Dirty Words of Chiropractic: Part 1

I've been writing about health and healing for quite some time and it can seem as if I am repeating myself. The rules for health are fairly basic but there is still plenty to discuss when it comes to chiropractic. As a thank you to my regular readers I am now going to reveal some of the dirty words of chiropractic.

Just like the old days on the back of the school bus and in the bathroom stall with the broken door, we can be rebellious and talk about some surprising topics. How can there be dirty words in chiropractic? Well, all professions have their disagreements and they can get ugly.

The chiropractic dirty word I will blurt out is subluxation. Oh, the cringing has begun. While some of my peers will rant all night about this word's profoundness, the other half will say it is as useless and extinct as the woolly mammoth.

I give tons of credit to my own practice members. They know all about subluxations. They come in to the office and tell me with no doubts that they are subluxated. They get adjusted. We work together to reduce their subluxations.

I don't know why it is a dirty word when when orthopedics, dentistry, and ophthalmology also use the word subluxation to define a dislocation or displacement of some type of anatomy. In chiropractic it is a spinal joint that has lost full range of motion which also demonstrates a number of dysfunctional processes that are taking place to cause discomfort and energy depletion.

A subluxation shows there is a stress in play that interferes with homeostasis. If it goes on too long, permanent damage can be observed. We don't want it to get to the permanent point.

The problem according to chiropractic complainers is that subluxations are a bit subtle. It is not as blaring as a heart attack or fractured femur. A chiropractor doesn't get the heroic response for adjusting spines the same way as someone holding an artery together during transplant surgery.

Chiropractic researchers want to perfectly measure a subluxation so they can say, there it is, oh my gosh! We can, however, look at health indicators before and after a spinal adjustment. There are clear changes shown with blood pressure, brain wave patterns, endocrine responses, immune responses, muscle activity and skin temperature.

Let's not overlook the unique form of palpation where the chiropractor relies on the hands to assess thousands of spinal presentations over many years of practice, storing them in his or her brain in order to give a personalized adjustment to each patient.

Subluxations are not complicated to my practice members. They know when they have let stress get the better of them. They also learn over time their own subluxation patterns. They have trained themselves to be more aware of their bodies' needs.

If you're not the type to shout out dirty words in public, you can whisper. But make sure to learn how subluxations affect quality of life so you can do something about it.