Thursday, April 5, 2012

How Does Chiropractic Work?

Like other holistic health practitioners chiropractors look at the body as a whole when they treat you. If a joint is misaligned or damaged then the smooth functioning of the body can be disturbed causing inflammation, pressure on nerves and resulting medical problems.
Chiropractors know that stress, poor posture and accidents, including sports injuries and auto accidents can all stop the body from functioning properly. Almost any aspect of health can be adversely affected by problems in the spine.
For example, impingement on nerves connected to the stomach could be the cause of some digestive disorder. Chiropractic manipulation of the spine at the point where these nerves exit from the spinal cord through the vertebra can remedy such a disorder.

What happens during a chiropractic treatment?
Your first session with a chiropractor often involves an assessment of posture and mobility of joints. The chiropractor might also ask you to bend, raise your legs, test your reflexes, take your blood pressure or even an X-ray to build up a more detailed picture of a problem.
As with osteopathy, chiropractors try to track down restricted or excessive joint movement, especially in the spine because these problems are the cause of inflammation, swelling and pressure that leads to pain and illness.

A chiropractor might use some massage to loosen stiff muscles before performing the manipulation techniques. Manipulation usually involves a sharp, precise thrusting movement of a joint to set it. Some chiropractors avoid forceful thrusting manipulations and instead rely on more gentle movements and stretches.
Chiropractic will provide an effective long-term management of a condition. Patients usually return for regular “maintenance” treatments to prevent them regressing.

What problems can chiropractic help?
Chiropractors focus primarily on back problems, but there other conditions that they treat.

Where’s the evidence?
There have been various clinical trials of chiropractic several of which have been reported by the well-respected British Medical Journal, published by the British Medical Association. The research reports that showed that chiropractic worked better at treating acute back pain than standard treatments offered in a hospital out-patients.

What is a subluxation?
A medical subluxation is an incomplete or partial dislocation of a joint. A dislocation of any joint will usually need chiropractic treatment to help relocate the joint. A spinal subluxation is relatively rare, but can sometimes impinge on spinal nerve roots causing symptoms in the areas served by those roots.

Can chiropractors remedy subluxations?
Chiropractors talk of vertebral subluxations and have their own unique definition of this problem, they say it is relatively common and is apparent as a spinal vertebra having lost its proper juxtaposition, or alignment, with one or both of its neighbours. This apparently interferes with the nervous system. Conventional chiropractic treatment remedies vertebral subluxations using manipulation techniques.

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