Chiropractic is not what you might think

The chiropractic center Marc Bony, DC has 17 years of experience

but chiropractic is:

The third largest health profession in the world.

Licensed in 50 states and almost all European countries.

Completely independent of conventional medicine.

Safe, especially when compared to the risks of other health professions.

Based on the principle that health and healing is an innate ability.

Able to be applied safely to all ages of patients.

Primarily interested in establishing the free flow of nerve impulses.

Used by many professional athletes to enhance performance. Recognized by the World Health Organization.

Documented in many reviews across numerous professional publications.

A service covered by Medicare. Included in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

Often unjustly pursued and/or criticized by those who have a poor understanding of it.

The leading natural science of health assistance in the world. A science, an art, and a natural philosophy of health care.

Official organizations

– The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) defines chiropractic as follows: “Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system, the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on overall health.

Chiropractic care is most commonly used to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, joint pain in the arms or legs, and headaches.

Doctors of chiropractic – often referring to themselves as chiropractors or chiropractic physicians – practice drug-free, a manual procedure for health care that includes patient examination, diagnosis, and treatment.

Chiropractors have a broad diagnostic capability and are qualified to recommend exercises, as well as to provide nutritional advice, dietary counseling, and a healthy lifestyle.

The most common therapeutic procedure performed by chiropractic physicians is known as “chiropractic adjustment.”

The purpose of the adjustment is to restore joint mobility by manually applying a controlled force to joints that have become hypomobile – or restricted in their movements – as a result of soft tissue injury.

A soft tissue injury can be caused by a single traumatic event, such as improperly lifting a heavy object, or by repetitive stress, such as sitting in an inappropriate posture with a precarious spinal position for an extended period.

In any case, the injured tissues undergo physical and chemical changes that can cause inflammation, pain, and a decrease in function for the individual suffering from it.

The adjustment of the affected joint and tissue restores mobility, thereby relieving pain and muscle tension and allowing the tissues to heal. The chiropractic adjustment rarely causes discomfort.

However, patients may sometimes experience mild muscle soreness or pain after treatment (as can occur with some types of exercise) that generally resolves within 12 to 48 hours. In many cases, such as lower back pain, chiropractic care may be the primary method of treatment.

When other medical conditions exist, chiropractic care can complement or support medical treatment by alleviating the musculoskeletal aspects associated with the illness.

Doctors of chiropractic can evaluate patients through a clinical examination, laboratory tests, imaging diagnosis, and other diagnostic interventions to determine when chiropractic treatment is appropriate or not.

When chiropractic care is not appropriate for a patient’s condition, chiropractors will promptly refer the patient to an appropriate health care professional, or the condition warrants management in collaboration with other members of the health care team.

Palmer Chiropractic University defines chiropractic as follows: “Chiropractic deals with the relationship between structure (primarily of the spine) and function (primarily coordinated by the nervous system) of your body and how this relationship affects your health.

In the late 1800s, Daniel David (D. D.) Palmer, who founded Palmer University, researched this relationship. His hypotheses and subsequent discoveries laid the foundation for modern chiropractic care. There is no part of the body that escapes the domain of your nervous system.

Improper functioning of the spine due to a slight misalignment – called subluxation – can cause poor function or ill health, even in areas far removed from the spine and the spinal cord itself.

Misalignments can also reduce your body’s ability to adapt to its constantly evolving environment. Even the slightest abnormality in your spine can disrupt the regular transmission of nerve impulses, preventing part of your body from responding optimally.

Chiropractic is a natural form of health care that uses spinal adjustments to correct these misalignments and restore proper functioning of the nervous system, helping your body heal naturally.

Chiropractic does not use drugs or surgery. Instead, a chiropractic adjustment to the spine – the application of a precise force to a specific part of the spinal segment – corrects the misalignments, allowing normal nerve transmission and helping your body recover on its own.

“The International Chiropractic Association (ICA) defines chiropractic as follows:

• “THE SCIENCE of chiropractic deals with the relationship between the joints of the skeleton and the nervous system and the role of this relationship in restoring and maintaining health. The primary interest of chiropractic is the anomalies of the structure or function of the spine clinically known as complex vertebral subluxation. Complex subluxation includes any alteration of the biomechanical and physiological dynamics of contiguous spinal structures that may cause neural disturbances.
• THE PHILOSOPHY of chiropractic holds that the body is a self-healing organism and that a major determining factor in the development of disease states or dysfunction is the body’s inability to comprehend its internal and/or external environment. Directly or indirectly, all bodily functions are controlled by the nervous system; therefore, a central theme of chiropractic theory regarding health is the premise that abnormal bodily function may be caused by interference in nerve transmission and expression due to pressure, tension, or distortion of the spinal cord, spinal nerves, or peripheral nerves as a result of a displacement of spinal segments or other bony structures (subluxation).
• THE ART of chiropractic refers to the skill and judgment necessary for the detection, location, analysis, control, reduction, and correction of complex vertebral subluxation fundamentally. It also involves determining any contraindication for providing chiropractic care to any particular adjustment method. The ICA considers chiropractic spinal adjustment to be unique and singular to the chiropractic profession due to its particularity in utility and the logic of application.
• THE PRACTICE of chiropractic consists of analyzing interference with normal nerve transmission and expression produced by anomalies of one or more vertebral motor units or other skeletal structures and correcting this through an adjustment of these structures for the restoration and maintenance of health, without the use of drugs or surgery. The ICA considers the therapeutic use of drugs and surgery to be the practice of medicine. The term “analysis” in this context includes the use of X-rays and other analytical instruments typically used in chiropractic practice.

Chiropractic care utilizes the body’s inherent rehabilitative energy for the restoration and maintenance of health through the normalization of the relationships between the musculoskeletal structures of the spine and the nervous system. The science of chiropractic recognizes that the body actually heals itself and, therefore, holds that it does not cure disease.

“Chiropractic is NOT: Focused on back problems or pain relief. Regulated by conventional medicine. Intended to replace any need for medical treatment.

A cure-all. A method to straighten the spine. Focused on making a diagnosis and prescribing treatment. Relatively expensive compared to other health care methods.