Chiropractic Care: More Than Just Bad Backs

When most people think about chiropractic, they have a picture in their mind of someone with pain clutching their back or neck. But chiropractic care has been shown to help people with a variety of different problems and help people perform at their best on a daily basis.

Chiropractic care improves the potential of your body to be healthy and strong, allowing you to work better, play better and live better.

Spinal Misalignments Can Cause All Sorts of Problems

Spinal misalignments frequently begin with trauma. Falls, car accidents, sports injuries, and other traumatic injuries lead to a tearing loose of connective tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments) that holds the spine in place.

This allows the spine to breakdown and lock into a stressed position. In this stressed position your posture will begin to change. Your head will tilt to one side, your shoulders will be uneven, hips will be uneven, and your weight will not be evenly distributed into both legs.

Once the spine is locked into this stressed position, the joints, muscles, ligaments, tendons, discs will begin to progressively deteriorate. The longer your body is in this position, the worse it gets.

This can lead to conditions such as degenerative disc disease, arthritis, herniated discs and more.

When your body frame is in this misaligned position, it will also cause irritation of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves that go throughout your body.

Nerves control every cell, organ, tissue, and muscle in your body. When your spine is misaligned, your body must adapt to this stressful situation. This can lead to a variety of different conditions, including; headaches, numbness, tingling, carpal tunnel syndrome, high blood pressure, sciatica, and much more.

How Does Chiropractic Help Headaches?

One of the conditions that people may not think of when they think about chiropractic is headaches.

The World Health Organization says that Headaches are extremely common with the most common type of headache, the “Tension Type Headache” affecting two-thirds of men and over 80% of women.

Chronic daily headaches are also common, with up to one adult in 20 having a headache nearly every day.

Chiropractors, like those at Chicago’s Aligned Modern Health, have helped millions of people with a variety of different headaches including: tension headaches, migraines, cluster headaches, medication overuse headaches and more. They do this by correcting small misalignments in the neck that are putting pressure on the nerves and blood vessels that go to the skull and brain.

Even medical doctors have looked to the neck for the source of headaches going all the way back to the 1950s. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association once stated:

“Headaches are not headaches at all but really a pain in the neck.”

Self-Evaluation

If you have headaches or another condition that you think chiropractic may be able to help, here is some ways to evaluate yourself:

Evaluate Your Posture from the Front in a Full-Length Mirror

When you look at yourself in the mirror:

Is your head tilting to one side?

Are your shoulders even?

This can be signs of postural changes from a misalignment in your spine.

Check Your Range of Motion

Next, turn your head one way and then the other.

Is it more difficult to turn your head to the left or the right?

Do you hear clicking, grinding or popping as you turn your head?

These could also be signs that your spine is not properly positioned.

So I hope you can see the chiropractic care is about more than bad backs.

Do many people with back and neck problems find amazing results with chiropractic care?

Absolutely!

But, Chiropractic care is not mainly about your back, it is mainly about your health and your life!

About the Author

Dr. Bill Davis has more than 15 years of experience in chiropractic as a chiropractic patient, student, associate doctor, clinic director and now a writer for the chiropractic industry.  Dr. Davis has been published in the Journal of Upper Cervical Chiropractic Research, featured in the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association News and is currently writing blog posts and articles for a growing number of chiropractic offices throughout the country. Dr. Davis is a husband and father of 3 and is passionate about all things chiropractic. You can connect with Dr. Davis on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.