulder pain as well. While these joints are much different than spinal joints, we can look for misalignment or stuck joints that would benefit from an adjustment.
Similarly we can work on the muscles to alleviate spasm, improve range of motion, and help your adjustment last longer.
While alleviating pain is the primary goal for most new patients walking into the office, our goal is to help you maintain your spine for life. You can get new body parts – a new heart, new teeth, and even survive with one kidney or lung. There’s no such thing as a spine transplant, so we need to take care of the one we’ve got.
We focus on chiropractic adjustments and some therapy in our office, but we educate you on posture exercises and other healthy changes you can make simply and easily on your own to improve your health. We want to be just one part of your staying healthy strategy. That’s why so many patients opt for wellness care even after their pain in gone, and we hope you will too.