What is Chiropractic?

Chiropractic is a non-invasive, drug-free approach to health care. According to The Association of Chiropractic Colleges, "chiropractic is a health care discipline which emphasizes the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery. The practice of chiropractic focuses on the relationship between structure (primarily the spine) and function (as coordinated by the nervous system) and how that relationship affects the preservation and restoration of health."

What this means is that a chiropractor will examine your spine or any other bone and joint in your body and determine if it is misaligned.  If it is, it could be affecting the nerves in your body.  Since every muscle and organ in the body is supplied by certain nerves, a decrease in that nerve flow could cause injury or pain to that muscle or organ.  For example, it a bone is misaligned and it is pinching a nerve, even ever so slightly, you could feel pain in that area or the whole length of the area supplied by that particular nerve.  That is why some conditions have pain that feels like it travels down the leg or the arm.  To remove the pressure off that nerve, a chiropractor would adjust the bone that is misaligned.  Although many patients feel better after one adjustment, it usually requires more than one visit to fix the problem.  For example, if you had a tooth that was not straight, it would take one visit at the orthodontist to fix that tooth.  A misaligned tooth does not happen over night, and it does not take one visit to fix it. Chiropractic works much the same way.  A misaligned bone in your body usually takes time in order to allow the body, including any bones/ligaments/tendons to re-adapt itself to a normal position.