Will Adjustments Make My Spine Too Loose?

Chances are, you may have heard this concern voiced by those who don’t fully understand how chiropractic works, or what chiropractic adjustments actually do.

Most spinal problems come in pairs. Usually there’s an area of the spine that is stuck, fixated and not moving adequately. And this is often accompanied by one or more areas somewhere else in the spine that compensate by moving too much. Sometimes these areas are immediately adjacent to stuck areas and sometimes they can be at the opposite end of the spine!

We call these compensation reactions.

Your body is constantly dealing with the force of gravity. Like a tightrope walker trying to maintain his balance, when one area of your spine malfunctions, an equal and opposite reaction can appear elsewhere. This is why patients are often surprised that we examine their lower back when their primary compliant is in their upper neck, or vice versa.

Our goal is to avoid the compensations and focus our attention on the primary subluxation. The spinal joints that move too much are avoided so muscles and ligaments can stabilize and heal. When we add motion to stuck spinal joints, areas that are too loose can properly heal.

Living For Today

So many diseases that tax our so-called health care system (which should more accurately be called our sick care system) are the result of long-term abuse or neglect. Lifestyle decisions produce obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and many other common health problems. But because it can take decades to show up as a heart attack or a blood sugar problem, these issues are easy to overlook.

If eating a greasy hamburger immediately produced a heart attack, you’d think twice about having one. (Not to mention the French fries!)

If getting off the elevator instead of taking the steps immediately resulted in a visible weight gain, you might be persuaded to make the healthier choice.

If expressing anger, envy or grief instantly created a stomach ulcer or collapsed a lung, you’d be very careful about expressing such unhealthy emotions.

But they don’t. It can take years for even the earliest symptoms of these choices to show up. By the time obvious symptoms emerge, the problem can be well advanced.

“By then they’ll have a pill I can take,” we fool ourselves.
“It won’t happen to me,” we lie to ourselves.
“I’ll change my ways next time,” we justify to ourselves.

Yet, the damage is done. It’s hardly perceptible. It’s so incremental as to hardly matter.

But it does matter. That’s why some of our most health conscious patients choose to see us on a regular, ongoing basis. Can chiropractic care reverse years of obvious abuse and neglect? Of course not. But periodic checkups can often catch little problems before they become serious.

As a famous sports figure, who was known to neglect his well-being and make some rather poor health choices once said, “If I knew I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

How Full is Your Bucket?

One of the most common health complaints these days is allergies. So common, many people don’t even recognize the many ways our bodies alert us to allergic reactions.

Some of the common signs include:

• Sneezing
• Running nose
• Itchy eyes
• Sinus congestion
• Asthma
• Heartburn
• Skin rashes
• Acne
• Itching
• Weight gain
• Fluid retention

Yet, the problem isn’t the pet dander, pollen, chemicals or spicy food. While these and other allergens are often singled out as the culprit, it’s actually the person—not the allergen. If it were the allergen, everyone would react. Clearly, the problem must be person’s ability to accommodate the allergen. Which involves the nervous system. So, it’s no surprise that many people with allergies also have subluxation(s) that drain their body’s ability to adapt.

Think of your body’s ability to accommodate physical, chemical and emotional stress as an empty bucket. Fill your bucket with the stress of poor nutrition, a lack of rest, a poor career choice, a stressful commute each day and other stressors and our bucket is filled to the brim. Along comes tree pollen season or you encounter a house cat and you start wheezing. Your bucket is overflowing!

The pollen or the cat may get the blame, but only because your ability to adapt has been exhausted by the other stress. Do you know someone with allergies? Introduce them to chiropractic. Chiropractic isn’t a treatment for allergies, but perhaps we can help them increase their ability to adapt!