Chiropractic Care Benefits
Chiropractic care is a form of complementary medicine based on the idea that your body can heal itself with the help of specific hands-on manipulations from a trained professional. These manipulations help realign your joints and can potentially lead to pain relief.
Chiropractic treatment may help relieve pain from conditions affecting your:
- Bones
- Cartilage
- Connective tissue
- Joints
- Muscles
Chiropractic Care Techniques
There are multiple adjustment styles within chiropractic but boiled down to their essentials each chiropractor’s approach addresses three key areas regardless of the techniques used.
Manual Therapy
Manual therapy is what the layperson most often associates with chiropractic care. Here, the patient’s joints are manually manipulated, either on an adjusting table or a traction table. In this way, the patient’s joints can be stretched and mobilized, easing pain and also alleviating stress on surrounding musculature.
Soft Tissue Therapy
Having mentioned muscle pain and stress, we would be remiss if we didn’t also discuss how chiropractic adjustment addresses it. The application of heat (to promote flexibility and relieve pain), cold (to prevent swelling and inflammation), and even cutting-edge treatments like cold lasers is often undertaken in tandem with a regimen of stretches, trigger point therapy, and even multiple forms of instrument-assisted therapy. Some chiropractors’ offices will make use of what’s generally considered equipment for physical therapy alongside traditional chiropractic equipment.
Exercise Therapy and Self-Management
In some ways, the chiropractor’s craft overlaps with physical and occupational therapy. After all, s/he is often attempting to help patients restore range of motion, as well as strength lost to atrophy, or imbalances that occur when pain or misalignment cause patients to favor one side of the body, or one muscle group, over another. So from tips for good posture to exercises a patient can do between visits, a good chiropractor gives the patient tools to aid in their recovery and continued well-being.