What is Chiropractic?

Before we start....

So, before we answer the questions ‘What is Chiropractic?’, we need to give you some information on how your body works, so bear with me.

What does your nervous system do?

EVERYTHING!

A Chiropractors primary focus is your nervous system, the brain and spinal cord co-ordinate everything that occurs inside your body, from controlling things you don’t think about, such as hormone production, immune system regulation, processing all sight, sound and touch, also things you do think about such as picking up a glass of water or brushing your teeth.

How does your body let you know there's a problem?

SYMPTOMS!

Your nervous system has ways of communicating with you, such as thirst, hunger and fatigue. Your body is pretty quick to let you know when it has an immediate need for nutrition, hydration or rest. However, when your body starts to break down, or parts of your body become irritated or damaged, it’s not so good at giving instant messages, because its so busy co-ordinating everything else it does on a second by second, minute by minute or hour by hour basis.

If we use the analogy of an email account, immediate needs such as hunger, thirst, are those urgent emails from your boss, you have to respond quickly or they will keep nagging you!

If parts of your body start to break down and degenerate due to poor posture, lack of movement or too much repetitive movement, your body doesn’t necessarily require immediate action, a bit like a colleague sending you an email to give you yet another task, you file it away to revisit another day. You’re too busy dealing with your bosses email! Then eventually your colleagues nagging starts to pick up pace and gets more annoying! You may experience, aches, pains, numbness or tingling. This is your body forcing you to take action through symptoms.

So where does Chiropractic come in?

IT’S ALL IN THE SPINE!

The chiropractor will assess your nervous system during the consultation process. Checking which areas of your spine are working well and which are not, the nerves from your spine filter out to all areas of your body, organs and limbs. By assessing the weak points the chiropractor knows which segments of your spine need attention.

When the nerves have interference, such as a joint that doesn’t function correctly, an intervention to that specific area of the spine (we call this an adjustment) can increase the flow of information from the brain to that area of the body.

The side effect of getting the joint to move and function better, is that symptoms of pain, numbness and tingling decrease. So not only do you have reduced symptoms but also your nervous system is functioning at a higher rate than before, it’s not just able keep doing those second by second jobs but also answer those emails to your boss and your colleagues!