The Five Great Side Effects of Chiropractic Care
What is Chiropractic Care?
As a holistic, whole body, approach to health care, chiropractic care utilizes the body’s innate healing abilities to aid in a variety of ailments, including headaches, back and neck pain, arthritis, sciatica pain, sports performance, and posture. Doctors of chiropractic achieve these benefits mainly through manual spinal manipulation, (also known as an adjustment), but also prescribe and oversee a variety of other therapies including, spinal decompression, electric muscle stimulation, ultrasound, and infrared laser. In addition, chiropractors can offer nutrition and exercise counseling, and in conjunction with therapies, can address five main health issues: mobility, injury recovery, posture, athletic recovery, and pain management.
Increased Mobility
Joint mobility is crucial for a healthy and pain-free body. Through chiropractic care, we can help our patients eliminate their daily joint stiffness and pain by increasing their mobility. The first step in addressing mobility issues is finding the root cause: muscular, skeletal, or nerve? For many, they can have two or all three of these factors limiting their ability to move, but thankfully, Chiropractors are skilled at addressing all three. If a muscular issue is the cause of limited mobility, chiropractors can prescribe an exercise and stretching plan in conjunction with chiropractic therapies including graston, STIM, and massage. If the mobility issue stems from nerve or bone issues, a chiropractor can utilize spinal decompression and manual or instrument adjusting.
Injury Recovery
Auto accidents, slips and falls, and work injuries can damage the body’s systems and cause lasting back, neck, and joint pain. With chiropractic’s whole body approach, we can help the body recover faster, without the need for painful injections or procedures. One common injury that we treat is whiplash, a physical trauma from the head and neck being unnaturally forced forward and backward. This trauma can cause symptoms like headache, neck and back pain, dizziness, and blurred vision, caused by spinal misalignment, nerve damage, or pulled muscle or connective tissue. To aid in a speedy recovery, chiropractors can realign the spine and oversee therapies related to head and neck trauma.
Better Posture
Posture can give insight on spinal and overall health of the body, thus poor posture is a warning sign that a person’s health may be in jeopardy. Good posture is crucial in almost all of the body’s systems, as the body is designed to function best in alignment. As we deviate from those functional planes, we deviate from our organs' optimal posture. This is seen through those with poor cervical/neck posture suffering from headaches and radiating arm pain, poor mid back posture causing breathing issues, and poor low back posture causing sciatica pain. To correct this issue, chiropractors can manually reposition the spine through adjustments to prevent or correct poor posture.
Athletic Recovery
All NFL teams, the majority of NHL and MLB teams, and the United States Olympic team all have chiropractors on staff to aid in athletic recovery. Chiropractors have unique therapies that aid athletes from a noninvasive, whole body approach. Chiropractors are able to reduce pain, increase range of motion, and decrease recovery time, all of which aid pro athletes boost their athletic performance.
Pain Management
For many with chronic joint or back pain, their first treatment is pain medication, followed by injections or surgeries; chiropractic offers an alternative to these invasive measures. Not only has spinal manipulation been proved to reduce inflammation and swelling in the back and neck, chiropractors are skilled at treating muscle pain, nerve pain, and headaches. Chiropractors also utilize other non-invasive therapies like STIM and Infrared treatments to address any form of muscle, joint, bone, or nerve pain.
How can Chiropractic help me?
Chiropractic care has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments since its founding in 1895. Since then, the use of chiropractic has evolved to successfully treat issues including but not limited to, mobility, injury recovery, posture, athletic recovery, and pain management.