Chiropractors are focused on attending to a wide variety of chronic pain and even medical conditions that result from misalignments in the spine, which are called subluxations. When your spine is out of alignment, it can result in all manner of pain and health issues, from back and neck pain to problems in the extremities – as far as your fingers and toes.
Many medical conditions are often related to spine problems. These include issues like hernias, carpal tunnel syndrome, TMJ, and even ear infections, among others. Your chiropractor can be an important part of your overall health and wellness routine. They allow your body to engage in its best natural healing, working like a finely tuned machine to maintain itself.
Let’s take a look at a few of the more common conditions a chiropractor improves, as well as some of the other benefits you get from chiropractic care.
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How Can a Chiropractor Treat Chronic Pain?
The primary focus of chiropractors is to help patients improve their overall health and wellness, and that includes the management of chronic pain. Many patients are surprised at the different kinds of pain that are actually associated with a simple and common misalignment in your spine.
Just a few types of chronic pain that the chiropractor can improve include:
- Lower back pain
- Upper back, shoulder and neck pain
- Hip and leg pain
- Conditions like whiplash and sciatica
- Headaches
All of these conditions can be caused by the pressure placed on your nerves due to a vertebral subluxation, or a spinal misalignment. Correcting such misalignments can not only alleviate pain but allow your body to work better, improve your immune response, and let you heal from injuries faster.
Back Pain
When you’re having back pain, many options are available. The majority of people simply go for medications such as anti-inflammatories or muscle relaxants. While these are good temporary options, they can carry serious side effects from liver damage to addiction. With the opioid problem in our country, many people are starting to look for new options, and that’s where chiropractors come in.
Chiropractic is a non-invasive, safe and chemical free method of alleviating back pain. Your chiropractor will examine your back for areas where its curvature is out of alignment. By manipulating your spine, it can be returned to its ideal curve, and this can remove your back pain permanently.
It’s important, however, to understand that it may take more than one visit. Like many medical procedures, adjusting the spine can be an ongoing process. As one subluxation is adjusted, another can develop. Eventually, however, the chiropractor will get your spine back into its ideal curvature, which will in turn remove the pressure placed on your nerves. This pressure is the root cause of many types of back pain.
Back pain can be caused in a number of ways. It can result from heavy lifting, poor posture, even what people refer to as “sleeping funny.” Your back is strong but also designed to be flexible, which can lead to a number of injuries that medication can only treat to a certain extent. A chiropractor can address the root cause of the problem.
Lower Back Pain
Lower back pain is the single most common cause of worldwide disability. It’s among the most common reasons that people miss work, and over half of all Americans in the workforce report suffering these symptoms at least once a year. According to experts, up to 80% of the populace will have a back problem at some point.
Most causes of back pain are caused by something mechanical – a minor injury as opposed to something like a fracture, an infection or a disease. In these cases, a chiropractor can be of help. Still, you should never ignore lower back pain, whether acute or chronic. It can be an indicator of more serious problems.
With Americans spending over $50 billion on treating back pain annually, a chiropractor can be an ideal way to get back on your feet without breaking the bank on complex treatments and side-effect-laden drugs.
Neck Pain
Neck pain is another type of ache that can be caused by spinal issues. Whether it’s spending time hunched over your computer at the office all day or even spending too much time texting on your phone, these activities can result in poor posture. In addition, spending too long with your head bent down and forward can actually lead to the degradation of your spine.
Neck pain can manifest in a number of different ways: soreness, numbness (pins and needles), stabbing or searing pain, burning and even weakness that radiates into your arms. Chiropractors are widely used for the management of neck pain because they can help the pain without invasive surgery and without chemicals that can be addictive or cause side effects.
The various types of neck pain that can benefit from chiropractic care include, but are not limited to:
- Spinal degeneration.
- Bone disorders.
- Slipped or bulging discs (also called prolapsed discs).
- Cervical Spondylosis.
- Torticollis (also called wry neck).
- Arthritis.
Whiplash
Whiplash is a unique kind of neck pain that’s almost exclusively caused by injury. It occurs when you have a sudden impact that causes your head to snap forward then back, like the cracking of a whip. The medical term for whiplash is cervical acceleration-deceleration syndrome, or CAD syndrome.
The symptoms of whiplash can manifest in a range of ways, not all of which are physical pain. For example, while neck pain, headaches, back and shoulder pain and stiffness can be part of the condition, so can difficulty with concentration and memory, as well as mood swings, fatigue and sleeping problems.
These symptoms can be quite severe and can last a very long time. They can, in fact, be debilitating, which can damage your social relationships and your basic ability to do a job. Chiropractors are uniquely qualified to address the symptoms and underlying cause of whiplash and can help to alleviate the problem for good.
Shoulder Pain
While there are a number of causes for shoulder pain such as rotator cuff injuries or dislocations, more often than people realize, pain in the shoulder is actually tied to the spine. When your spine gets out of alignment, it can put pressure on the nerve bundles it protects, resulting in pinched or compressed nerves that can result in pain in the shoulder.
Shoulder pain can range from a nuisance to quite literally crippling in nature. Shoulder pain that’s caused by spinal problems is often marked by flexibility and motion issues. That is, your shoulder won’t hurt to touch, but when you move it a certain way there will be aches or even sharp, shooting pains.
Very often, shoulder pain begins with a sharp, stabbing sensation, then fades to an ache before going away. When the pain returns on a regular basis, it’s time to seek treatment. You might need medical help if you’re experiencing the following symptoms, such as:
- Inability to raise your arm or difficulty with motion.
- Prolonged heat or inflammation.
- Pain that recurs time and again.
- Chronic pain that continues for more than a few days.
- Noticeable misshapen shoulder.
Pinched Nerve
Pinched nerves are very common injuries. If you’ve ever woken up in the morning after having “slept wrong,” and realized you’ve got a sharp pain in your neck, back, shoulders or somewhere else when you try to move, that may be a pinched nerve.
Sometimes pinched nerves resolve on their own. All too often, however, letting them go without treatment can lead to serious problems in the future.
Pinched nerves most commonly happen in the neck and can manifest a number of different ways. These include difficulty turning the head, pain in the shoulders, arms or legs, even symptoms similar to a heart attack. Muscle spasms are not uncommon, and depending on the nerve, you might even have issues with other internal systems.
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