What is a chiropractic adjustment?
According to Cleveland Clinic, chiropractic adjustments are techniques that are used by a licensed chiropractor involving their bare hands or instruments to manipulate joints in their patients bodies. Adjustments may help reduce pain symptoms as well as play a part in correcting the bodies alignment from head to toe and overall physical function.
Chiropractic care is beneficial in treating many conditions that affect the nervous system and musculoskeletal system. Some of the most common pain symptoms that chiropractors treat are: headaches, back pain, neck pain, muscle pain and other pain points in the body.
What is a chiropractor?
Chiropractors are doctors that are specifically trained in treating muscle, joint or bone pain, also known as musculoskeletal disorders. Chiropractors can often compliment traditional medical care that patients may be receiving to aide in full body well being and pain relief.
One of the major benefits of chiropractic care is that it may encourage the body to heal itself without the negative effects of surgery or medication.
So, now that we know what a chiropractor is, what does a chiropractor do?
What does a chiropractor do?
Chiropractors use a variety of methods to treat pain that is coming from the musculoskeletal system. Anything from chronic aches and pains to an unfortunate sports injury can be treated by a chiropractor.
Once of the things that makes chiropractic care so popular is that they do not prescribe medication, instead using a holistic approach that has been proven to reduce pain. It is also important to keep in mind that chiropractors do not just treat a single pain point, they examine the body as a whole to try and solve the root cause of your pain.
Chiropractors may prescribe:
- Chiropractic Adjustments: Chiropractors can perform chiropractic adjustments on patients neck, back, arms legs, wrists, and ankles which acts to properly align joints with goal of increasing your pain free range of motion.
- Exercises & Stretches: Often times, an active treatment such as assigned stretching and specific exercise paired with a passive treatment such as chiropractic adjustments is the best way to eliminate you pain and keep it away for the long term.
- Massage Therapy: Some chiropractors team up with Licensed Massage Therapists (LMT) to give you body work massage. These advanced massage techniques are an excellent way to promote functional movement and reduce pain across your whole body. Massage also has stress and tension relieving benefits.
- Dry Needling: Chiropractors may also be licensed to perform dry needling which is a an extremely effective technique that treats restrictions in the myofascial tissue and re-educates muscles that are not working properly. The needle is inserted into the trigger point or a tight muscles, which has a profound effect similar to rebooting a computer.
- Bio Mechanical Analysis: This method is the cornerstone of chiropractic treatment philosophies which involves analyzing the way your body movements may be directly or indirectly causing pain and decreasing the functionality of your body. When doing bio mechanical analysis, your chiropractor will talk about everything from your work environment and physical activities to how you get out of bed in the morning. Understanding the proper movement patterns can increase recovery times, decrease pain and prevent future injuries.
- Cupping: Cupping is an increasingly popular chiropractic technique that acts as a form of myofacial release. Imagine the different layers of tissue from your skin all the way down to your bone. These layers are suppose to glide smoothly along one another without restriction, but sometimes the layers become “stuck” resulting in adhesions and pain. Massage cupping therapy is a great method of breaking up these adhesions and reducing pain. Cupping also has great effects on increasing fluid flow throughout the body and provoking a natural healing response.
With so many different treatment methods that chiropractors have at their disposable, they are able to treat musculoskeletal problems in people of all ages and stages of life. Depending on the patients individual needs and goals the type of treatment used and the force applied to the treatment will vary.
When you first visit a chiropractor, they will do a preliminary examination to make sure that you are healthy enough for chiropractic care. In cases of older patients, conditions such as osteoporosis or arthritis may not make them a good candidate for chiropractic care.
What are the risks and benefits of chiropractic care?
Once your chiropractor has done a preliminary examination and deemed that your musculoskeletal system is healthy enough for chiropractic care, standard manipulations are considered safe. Manipulations have been proven to be excellent sources of relief from chronic and acute pain effecting areas such as: knee, back, low back, shoulder, neck, and ankle.
According to WebMD, roughly 22million Americans seek chiropractic care every year, and roughly 35% of chiropractic patients are seeking relief from back pain. The other most common reasons to visit a chiropractor are headaches and pain in the neck, arms, or legs.
Depending on the type of treatment that you receive, there may be lingering soreness or tenderness that persists for a short period of time after treatment. This is common with treatments such as: dry needling, wet needling, trigger point therapy, cupping, exercise instruction, blood flow restriction therapy and instrument assisted soft tissue mobilization.
What does a chiropractor treat?
Although many people think that chiropractors only treat pain that is related to your spine, such as back and neck pain, in practice they are able to treat much more than that.
According to The Joint, these are some of the most common conditions that chiropractors treat:
- Repetitive Injuries
- Headaches
- Sciatica (Sciatic Nerve Pain)
- Various Sports Injuries
- Arthritis Pain
- Should Pain
- Neck Pain
- Back Pain
- Automobile Accidents
Although most work that chiropractors do revolves around musculoskeletal system disorders, they still treat the entire body and look for the root cause that is responsible for your pain. This could mean recommendations to nutritionist to improve you diet, often reducing foods that are known to cause inflammation.
What do chiropractors do at South Pointe Chiropractic?
Unlike most chiropractic clinics, we are an integrated multidisciplinary medical clinic. Our specialties extend far beyond only chiropractic adjustments, we have a passionate team of medical, physical rehab, and physical therapists with the shared goal to reduce pain and improve quality of life in our patients.
Are you searching for a “chiropractor near me“?
If you are in the greater Denver area and experiencing pain symptoms, please do not hesitate to give us a call at (720) 749-4712 or setup an appointment using our online scheduling system.
