The difference between corrective care and relief care is the difference between optimal health and merely applying a band-aid to cover the symptoms.
 

Although Chiropractic is effective in providing patch-up or pain relief treatment, we have found correcting the spine offers long term benefits for decades to come.  This is why our office specializes in Corrective Chiropractic care.
 

Thanks to technological advances and a new understanding of the spine and nervous system, we are now able to correct the spine and use pre and post x-rays to document this change.  These changes are achieved through a series of gentle and specifically precise adjustments.  If we are able to accept your case, a care plan will be recommended based on the pre-existing levels of degeneration in your spine, your age, levels of activity, and your response to an adjustment.  Not every spine is correctable for us, so we always start with a check-up to evaluate your potential for success in our office.

When a person seeks Chiropractic care and when their chiropractor accepts them for care, it is essential that they are both working toward the same goal.  Traditionally, the focus of health care is centered upon a person’s symptoms and the treatment or relief of these symptoms.  This is the entire basis for relief care.  Today, Chiropractic care is very well known for its ability to provide relief care and is often referred to as miraculous in its ability to provide relief where all other forms of health care have failed.  However, although many chiropractors specialize in and are extremely successful with providing relief care, this was never the intended purpose for Chiropractic.

Chiropractic from its inception over 110 years ago was designed to be a corrective form of health care.  The goal or objective of Chiropractic is to identify the underlying cause of a person’s health challenges and to correct them.  A condition of the spine known as Vertebral Subluxation interferes with the natural ability of the body to heal itself.  Corrective and Wellness chiropractors locate Vertebral Subluxations, thoroughly analyze all of its components, design a specific program of adjustments and exercises to correct Vertebral Subluxation, and most importantly, help you and your family achieve a state of optimal health and high quality of life.  Most importantly, our focus is maintaining this healthy spine and nervous system over the course of a lifetime.
 

To fully appreciate and understand this difference and the importance of Corrective Care, let’s start by looking at the difference between “symptoms” and “body signals.”  The difference is best understood through a simple comparison.  If a person sprains their ankle and they experience pain in their ankle – this is a direct relationship.  The location of pain and the location of their injury are the same.  This is a classic example of a symptom.  However, if a person is suffering from heart disease and is experiencing pain into their left arm – there is likely nothing wrong with their left arm.  This is a classic example of a body signal for a heart problem.  It would seem quite silly, even foolish, to spend  tremendous amounts of time, energy and resources treating a person’s arm pain when the cause of this pain is coming from the heart.

With spine and nervous system problems, it is primarily these “body signals” which are experienced.  If Vertebral Subluxation is affecting the spine and causes pressure on the nerve going to your leg, over time you may begin to experience leg pain (commonly called sciatica).  Examining and treating the leg would be in vain.  Depending on which nerve(s) in the spine are being affected will determine which body signals you may experience.  (Be sure to see the Vertebral Subluxation Nerve Chart).  It is also important to remember, significant time may elapse between the onset of Vertebral Subluxation and the initial body signals.  Your body has an amazing ability to adapt to the internal and external environment. 

“I have low back pain.  What does my neck have to do with it?”

This is common thinking for people new to Chiropractic Corrective care and equally perplexing to a society conditioned to the band-aid approach to health care.  However, after gaining a better understanding about how the spine deteriorates, the answer to this comes into clearer focus.

Very commonly, one of the first Vertebral Subluxations to occur in the spine is the neck.  This is for a variety of reasons including the fact that the vertebra, ligaments and muscles in the neck and the head (especially in children) are disproportionately heavy in comparison with the rest of the body.  Small slips and falls as a child, or even the birth process itself, can result in the small vertebra in the neck becoming displaced or subluxated.  The body behaving very intelligently will change our posture over time, often shifting the head well in front of the shoulders and leaning the head to one side or the other to reduce the pressure this subluxation is creating on the spinal cord.  In our office, you will often hear the phrase: “The entire body will follow the head and neck.”  This is why.

As a result of a change in head posture, the rib cage may bend or shift to reduce pressure on the spinal nerves.  Similarly, as a result of this change, the big muscles of the lumbar spine and pelvis now compensate to further reduce the unwanted pressure on the spinal nerves. 

Believe it or not, this common “domino-like” pattern within the body is a much better state than suffering the immediate and devastating effects of spinal cord and spinal nerve pressure.  However, this leaves abnormal stress and pressure on the vertebral discs, creating an imbalance and causing them to begin wearing out at an accelerated rate.  As this process continues, it is most often not until the discs of the spine begin to significantly wear, and the body begins to lose its ability to naturally compensate to the Vertebral Subluxations, that we finally start to see the intermittent body signals related to subluxation.  Sometimes this process can take years. 

When Vertebral Subluxation is present in the neck, quite often, the first place in the spine to begin to fail and lose the ability to compensate is the lumbar spine.  With the neck functioning improperly due to Subluxation, all of the forces of gravity within the body now fall squarely on the last remaining stronghold of the spine; in this case the lumbar spine.  As the months and years pass with Subluxation left uncorrected, the spine becomes rapidly weaker, the aging process is accelerated and the bones experience continued degeneration and deterioration.

So as you can see, if we begin treating this person’s lower back pain without thoroughly analyzing their vertebral Subluxations and the fact that the cause was actually coming from the neck – we may be able to temporarily relieve their lower back pain, but it will only be a matter of time before it returns, because the back pain was merely a body signal. 

Sadly, this is why one of the fastest growing health conditions today is “Failed Back Surgery”.  The cause of the surgical patient’s low back pain was never addressed or even understood by the surgeon before the operation was performed.  Very often, (commonly about 2 years later), the surgeon recommends another lumbar surgery because the first one failed and the patient is worse.  The cause of their original spinal stress was never removed and this common medical mistake has led to countless people having multiple spinal surgeries leading them quickly down the road to permanent disability.

I hope this gives you a greater understanding of the importance of the entire spine working together to bring optimal health to the body.  Corrective and Wellness care chiropractors specialize in detecting, analyzing, correcting or in some cases minimizing Vertebral Subluxation.  We provide gentle, specific, scientific and precise adjustments over time and with repetition to correct the cause…instead of applying a temporary band-aid which creates great harm to your long-term future health.  For this, we are rewarded with amazing results.  And as for you?  You are rewarded with vibrant health for decades to come and the amazing quality of life that only a healthy nervous system can bring!

We look forward to serving you!  Call 972-394-3350 today.