In our clinic, we call our approach the 360 Degrees of Wellness. We want to achieve objective long-term results, which comes from a healthy spine. Your spine houses your nervous system and your nervous system controls everything in the body like feeling and function. We want to get your spine in alignment and we want it to move well. We want the tissue to be healthy, and we want the muscles to be balanced and fit and be able to perform at a higher level.
Stability
Our patient base is typically corporate America and we’re really sedentary in our lifestyle, which means that we’re not moving much. So, if we’re not moving much the mechanoreceptors within joints that pick up on movement and sensory stimulation don’t work as well.
When you come to see a chiropractor, your spine and the joints, so it could be hip, knee, foot and ankle, essentially get adjusted. When you’re getting adjusted, it stimulates mechanoreceptors in the spine and the joints and activates them. This allows you to develop that sensory response to dealing with walking on an uneven trail for example. Stimulus is basically walking on loose rocks and uneven ground, such as hiking. The better you are at dealing with stimulus, the better you are at staying on your feet, mitigating trips and falls.
We involve specific stability exercises of the lower extremity as part of our chiropractic care plans. For the majority of people, for example, the number one cause of disability is lower back pain. So, in treating the lower back, you’re not just physically treating the lower back, you’re treating it with adjustments, soft tissue therapy, and traction, but you’re also supplementing that with a lot of rehab. That involves diaphragmatic breathing. The diaphragm’s important to control pelvic floor and core.
Your core is going to be involved in balance, so it’s not just coming from your ankle, it’s going to be coming from those core muscles. As you go through a program that we deliver, you’re working on those foundational muscles in the core and your obliques so when you’re out walking, you’re going to have more stability in your trunk. It’s going to give you more stability down into the lower extremity. The more stable you are through being able to deal with the stimulus and the ability to physically stabilize your body, the more it is going to allow you to exercise, if that’s hiking, trail running, mountaineering with obviously a reduced risk of injury.
Agility
Chiropractors can specifically help with agility. Agility is part of our ability to move and balance and be nimble. When we’re in pain and we have dysfunction in lower back and the pelvis, that can trickle down into what we call the kinetic chain, that’s the hip, knee, foot and ankle. And if you’re not functioning well there, with limited range of motion, inactive muscle balance, then those things are going to be a lot harder.
Range of Motion
It’s all about your mechanics. When we are bending, lifting and twisting, how are we doing it? We educate our patients as they come through the office on how they should be sitting at work, how they should be standing at work, and then essentially how they should be functioning in the gym.
We teach proper mechanics of how to bend and lift without causing injury. If you’re bending and lifting and twisting, the consequence of that can be low back pain. You need the low back and the pelvis to be healthy, so the spine moves well. It needs to have full range of motion.
We need good joint function, joints that move well. When the joint moves, it allows us to create stimulation of discs. The discs stay nice and healthy and hydrated. It fires up those mechanoreceptors so the joints can pick up on movement. We need a spine that’s in alignment. So, if you’re out of alignment, we need to get it in alignment. That comes through our chiropractic biophysics protocol where we’re tractioning the spine. You can get the spine in alignment through corrective traction. That’s going to allow good weight distribution. It’s going to create objectivity and long-term results.
Muscle Balance
We are built to move. When we don’t move, big muscles switch off. So then when we go from 9:00 to 5:00, Monday to Friday, and then we get outside and go hiking and moving, if things aren’t engaging and activating properly, then that’s going to create dysfunction, which essentially over time is going to break us down.
We obviously need healthy muscle balance or health, so it allows things to move freely. So that’s why we’re going to be doing a lot of soft tissue therapy within the office, breaking down muscle adhesion which is like glue in a muscle. And then lastly, we need to move with stability. So, then you need hamstrings that are engaged, glutes that are engaged, core muscles that are engaged, and then obviously following that up with good mechanics, bending at the knee, not from the hip. When you’re bending, it’s a hinge, not a hip.
We need healthy muscle tissue. We may have postural changes, a previous injury can create weak and flexible muscle tissue. So, in our programs, we’re addressing that with myofascial work. We need a spine that moves well and that’s in alignment with healthy muscles and balanced muscle strength.
We will take you through orthopedic exams, neurological exams, and movement assessments to figure out where the dysfunction’s coming from. From there, we can rehab those muscle groups that aren’t doing their job due to compensation injury, corporate posture, for example.
If you’re going through a correct care plan in our office, we’re going to be addressing all those key points. If you follow through on your treatment plan and then all the education and advice that we give you as you go through the program, there’s absolutely no reason why you should be breaking down. It all comes back to the premise of being holistic. No drugs, no surgery, an inside-out approach, we’re not putting things in a body to fix them inside. We’re fixing the internal dysfunction to get where we need to get to.
