Chiropractic Healing
Chiropractic is one of the safest forms of medicine because it’s a drugless healing art.
Our brain and spinal cord make up the central nervous system. This part of the nervous system is known as the “master controller of the body” because it controls every function in the body – every muscle, organ, gland, tissue, and cell.
A nerve impulse must occur before anything to happens within the body. If you break a bone and put a cast over the area, it’s not the cast that’s healing the body, it’s the body itself. Our healing is directly proportional to the free flow of nerve transmissions to all areas throughout the body.
Nerve Interference
Our nerves control the circulatory system and the more circulation there is in an area, the faster we heal. When this nerve transmission is interfered with however, we find dysfunction and disease in the body.
For example, when someone “throws out their back” or “pinches a nerve” they often describe pain that radiates down their leg to the feet and toes.
What most people don’t think about is that everything downstream from the pinched nerve can also be affected. The nerves that go down the leg also control the bowel, bladder, and reproductive organs. Therefore, it’s very common to see women with dysfunctional periods, and men with low testosterone or erectile dysfunction. This nerve interference is called subluxation.
Subluxation
Subluxation is a misalignment of a vertebra that causes inflammation or “pinching” to the nerve roots coming out of the spine.
When the nerves are pinched, not only can it cause pain locally, but also dysfunction anywhere else along that nerve pathway.
Most people with subluxations in their cervical spine (neck) often report neck pain and any of the following additional symptoms: headaches, migraines, fatigue, numbness and tingling in the fingers, slow healing of injuries in the shoulders or arms, sinus problems, and the list goes on and on.
Who is Chiropractic For?
We treat those who’ve been living with pain in a variety of ways, and bring them into balance. Our chiropractic patients range from Longshoremen, athletes, and gym enthusiasts to college students, Millennials, children, pregnant women, babies, as well as older adults.
In Practice
Doctors of chiropractic are trained to diagnose all conditions:
- History taking and physical exam techniques
- Appropriate use of laboratory and other tests such as MRI and x-ray
Doctors of chiropractic are educated, trained, and licensed by the state of California to treat all conditions, diseases, or injuries in a manner consistent with chiropractic methods and techniques.
We provide treatment without drugs or surgery:
- Prevention is stressed, along with wellness practices such as a healthy diet and exercise
- Natural approach including nutrition, vitamins, minerals, and herbal remedies
- Typical treatment uses manual adjustments to the spine and/or extremities
- Physiotherapy and other soft tissue techniques can also be utilized
- Exercise and rehabilitation are prescribed to enhance function and prevention, particularly to our patients who are athletic and Longshoremen
Overwhelming Evidence for Pain Reduction
A number of studies throughout the world have shown that chiropractic treatment, including manipulative therapy and spinal adjustments, is both safe and effective. Many other studies have shown that chiropractic care can be a cost-effective remedy that brings healing in less time than other treatments. The following are excerpts from just a few of these studies:
For Acute Low-Back Problems:
“For patients with acute low-back symptoms…the scientific evidence suggests spinal manipulation is effective in reducing pain and perhaps speeding recovery within the first month of symptoms.” – Clinical Practice Guidelines, AHCPR (1994)
For Long-Term Low-Back Problems:
“There is strong evidence that manipulation is more effective than a placebo treatment for chronic low-back pain or than usual care by the general practitioner, bed rest, analgesics and massage.” – Spine, Van Tulder and Bouter et al. (1997)
“…improvement in all patients at three years was about 29% more in those treated by chiropractors than in those treated by the hospitals. The beneficial effect of chiropractic on pain was particularly clear.” – British Medical Journal, Meade et al. (1995)
For Pain:
“…patients suffering from back and/or neck complaints experience chiropractic care as an effective means of resolving or ameliorating pain and functional impairments, thus reinforcing previous results showing the benefits of chiropractic treatment for back and neck pain.” – Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, Verhoef et al. (1997)
“…for the management of low-back pain, chiropractic care is the most effective treatment, and it should be fully integrated into the government’s health care system.” – The Manga Report (1993)
For Headaches:
“Cervical spine manipulation was associated with significant improvement in headache outcomes in trials involving patients with neck pain and/or neck dysfunction and headache.” – Duke Evidence Report, McCrory, Penzlen, Hasselblad, Gray (2001)
“The results of this study show that spinal manipulative therapy is an effective treatment for tension headaches…Four weeks after cessation of treatment…the patients who received spinal manipulative therapy experienced a sustained therapeutic benefit in all major outcomes in contrast to the patients that received amitriptyline therapy, who reverted to baseline values.” – Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, Boline et al. (1995)
For the Elderly:
“[Elderly] chiropractic users were less likely to have been hospitalized, less likely to have used a nursing home, more likely to report a better health status, more likely to exercise vigorously, and more likely to be mobile in the community. In addition, they were less likely to use prescription drugs.” – Topics in Clinical Chiropractic, Coulter et al. (1996)
For Containing Costs and Getting Workers Back on the Job:
“Findings from this analysis of the Florida DWC claims and medical files indicated that considerable cost savings and more efficient claims resolution may be possible with greater involvement of chiropractic treatment in specific low back cases and other specific musculoskeletal cases.” – MGT of America (2002)
“The overwhelming body of evidence” shows that chiropractic management of low-back pain is more cost-effective than medical management, and that “many medical therapies are of questionable validity or are clearly inadequate.” – The Manga Report (1993)
First contact chiropractic care for common low back conditions costs substantially less than traditional medical treatment and “deserves careful consideration” by managed care executives concerned with controlling health care spending. Medical Care, Stano and Smith (1996)
