Chiropractic
Frequent Asked Questions

Chiropractic is a science, healing art, and philosophy founded in America. Its practical principles are easily understood. The Brain and Spinal Cord integrate, control, and maintain every organ, tissue and cell of the body. (Innate) is the inborn Intelligence and Force, which is present in every cell, tissue, and organ of your body.

The presence of the innate intelligence force in any cell, tissue, or organ, separates the living from the dead. The impedance of Innate will cause pain, dysfunction, ill health, disease, and ultimately premature death.

Chiropractic treatment restores the body to optimum health.

Chiropractic offers benefits for health, wellness, and optimum physical function. Health and wellness are life-enriching benefits that more and more people are obtaining through their chiropractic doctors. Still, one of the primary reasons people seek chiropractic care is for relief from pain. Discomfort and pain are symptoms of changes and/or malfunctions in your body. We are committed to correcting the causes of such problems, returning you to full health and vitality.

Chiropractic care alleviate impingement on the nerves so that the correct and normal transmission of intelligent impulses from the central nervous system may reach every cell tissue and organ in the body.

Almost any person will benefit from Chiropractic Care. Chiropractic Care is designed to treat patients of all ages from infancy to senior, both male and female.

There are two parts to your Nervous System: The Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). The CNS is composed of the Brain and Spinal cord, while the PNS is composed of the Peripheral nerves which are the Cranial nerves, and Spinal Nerves. In every part of your body there are sensory nerves. These nerves are constantly receiving information from your body and from your environment and relaying it to your CNS. These impulses can carry information regarding body temperature, touch/pressure, chemistry and more!

The CNS sends exact electric signals out to the body in response to the sensory signals. The electric signals travel through nerves from the CNS to the body. The CNS response is so specific and perfect that the body is left in a balanced state called homeostasis.

Homeostasis is the role Innate to maintain a proper balanced environment.

A Chiropractor is a doctor who has been trained to properly locate and correct or reduce Subluxation. The doctor must consider the variables in order to address the problem with precision and accuracy. They are as follows:

• The muscle tone; Are there spasm, flaccidity, strength, or weakness?
• The joint - degree of degeneration, pathology, and direction of misalignment have to be determined.
• The motion of the joint - Is there normal, too much, or too little motion?
• The soft tissues including the disc of the spine, tendons, ligaments of the involved area of complaint can have the following symptoms including swelling, degeneration and inflammation.
• The nerve - Is the nerve sensation that of hot, cold, inflammation, tingling, dullness, or pain.

After careful consideration, the doctor will determine a treatment plan that will address the above findings to most effectively take pressure off the nerve and allow the electrical impulses to be restored to normal.

The chiropractor will use a(n):

• History: The history gives the doctor a broad picture of the patient as well as an explanation as to what happened that brought the patient to the office.

Examination: The exam consists of:

• Posture analysis - the distortion pattern displayed by the individual's body
• Range of motion of the spine or any joint
• Palpation, which helps to find muscle spasms, atrophy, swelling, and determine joint motion
• Muscle tension
• Diagnostic media - X-ray, M.R.I: Diagnostics: Most doctors will order an X-Ray to visually see the condition of the spine or extremity and the misalignment of the vertebrae. However, additional tests are often ordered such as MRI and lab work.
• Nutritional Evaluation: Nutritional evaluation can render valuable information on the patient's condition. Nutritional supplements often play an important roll in the restoration of health.

Each doctor may practice differently. However, the doctor, within his scope of practice, may use the following:

The Spinal Adjustment

• Disc Decompression (Cervical and Lumbar);
• Activator Adjustment;
• Passive and Active traction;
• Trigger point therapy;
• Cranial Adjustment;
• Heat/Ice;
• Inferential therapy;

Extremity Adjusting

• Laser Therapy;
• Visceral manipulation;
• Nutritional therapy;
• Exercise;
• Rehabilitation.

All of the above methods can be used by the doctor to correct or reduce your subluxation.

The main objectives are to:

• Relieve pain;
• Restore function;
• Strengthen the immune system;
• Bring about the balance, harmony, and integrate function of the organs with each other, rendering a whole healthy person internally and enable them to live a higher quality of life externally.

When a joint of the body is not in proper alignment, the patient feels the discomfort and exhibits symptoms. These are all signs of nerve impingement. By properly addressing the spinal misalignment, that is rendering care for the muscle, the motion of the joint, the joint itself, the surrounding soft tissue and adjusting the joints, will take pressure off the nerve and reduce swelling and inflammation restoring nerve impulses and transmission to normal so the body can heal itself. This is the chiropractic treatment.

First, one should realize that if they have not been a chiropractic patient up until now, their condition, generally, did not occur overnight. Research has shown that from the time a nerve is first abnormally tensed or pressured, it takes 14 days to cause a breach in the tissue that is supplied by the nerve. Many people do not even feel the pain right away!

In fact, many start to feel the pain weeks, months, and even years after it has occurred. So expect the treatment to be repetitive and that it will take time. The body has to de-compensate and de-adapt to all of life stressors up till the date of their first treatment. One can expect routine visits with a spinal check, adjustment, therapy, nutrition, and exercise.

Your treatments at the Chiropractors office will usually only take 10 minutes. Your treatment frequency will vary from 2 to 3 times a week. Everyone is different! The doctor will treat your subluxation according to severity. One visit may take more time than another. Your treatment program is determined by your age, length of time of your condition and rate of severity. Treatment will change as conditions improve.

Follow up visits will consist of re-examination to allow treatment programs to change.

There are three phases of care:

1. Acute Care: Acute care is from the first treatment until the pain subsides. That is, just because a person has no pain does not mean he/she is well. The absence of pain only indicates a person has reached a sub-pain threshold but not yet healthy. Once the patient is out of pain, the doctor reevaluates and may change treatment protocol and treatment frequency and changing the patient status to the second phase of care.
2. Re-constructive Care: Re-constructive care commences. The goal of re-constructive care is to see the patient until normal function is restored. Once normal function is restored, the patient can then elect to take Wellness care.
3. Wellness Care.

Wellness care is an active plan that the patient takes in his life to help maintain a state of homeostasis in the body and the optimal health.

The doctor of chiropractic will help his patient through nutrition and exercise and the benefit of regular chiropractic treatment.

As mentioned earlier, research has shown the subluxation in the spine can cause tissue destruction in the body in about 14 days. A wellness program is tailored for the patient that might consist of spinal checks every 2 to 4 or 6-week intervals to check for and treat reoccurring subluxations. A wellness visit is a preventative check for subluxations that might occur in the body to prevent the formation of disease and help maintain health.

Many chiropractors are highly trained in nutrition. Your chiropractor may make recommendations to your diet as well as using nutritional supplements. These nutrients will help to reduce the stress, reaction to a chemical imbalance caused poor diet or toxicity and assist in digestion and supply the body with food that it may be lacking.

Subluxation is caused by life. The one guarantee that life offers is change. The world is constantly moving and constantly changing. The change in our environment is stress. There are many stresses in everyone's personal lives. The stressors cause our overworked, traumatized bodies to react.

The stresses we have now are: Dietary, Emotional, Chemical, Physical, Mental.

Regular check ups with your chiropractor are needed to battle the effects of stress and its damage on the body.

Examples:

• Dietary - food preservatives
• Emotional - relationship problems, death of relatives or friends
• Mental - over studying, computer work/paperwork
• Chemical - tobacco, alcohol, drug, pollution
• Physical - auto accidents