Anyone who has been a patient of ours has probably heard the term “subluxation”. This is not, however, a word that most people understand or comprehend.
When you hear the word “cancer”, there is an instant vision of a very serious and possibly life threatening disease. When you hear the word “AIDS”, you think of a terminal condition with a person suffering with no hope of survival. But what do you think of when you hear the word “subluxation”? If you are like many people, you probably have trouble even pronouncing the word. Then after you think about it, you probably still do not know just what to think. The fact is that most people do not have even the slightest idea of just what a subluxation is or how dangerous it can be.
A few generations ago, the people of that time probably never heard the word “cavity”. But more than likely they all knew of the end results of cavities called “tooth aches”. Only after years of public education by the dentists, did people come to understand just what a cavity really was. The same can be said for subluxations. Most people are very familiar with the end results of subluxations, but most of them do not realize that a subluxation had anything to do with that end result.
The reason it is easier to understand cavities rather than subluxations is because it is easier to see the end results of a cavity than the end results of a subluxation. Most people know that the end result of a cavity is a tooth ache or possibly even tooth loss. But with subluxations, a simple connection is not possible. This is due to the fact that a subluxation affects your nerve system function which is a much more complex situation than a cavity on a tooth. For this reason we often refer to subluxations as the fundamental underlying “cause” of your problems.
The difficult thing to understand is that subluxations, unlike cavities in your teeth, cause different problems in different people. In fact no two people with subluxation will have the same end results. It is also nearly impossible to predict what types of health problems a person will get from the subluxations they have. But one thing is for sure, subluxations will create a health problem somewhere, sometime If you look in any anatomy book to find out how the body functions, you will see an explanation like this; “The brain controls and coordinates all the functions of the body.” This basically means that everything you do, everything your body does, whether you know about it or not is controlled by your brain.
The signals from your brain are transmitted over your nerves to every part of your body. In order for your body to function properly these signals from the brain must get to the various parts of your body without any interference, alteration, or change. If some form of interference does occur along the pathway from the brain to the body part, that part cannot function properly and some sort of health problem will result. It may not show up immediately, but eventually it shows up. The most common cause of interference to nerve signals is known as a subluxation.
A subluxation is when one or more of the bones in your spine move out of position and causes pressure or irritation on a nerve or nerves and therefore interferes with proper nerve messages. It is our job as chiropractors to find these subluxations and correct or reduce them as much as possible. So, “Subluxations, how dangerous are they?” Answer this for yourself by keeping in mind how important your nervous system is. Now ask yourself the question, “How important is it to my health to have my nervous system functioning without interference?”
