A broad range of techniques are used to locate, analyze and gently correct vertebral misalignments (subluxations) in the spine. Chiropractors may use manual adjustment, electrical muscular stimulation, ultrasound or massage. But they never use pharmaceutical drugs or invasive surgery. Chiropractic is a natural method of healing that stimulates the body’s communication system to work more effectively to initiate, control and coordinate the various functions of the cells, organs and systems of the body.
Chiropractic
Keep ‘Em Planted
Don’t put unnecessary strain on your back muscles {or your spine!} Keep your feet planted evenly when standing for long periods of time. Many people tend to shift their weight on one leg, throwing the back out of alignment. Proper posture at all times will help you get the most benefit from a chiropractic adjustment.
Promote Good Posture
Use exercise to help prevent injury and promote good posture. Regular exercise such as walking, swimming, or bicycling will help the body stay aerobically conditioned, while specific strengthening exercises will help the muscles surrounding the back to stay strong. These benefits of exercise promote good posture, which will, in turn, further help to condition muscles and prevent injury. There are also specific exercises that will help maintain good posture. In particular, a balance of trunk strength with back muscles about 30% stronger than abdominal muscles is essential to help support the upper body and maintain good posture.
Benefits of Chiropractic Work
Back and neck pain
Chiropractors are best known for safely and effectively treating acute back and neck pain, as well as headaches. Whereas a medical doctor might prescribe pain medicine, muscle relaxers or anti-inflammatory drugs, and an orthopedic doctor might suggest surgery, a chiropractor will treat your back problems by hand, through manipulation of the spine.
Chiropractors bring the musculoskeletal structure into proper alignment. Chiropractors change the position of your body and apply pressure to particular points along the spine that are not properly aligned. This results in a popping noise similar to the one created when you crack your knuckles. The noise is created by a change in pressure in your joints as gas bubbles are released.
By adjusting the spine with their hands at particular pressure points, chiropractors unblock nerve energy and allow it to flow better down your spin and throughout your entire body. Repeated visits can, over time, realign your spine to optimize overall health.
Get Healthy
Get healthy!
Exercise that is rhythmic, repetitive, noncompetitive, and involves diaphragmatic breathing {from your belly} yields the biggest mental payoff. Yoga has the additional benefit of increasing levels of GABA {a neurotransmitter associated with happy, calm feelings} and lowering levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress.
Infants Need Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic deals with correcting subluxations. Subluxations are areas of interference to the nervous system caused by pressure or irritation from spinal bones. Chiropractors correct subluxations. One of the most common causes of a subluxation in an infant is the birth process.
Health consequences to the newborn from subluxations caused from birth trauma range from immediate and severe to hidden problems that may take years to surface. Many experts are now suggesting that birth be handled as a normal and natural process. One of their suggestions is for the birthing position of choice to be an upright position of either sitting or squatting, using gravity to assist the birth process. This would result in less force being used for delivery and reduce the trauma from birth and the subluxation related effects.
Chiropractors have been stressing for years the importance of having newborns checked for vertebral subluxations. Checking the spine of an infant is painless and easy. The importance of a developing baby being free of nerve interference from subluxation cannot be understated. Even infants that appear healthy may have subluxations due to traumatic birth syndrome. All babies deserve the best chance at a healthy happy life. Babies deserve Chiropractic Care.