What do Chiropractors treat?

Even though the first thing that may spring to mind is that ‘chiropractors treat backs’ – which they certainly do very successfully – today’s chiropractors also diagnose and treat other neuro-musculoskeletal disorders as well as a number of other conditions.

In general Chiropractors mainly treat:
● back, plevis, neck and shoulder problems
● joint, posture and muscle problems
● leg pain and many causes of sciatica symptoms (see BCA website)
● sports injuries

You may also see an improvement in some types of:
● asthma
● headaches, including migraine

"It is most necessary to know the nature of the spine, what its natural purposes are, for such knowledge will be requisite for many diseases."

Hippocrates of Kos (5th century BC)

Chiropractors are specialist manipulative practitioners who concentrate on diagnosing and treating disorders of joints, muscles, bones, ligaments and tendons. Particular attention is focussed to the spine due to the fact that the close relationship between the spine and the central nervous system, for which it offers structural protection, is pertinent to a lot of conditions chiropractors treat. This is a feature and therefore why chiropractic treatment can be so successful in many cases of head, arm, trunk and leg pains, numbness or pins and needles. Treatment aims to bring about an improvement or cure to many physical symptoms such as headache, facial pain, fibrositis, ‘frozen shoulder’, ‘tennis elbow’, carpal tunnel syndrome, rib pains, lumbago, ‘slipped disc’, buttock, hip or groin pain, sciatica and knee or ankle pain.

HOW DOES CHIROPRACTIC INFLUENCE CONDITIONS OTHER THAN BACK PAIN?

The spines close relationship to the autonomic nervous system, which controls all our unconscious functions (such as blood pressure, body temperature regulation, sweating, the pH of the blood, the movement of food through the intestines, kidney, liver, gall-bladder function etc. etc. etc.) means that chiropractic adjustments may frequently help with many other conditions seemingly not associated with spinal disorders. Through the mediation of the autonomic nervous system, chiropractic corrective adjustments may help to banish or relieve such problems as migraines, vertigo, period pains, high blood pressure, water retention, constipation, bed-wetting, catarrh and asthma.

WHY NOT JUST TAKE PAIN KILLERS FOR JOINT PAINS?

When a joint is not functioning correctly (e.g. poor posture, trauma, sports injuries etc.) there can be associated pain. Pain is not the actual problem, pain is your bodies way of telling you that there is a problem. So when you next take pain killers the question to ask yourself is this “Am I solving the problem, or am I just stopping the important nerve signal message that tells me something is wrong, from reaching my brain?“ Admittedly pain killers can help with the pain, indeed we have all taken them at some point in our lives. However pain killers will not magically make the joint work properly again, therefore not necessarily solving the problem which is the cause of the pain, they suppress the symptoms. In this instance chiropractic treatment would be aimed at restoring the correct joint function. This would therefore be removing the actual problem that caused the pain in the first place and by removing the problem they would be removing the pain too.

An example: When the warning light appears on your car's dashboard to inform you that the brake pads are low what do you do? Chiropractors change the brake pads to turn the warning light off, in other words… treat the problem to remove the signal. Pain killers are the other option and that is not changing the brake pads; that is just cutting the wire, or removing the light bulb so there is no warning on the dashboard any more. The problem has not gone away, damage is still being done by the worn brake pads, but at least that annoying light on the dashboard has been turned off.