1. Chiropractic means done by hand and is derived from Greek. Many people think that their back goes out. The spinal bones don’t go out for lunch, or leave your body. However, muscle spasm will decrease the function of the spinal joints and since 20% of your brain is going through those joints you want them to work correctly. The joint moves the same distance regardless if it pops during the adjustment. A patient cannot get the vectors and torque when trying to adjust themselves. The more vectors and torque the better the adjustment. Chiropractors do not adjust themselves because they understand that they are not going to get any benefit from it. Whether you are hurting or not, Chiropractic decreases the risk of injuries. The weight of a feather on a nerve can decrease it’s electrical transmission by 50%. If the spinal joints are not functioning optimally, it is more pressure than a feather. You may think it is normal to have postural, mechanical problems but it is not normal, just common.
2. What is a chiropractic adjustment doing. Macro or micro trauma contracts muscles. Chemicals become trapped in the tissues and that is known as inflammation. That leads to adhesion’s which are visible under a microscope after 4 days. These joints now have restricted motion. It is important to change these processes as soon as possible. A good chiropractic adjustment relaxes contracted muscles, allows the chemicals aka, metabolic waste to exit the area, adhesion’s are broken up, and proper joint motion is restored, which is a key part of good health. More than 90% of the energy output of the brain is used to adapt the body to the earth’s gravitational field. Things like not falling over is actually very important to good health for more than the obvious reason. The more mechanically distorted a person is, the less energy is available for thinking, metabolism, and healing. A fast stretch which is what a good chiropractor is performing fires special nerves in the muscles and joints resulting in relaxation. Doing it slowly makes your muscles tighten up at a subconscious neurological reflex loop. Patients expect a miracle and this is not magic. In fact, it is normal to be sore for a few days because the inflammatory chemicals are trapped in tissue and they don’t instantly disappear. If you took enough ibuprofen so that there were none of those chemicals you would not heal. Inflammation is vital to healing. That is just how we work. A typical myth is that cracking your knuckles causes arthritis. There are no studies to prove that. But there are studies that prove chiropractic adjustments can reduce the amount of arthritis in spinal joints. Decreased joint motion results in arthritis. Chiropractic breaks up adhesion’s and re-establishes joint motion. JMPT 2004.
3. Posture can affect and moderate, spinal pain, headache, mood, blood pressure, pulse, respiration, sympathetic function, homeostasis, autonomic regulation, breathing and hormone production. That is from the American Journal of Pain Management 1994. How effective is chiropractic versus medical treatment for back pain? Chiropractic care decreases hospital admissions 60%. Days spent in the hospital by 59%. Outpatient surgeries are reduced 62%. Pharmaceutical costs are decreased 83%. That is from JMPT, 2007. 97% of back pain seen by primary care physicians is mechanical in origin. There is something wrong with the muscles, ligaments, and connective tissue that is best fixed by hand. Refer back to the very first sentence of this article. These patients do not require surgery.
4. What else are we good for? The long list of following conditions have been reported as 70 to 90% improved with chiropractic treatment. Allergies, Arm/Leg Pain, Arthritis, Asthma, General Back Ache, Bursitis, Chest Pain, Dizziness, Gall Bladder, Tension, Hay Fever, Headaches-Migraines, Herniated Disc, High Blood Pressure, Joint Pain, Nausea, Nervousness, Neuritis, numb extremities, Rheumatism, Sciatica, Sinusitis, Stiff Neck, Stomach ailments. What about cost? For the typical low back case treated in the medical model 30.3 billion dollars is spent. 4.5 billion dollars on prescriptions. The average cost for a back pain patient in this system the cost was $1,589. This could have lasted over a long period of time. The average chiropractic case is about 5.2 visits. That averages out to around $302. 95% of patients rated the care as excellent.
5. For those of you that think your trillion dollar machine, aka your body is not in pain and therefore could not benefit from chiropractic, studies have revealed improvements in neuro-cognitive function, visual fields, visual acuity, cortisol levels,( less stress), muscle strength, and reduced general health care costs. Range of motion improves, endorphin levels increase(that is the natural pain killing substances created by parts of our brain) increased agility, balance, power, and speed. I stated that our body is worth a trillion dollars based upon an M.I.T. study that calculated the worth of all of the hormones your body will produce over a lifetime and if they were sold in today’s market place. As far as safety is concerned, you are twice as likely to become disabled from physical therapy treatment. When I saw that stat I thought, I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’ve never even hurt anyone. O.K. maybe they were in discomfort for a few minutes. Most of my friends are chiropractors and they’ve never hurt anyone as well. Our Malpractice insurance costs about 1% of an orthopedics and you can be sure that the insurance companies know who is hurting who. According to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 2011, you are 60% more likely to become disabled from medical care. Again, and this is not scientific, just my personal experience with probably over 50,000 patients by now, I haven’t disabled one of them. About 85% received very satisfactory results. In other words, if I had achieved those results in a hospital setting, I’d be on the news every night with headlines such as, miracle treatment discovered.
