I hear this quite often and I know for those just starting their chiropractic journey it is different and hard to understand, especially if you have seen another therapist before who spent more time at each visit.
As such I wanted to take the time to explain why adjustments only take a short time to do, and why it is of more benefit to the body to have a ‘little and often’ intervention, over a lengthy one.
Firstly, we need to understand exactly what an adjustment is doing.
The perception here is that chiropractors ‘crack bones back into place’, and to be honest, this is not the truth. The noise that you hear when we adjust the spine is a release of gasses, like popping bubble wrap, it is not the crunching of bones. The force that we put into the spine is to encourage movement into an area that is not moving well.
Why is that important? Well, when the spine moves well, it is sending signals to your brain to let it know that your body is functioning properly. Yes, your spinal motion is an essential feedback to your brain to let it know that ‘everything is ok’ in the body.
The issue comes when the spine stops moving properly. When this happens, less good signals are sent to your brain, as a result your brain thinks that something is wrong in the body, and here two bad things can happen. One, your brain now starts to flood the body with stress hormones, like cortisol. Two, parts of your brain that do not receive messages begin to slow and degenerate.
So, you can see that a spine not moving well causes the body to become sick, with a flood of stress hormones, that are a precursor to many illnesses, and a brain that is slowing down thus reducing the functions of the body.
The fix for this is quite simple. Adjustments to the spine to encourage motion back, will restore correct signalling to the brain, this will reduce stress hormones and wake up the areas of the brain that were starting to slow down.
However, when patients come to see us, we often see that this process has been going on for years. Therefore, the body has learned this bad behaviour and as such, to change it is a re-learning process.
Like anything learned, it takes time and repetition. From that you can see why often you need a lot of adjustments over a course of time to have an effect.
But again, why does it only take a few minutes to do the adjustment?
This is down to two things also. One, knowing where to adjust. At Epoch we do a very thorough exam and all our chiropractors are skilled and experienced to know exactly where to adjust. And quite simply, when you know where to adjust, there is not a lot more you need to do.
Two, as most of our patients see from their HRV (Heart Rate Variability) testing, their body is working overtime, caught in the ‘fight and flight’ reaction. Because the body has been in the stressful state for so long, and it is caught in a state of ‘overwhelm’ and as such if too much is done on each visit, the body can be further stressed by that intervention. And as such, less is more.
So there you have it, your short introduction to the world of neuroplasticity, chiropractic, and healing.
As Hippocrates said, “to find the true cause of disease, man must first look to the human frame and spine”.
To achieve your best health, we aim to get your spine moving and functioning properly. And this takes both time, repetition, and teamwork.
With love,
Tom
