Why Do I Need Maintenance Chiropractic Care?

maintenance chiropractic care

Every day more and more people are reevaluating their options when it comes to health care. They are realizing that wellness comes from within and that the best way to avoid illness and discomfort is to be “health conscious” in their daily lifestyles. In order to accomplish this we must first understand what it is we need to do to get and stay well.

The simple answer is that we need to adopt lifestyle behaviors that promote health – as opposed to those that lead to sickness. Because the truth is there is no drug that can fix our poor diet or remove the toxins from the processed food we eat. There is no drug that can undo our sedentary living or poor fitness – the answer is in our lifestyle choices. One major lifestyle choice we can adopt is to receive regular chiropractic adjustments, often called maintenance or wellness chiropractic care.

Understanding the reason for maintenance chiropractic care mandates an understanding of two major well documented concepts: 1) immobilization degeneration; and 2) the neurology of pain processing. A primary component of a subluxation (misalignment in the spine) is loss of normal motion in that area; and there is an immense body of research to support the ensuing degenerative process that will occur with this loss of motion and the logical conclusion of restoring movement to the spine.

You see, chiropractic is important for our health in many of the same ways that exercise is so crucial for our overall health and well-being. It’s all about movement. Movement feeds the brain, when we become misaligned we lose the normal motion of that spinal segment – which leads to degenerated joints and  decreases these movement- rich nutrients to the brain (proprioceptive signals). Continue reading “Why Do I Need Maintenance Chiropractic Care?”

How to Maintain Your Adjustment

The end goal of chiropractic care (at least in our office) is to retrain the spine to maintain its proper position so that the body can naturally heal and adapt to any problems that may occur in everyday life. This is why when you first begin chiropractic care, you will likely have to visit on a fairly frequent basis, but over time, your visits should occur less often and adjustments will likely be quite minor. This is a good thing. It means that your spine is, in fact, learning to retain its proper shape and position.

However, like any healthcare initiatives, caring for your adjustment is not just your chiropractor’s job. The patient needs to take responsibility and do what they can to maintain the adjustments they receive. Doing so will help expedite the spine’s retraining process, but it’s also just good practice for your body. After all, a backbone and spinal cord that are in the proper position provide optimal performance for your entire body, enabling you to live a healthy, happy, pain-free and productive lifestyle.

So what can you do to help maintain a chiropractic adjustment? Continue reading “How to Maintain Your Adjustment”