When most people first visit a chiropractor, it’s usually because they’re in pain and don’t want to be any more – that’s fair enough, but Chiropractors are concerned with so much more than just addressing pain! More often than not, you don’t have a pain problem – but a movement problem (you just don’t realise it!)
Movement is what we do
Your body is built to move and the benefits of movement for your body are immeasurable – it’s now widely acknowledged that an active lifestyle correlates with better physical and mental health and can contribute in a major way to keeping us mobile and independent as we age.
Chiropractors are, first and foremost, spinal experts – and every spinal disc and every individual joint in your spine was designed to help you sit, stand, run, and do everything in between. Your discs are soft enough to allow you to flex and bend in every direction, and your facet joints slide and glide in concert with one another so you can turn, twist, and extend. Your vertebrae are connected by a network of ligaments that support you as you push and pull, bend or flex –
Maintaining all those moving parts is important. Your body is an incredibly strong, complex, and resilient system that both powers and is itself powered by movement and the benefits of movement – in a very real sense then, were concerned with the health of movement itself.
That’s a big part of why we provide functional movement and flexibility tests as part of all of our treatment at Complete Chiropractic – to help ensure every part of your body is moving the way it was designed to so you can feel and function your best for as long as possible. It’s not enough simply to get someone out of pain, we also want to address any underlying issues which prevent your body working at its best. What’s more, we like to review your progress regularly so that we can chart this progress over time… why? Humans are incredibly adaptable and without keeping a record people very quickly forget just how much trouble they had in performing a certain task, even just a few weeks ago! At the same time, we often don’t notice certain movements becoming more difficult over time – frequently we see patients with issues which have been building up for months, but which have only just become serious enough to be noticeable.
Improving movement
As you may have guessed, as chiropractors we believe in the innate ability of the body to heal itself and the very real benefits of movement, so we’ve been trained to work with just about every joint in your body in addition to those in the spine. Adjustments are just one of the non-invasive tools we use to help get them back to moving at their best – limb by limb, joint by joint.
One of the top benefits of spinal adjustments is that they can help dramatically reduce your daily aches and pains – and that’s especially important since pain is the biggest obstacle that keeps many people from enjoying their favourite activities. Another way adjustments can help improve your quality of life involves resetting any faulty movement patterns so that your body is working together and moving well as a whole, sometimes the source of a painful complaint is nothing more than a bad postural habit or less than ideal movement pattern which has developed.
To take that a step further, sport-specific performance improvements are yet another one of the fantastic benefits of movement powered by spinal adjustments – achieving optimal flexibility, biomechanics, range of motion, and movement are all reasons why many leading athletes get adjusted consistently as part of their training. Unfortunately, getting an adjustment isn’t enough to make you a professional quality athlete… but it might help you make a dent in that personal best!
Chiropractic care… it’s movement based!
If you’ve ever been to see a Chiropractor, you may now be seeing the connection here – chiropractic care itself, is really just targeted movement! The term chiropractic comes from the Greek words cheir (hands) and praxis (practice) – literally, it means “done by hand”. Chiropractic adjustments are really just a way to get the spine, joints or surrounding tissue moving and release tension and stress – the exercises we ask our patients to perform at home help to re-enforce this, aiming, more often than not to “unlock” aspects of their body which have become stiff and painful, very often through inactivity or excessive strain.
Let’s get moving!
If you need some help getting a spring back in your step, look no further than Complete Chiropractic – yes, we can and do, mainly see people who are suffering from pain, but you don’t need to be in pain to see the Chiropractor! If things feel stiff, tense or just more difficult than they used to a Chiropractic check-up, and a couple of adjustments, could well see you right again!
