Chiropractic care has come a long way since it was founded in 1895 by Daniel David Palmer, who maintained that all diseases were caused by dislocated bones. For a long time, though, regular MDs took a dim view of chiropractic care and chiropractors. But today that has all changed. Now, you’ll find both mutual appreciation and professional cooperation flowing back and forth between “conventional” medicine and chiropractic practices. In fact, more and more interdisciplinary practices are popping up where you can find chiropractors, medical doctors, and physical therapists all working together in a complementary fashion.

Taking a holistic approach, chiropractors focus on both normalizing joint function and providing nutritional guidance. They use hands-on spinal manipulation and alternative treatments to help patients’ bodies do their own healing. One of the key services chiropractors provide is easing pain and restoring mobility through spinal manipulation to ensure proper alignment of the musculoskeletal structure (where the muscles and bones work together).

Although the benefits of working with a chiropractor are numerous, here are just a few common situations where chiropractors can help.

1. To get rid of chronic headaches

Maybe you’re beginning to worry about the effects of taking painkillers every day for your headaches, a legitimate concern indeed. Those chronic headaches that just won’t seem to go away can have several causes, including nutrients missing in your diet, dehydration, oxygen deprivation, or neck/spinal misalignment.

Your chiropractor can pinpoint the cause of the headaches and help relieve the symptoms by recommending diet changes, realigning your neck or spine, and/or improving the oxygen supply to your brain. And all of this will be done without the use of possibly toxic drugs or medications. In most cases, chiropractic care simply eases the pressure on affected nerves (the most common cause of headaches) and can even help with migraines.

2. To relieve joint or muscle pain

Again, as with headaches, painkillers are not a good solution — either short- or long-term — for ongoing joint or muscle pain. Besides the adverse side effects of these medications, they could be simply masking the underlying problem of musculoskeletal misalignment.

Trained to restore optimal bodily functioning, your chiropractor can use spinal manipulation to help reduce or eliminate pain in joints and muscles. In addition to helping realign the spine, chiropractic manipulations can also help increase blood supply and nerve conductivity to affected joints/muscles, thus further relieving pain and improving functioning.

3. To get rid of nagging back pain

What can make life more miserable than chronic, nagging back pain? It affects almost everything you do, and there seems to be no way to get relief short of surgery or drugs. But there is another option. Chiropractic care has been rated by Consumer Reports as the number-one remedy for lower back pain — even over standard medical care, pharmaceuticals, and physical therapy.

A chiropractor can help determine the source of your back pain (for example, bad posture or work-related stresses) and then help you get relief from the pain without invasive surgery or powerful narcotics. Relief can be as simple as a spinal alignment and avoiding what caused the painful condition initially.

4. To relieve sharp, stabbing leg pain

At various times, people experience sharp, stabbing pain in the legs sometimes coupled with or alternating with tingling and/or weakness. These things are often evidence of a pinched nerve near the spine or a slipped disc. But again, surgery doesn’t have to be your only option.

Not only can a chiropractor diagnose what is causing this pain or tingling, but they can also perform the needed spinal adjustment to alleviate the pain and get rid of the tingling. With the right adjustment, pressure will be taken off the nerve, thus eliminating the cause of your leg pain.

5. To restore range of motion

Another frequent and troubling condition is loss of range of motion, or loss of flexibility, in arms or legs. Or have you ever been unable to turn your head as far as you formerly could in one direction? Whatever the case, your normal daily functioning can be limited. A chiropractic adjustment can relieve the pain causing your limited range of motion and help your body function at its best again.

6. To make sitting at your job more comfortable

Many of us have to sit for long hours at our jobs, for example hunched over a keyboard and/or staring at a computer monitor most of the day. And most of the time, we do these things for hours on end with very poor posture or in an odd, awkward position. The result is often pain in the neck, between the shoulders, and in the upper back. The long-term result, if the condition is left untreated, can even be a herniated disc.

The best course, if your job is like this, is to visit a chiropractor regularly. A chiropractor can return your spine to correct alignment so that these conditions don’t worsen over time.

7. To live a healthier life

Or maybe you just want to be healthier — to feel better, be more active, and just enjoy life more. But to achieve a healthier life, you’ll first have to become more health conscious and learn what your body needs, with respect to both nutrition and exercise.

And chiropractors know about a lot more than just spinal adjustments. Your chiropractor can assess your unique individual situation and guide you in choosing the best diet and the best exercise program. Your chiropractor can get your body functioning optimally and then assist you in keeping it that way.

Quest Weight Loss/Shoar Chiropractic is dedicated to helping you achieve total wellness through chiropractic adjustments for pain relief and better mobility, as well as sound nutritional guidance and planning. We understand that your body and your life are both complex systems with a multitude of interconnected parts that all function together. That’s why we are committed to treating the whole person, not just the symptoms.

At Shoar Chiropractic, we are committed to producing lasting results, not temporary fixes. The incorporation of advanced scientific-based nutritional supplements, postural training, and strengthening exercises makes our treatment a complete healthy living and mind-body solution. Contact us today for a free consultation!