Chiropractic

What is chiropractic?

Founded as a profession in 1895 by DD Palmer, chiropractic now has the unusual position within healthcare offering mainstream back pain musculoskeletal management combined with a more alternative health and wellbeing promoting service.

Chiropractic uses the simple idea of using the spine to improve someone’s health – without the need for drugs or surgery, essentially ‘the healthy spine, healthy you’ concept.

Here is the official definition from the World Federation of Chiropractic:

“A health profession concerned with the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, and the effects of these disorders on the function of the nervous system and general health. There is an emphasis on manual treatments including spinal adjustment and other joint and soft-tissue manipulation.”- World Federation of Chiropractic

Chiropractic is about communication; the communication between your brain and your body. The body is controlled by the central nervous system and the central nervous system is housed in the spine. This system is the communication network between our brains and our bodies. Any disruption in this network is going to have an effect on the how our internal communication system performs.

So when this system is blocked, we’re going to hinder our body’s ability to function properly. This means we’ll heal slower, we’ll move less freely and when it comes to the brain, we could quite possibly be living our day-to-day lives in a fog we didn’t even know was there.

The nervous system controls every function in every organ of our bodies. This list runs into the thousands but as a starter, this includes digestion, attention, balance, posture, breathing, heart rate, hormone production and immune response. The better the brain and the nervous system can function, the better the body will function.

Chiropractic ensures that, through regular adjustments, this communication system is not just operating without blockages but improving all the time. When this is coupled with a lifestyle that includes regular exercise, good nutrition and a healthy dose of mindfulness, the effect is profound.