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 complaint 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 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 the heart attack or diabetes can take decades to appear, these issues are easy to overlook.

If getting on 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 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.

“It won’t happen to me,” we lie 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. Has it been awhile since your last visit? Give us a call.

Test Your Knowledge

If you’ve been a patient for some time, you know that chiropractic is different from traditional health care. Besides shunning drugs, our model of health and healing looks at pain, germs, symptoms and prevention from a very different perspective than the mainstream.

Without the deep pockets of drug companies to promote chiropractic, we depend upon patients like you to spread the word. Do you understand what makes chiropractic different (and effective)? Answer these questions to test your knowledge. Let me know how you did:

1. The primary focus of chiropractic care is to...

1. Enhance the function of the immune system.
2. Improve the vitality of the nervous system.
3. Reduce pain with natural methods.

2. Subluxations can cause one of two different reactions:

1. The need for laxatives and antacids.
2. Nervous system impairment or over-excitement.
3. Obvious pain and muscle spasms.

3. Chiropractic can help so many different health problems because...

1. The spinal column supports the entire body.
2. The nervous system controls and regulates everything.
3. The only “side effects” are largely positive effects.

(Answers: chiropractic is all about the integrity of the nervous system. So, the correct answers are 1(b), 2(b) and 3(b).)