What is the BIG IDEA behind what chiropractic can offer an individual with some sort of symptom, pain or limitation? When people think of seeing a chiropractor, they feel like they have to be in some sort of intense pain at that very moment to make it worth their while to go and visit a chiropractor. Some people believe in creating a wellness or maintenance care to continue them feeling great and not allowing their body to get to the point of some type of pain, limitation or other symptom.
With everyone’s daily lives very different from the next, there can be a lot of variation to how someone’s body can be affected by what they do in their daily schedule. Take a couple of examples, say you live in an area that is very cold and has more ice and snow that you have to deal with, they may be more vulnerable to a slip and fall on a snowy or icy sidewalk. Another individual lives in an area that is very hot and dry and when walking in the grass or dirt, this dry and hot temperature can create heat cracks in the ground where this person is more susceptible to stepping in the heat crack and rolling or tweaking their ankle. Look at someone who loves to play any type of sport, they will be more likely to have some type of sprain or strain of a leg, knee, arm, shoulder or wrist. Or just look at the average individual walking into any type of store where they have just mopped or have had a little water on the floor, thus creating a quick way to have this person slip and fall on the hard floor. All of these scenarios can happen to anyone, even the person who is very alert and aware of their surroundings, as things tend to get peoples attention and for a very brief second they take their concentration off of what they are doing and something unexpected happens.
Taking a deeper look into the body itself, your body is very electric from the brain sending signals down your Nervous System through the nerves that enter and exit the spine going down to the arms, body, legs, muscles, and internal organs. Think of this Nervous system as the electric lines in your house, and the arms, legs, muscles, and internal organs as light bulbs in each room. If for some reason these areas are not getting this electric signal, the light bulb within these areas are will either tell you by flickering or just simply will not light up. Your Nervous system runs from your brain down into the spinal canal with 31 pairs of nerves that exit the spine, which is made up of 24 individual vertebra, and at each vertebra there is a set of nerves that exit going to different parts of your body. Not only does your nerves run down the spinal canal and exit along each of these vertebra, but also the nerves pass around and through a majority of your bones in your skeleton, which could be down your arms into your hands, or down through your pelvis and hips into your legs and feet. At every point where these nerves pass through or around bones and joints, there is a potential for that nerve to get into trouble with either a misalignment of the main vertebra before it makes it out of the spinal canal, or at another place along the system of interconnected bones that make up your entire skeleton. Now there are 208 bones in the body which most of them have nerves passing through or around them that can create some type of pressure on that nerve that limits its ability to give the end result of a full signal, and allowing that ‘Light Bulb’ to turn on and function correctly like it is supposed to.
Chiropractors focus is at the bones and structure that make up your bodies skeleton and how they align with each other. The next focus with chiropractic is seeing how the nerves that enter and exit these structures are altered in any way, and seeing how to relieve this alteration by the way of an adjustment or manipulation to maintain proper structure and function. Most of the time chiropractors will focus on the spine, as it is the main source of where the nerves can have some type of limitation with the way they are moving and exiting these 24 vertebras. When there are 2 vertebras in the spine that are not moving correctly, this is called a joint dysfunction, misalignment, or subluxation, and can give you the sensation in your body of pain, decreased mobility, discomfort, and a potential of many other conditions and symptoms. These misalignments in your spine causes an information block with your nervous systems, as these nerves that start from the brain and send signals to your body also have a return signal from your body back to your brain letting it know what is going on, and also looking for what the next action or reaction should be based on your brains knowledge of every situation. When your body has some type of misalignment, either in your vertebral column (spine), or somewhere down the chain of bones in the skeleton structure of your arms and legs, this can lead to symptoms that are signals your body is telling you that something is going on that is NOT normal. Unfortunately when you are feeling NO symptom or pain, it isn’t an indication that everything is healthy, but on the other side when you do feel this pain, symptom or limitation appears the problem could have been there for months and even years. The best news is that with chiropractic care and getting your vertebra or other bones in the skeleton that are in a stuck or misaligned position adjusted and put back into the correct alignment or position, it can help your body prevent these different types of pains, symptoms or conditions that may arise due to theses misalignments or subluxations.
Now lets get back to one of the initial examples on how the BIG IDEA of chiropractic can make sense. Lets go into more detail regarding the example of stepping on a crack or hole and rolling your ankle. Say you are walking down the street that you walk every single day, as you are walking you see something pass by, maybe a really nice car, so you turn your attention to the car and when this occurs you miss the crack in the concrete that has created a raised portion of the sidewalk and you roll or tweak your right ankle. This makes you stumble and go down to a knee or sit on the ground to rub your ankle that is now in pain. On some occasions this ankle that you just rolled or tweaked can instantly swell up and become puffy and hot. Now you are not right next door to your house so you have to walk back towards your house to be able to rest, so along this walk back you have to put more weight on your left ankle and left hip due to the pain in the right ankle. You finally make it home and are able to rest and ice your ankle to help with the swelling. The next day you either have to go to work, run some errands or have things that have to get done around the house. So you must get up and walk around and put weight on the feet and ankles, but your right ankle is still very painful and sore, so you put additional weight on the left foot and ankle, which causes you to put more pressure on the left leg and left hip. Lets say this ankle pain in the right ankle lasts for 1-2 weeks, so for the next week or so with walking around you are now putting additional stress and strain on the left leg, which puts additional stress on the left hip. After the week or so is up your ankle is getting better but now you have some left hip pain and maybe some lower back pain on the left from your awkward walking habit that has been created from the right ankle pain. So you now have your right ankle that has become mostly better and in not as much pain, but your left hip and lower back are sore, so while you walk you lean over to the right hip alleviating some of the left sided lower back pain. Over the next few days or week you have been leaning towards the right hip to help with the left sided lower back pain, and now this has caused some mid back tension due to the twisted nature of how you are walking. This mid back pain is starting to get worse due to you having an awkward walking posture that all started with your ankle pain. Lets just say that due to this mid back pain you have to sit more to help alleviate not only the ankle, but now the hip and lower back, and the mid back pain. After sitting to help with the pain your lower neck becomes stiff and sore and could potentially cause a headache. When looking at how all this occurred it stems from rolling the right ankle while you were walking. Chiropractic benefits these types of injuries, as these little things do occur in normal life without anyone expecting it to occur.
A Chiropractor helps realign your body not only from the spine where all of your nerves are exiting, but also your entire skeleton structure. Going to a chiropractor and getting adjusted where the misalignments occur after injuries, just like the one in the example, can help with making sure these trouble spots that arise don’t become an issue with misalignments putting the nerves, muscles, tendons and ligaments in a bind that can create pain and limitation. Chiropractic revolves around the understanding of good health depends on how your body, skeleton structure, and nervous system is fully functioning at a normal rhythm. Many of the symptoms, pain, or structural limitations starts with the body’s inability to be able to adapt to one’s environment.
With living your life there will be many sorts of accidents, falls, tension, stress, overexertion, and many other countless factors that can result in misalignments or displacements in the structure of the vertebral column or spinal cord, and other parts of your skeletal system that cause irritation to the nerves that run throughout our bodies. Chiropractic is safe and very effective form of healthcare, that doesn’t utilize the use of drugs or surgery.
At PrimeSpine we take every measure to understand the “WHY” behind the symptom, pain or limitation that you are coming into the office with. When getting to the root of the cause of these impairments, then we will be able to understand the ‘WHY’ behind the pain, and get you back to living a pain free life that you deserve. Call us TODAY at (425) 590-9619 to setup your initial evaluation to get you back to the life you were meant to live.
What Is The BIG IDEA and The -WHY- Behind Chiropracctic
