Chiropractic therapies can improve a very vast range of injuries and conditions. Designed to restore balance to the musculoskeletal system, and to promote optimum spinal alignment and health, chiropractic care can expedite your body’s natural healing efforts, improve your immune system functioning, restore full range of movement, and more. Each patient is treated on a case-by-case basis and given an individualized and multi-pronged plan for meeting his or her personal health and wellness goals. Most people recognize remarkable decreases in pain and inflammation with each visit. However, these services are meant to provide gradual and lasting changes.
As such, it is not uncommon for individual treatments to include multiple office visits, and recommendations for long-term lifestyle changes. If you’ve been working with a chiropractor or intend to schedule a first visit, you might want to know how to determine when chiropractic is working. Although chiropractic care is the preferred manner of dealing with numerous functional and alignment-related issues, it isn’t guaranteed to work as a standalone solution for every problem and every patient.
The best way to know whether these services are right for you is by scheduling a consultation appointment. During this initial visit, your provider will review your medical history, thoroughly examine your spine and other connected structures, and ask questions about the problems that you’re experiencing. With the information gained from this interview and the related diagnostic processes, your chiropractor can establish a needs-specific treatment plan, and give you an idea of what your journey to good health might look like.
Signs Your Chiropractic Care Is Working
Many people choose to work with chiropractors in an effort to either avoid using prescription pain medications or to limit their reliance upon these products. Unlike pain pills, chiropractic care is all-natural and it doesn’t include any uncomfortable side effects. Chiropractic therapies aren’t addictive, and they’re unlikely to impair your ability to drive, operate heavy machinery, or engage in any other focused activities. If you’ve been using over-the-counter or prescribed pain medications to alleviate back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, or any other form of discomfort, you’ll likely notice that the need to use these products gradually abates. Strategies such as:
- Ultrasound therapy
- Inversion therapy
- Massage therapy
- Acupuncture
- Acupressure
are all capable of alleviating tension, built-up stress, inflammation, and even swelling. As these treatments are performed over the course of several office visits, the targeted area will invariably start feeling less stiff and sore. In addition to alleviating discomfort, many of these services also expedite blood flow to the injured area for improved oxygen delivery, nutrient-delivery, and healing. When chiropractic services are sought for serious subluxations of the spine, a number of noticeable improvements can be achieved with each manual or computer-assisted adjustment. When treating spinal alignment issues, chiropractors slowly finesse displaced discs back into position.
This alleviates tension and stress in surrounding muscle groups that are overcompensating due to injury, reduces pressure on pinched or compressed nerves, and improves the brain’s ability to transmit important messages to the nerves via the spine. If you’re receiving chiropractic therapy for nerve compression, expect a gradual decrease in numbness and tingling sensations, improved mobility, and fewer sharp, shooting pains that make basic, everyday movements uncomfortable.
As brain to nerve communication improves, many secondary issues that patients are dealing with begin to clear up as well. For instance, if you’ve been living with recurring headaches, migraine headaches, excessive congestion, insomnia, or mood swings, these problems may eventually go away as your spine is slowly realigned. Some people even experience decreases in chemical imbalances that have been negatively impacting their weight loss efforts and metabolic performance, and the gradual clearing of itchy, irritated skin rashes. The therapies leveraged in chiropractic care are rarely meant to deliver rapid, overnight results. What they will do, however, is produce incremental improvements as balance is progressively restored across the entire musculoskeletal system.
It’s additionally important to note that if you’ve been receiving chiropractic care for quite some time and have yet to achieve any remarkable improvements, there may be certain lifestyle factors or life habits that are exacerbating the very issues your chiropractor is working to correct. Sometimes changes such as weight loss, the introduction of ergonomic work equipment, and the performance of needs-specific stretching and strength-building exercises are required. When you’re ready to benefit from the hands-on and entirely natural approach to addressing illness and injuries that chiropractors provide, we can help. Call us today at 205-637-1363.
