Hi, I’m Dr. Carla LeClerc. I’m one of the chiropractors here at Corrective Care Chiropractic in Westford, Massachusetts.
What Is a Subluxation?
The main thing we look for and correct in the spine is what’s called a subluxation. Using the spine to show you, a subluxation is a word chiropractors use to describe a misalignment in the spine that causes irritation to the nerves.
Subluxations can be caused by different stressors to the spine and the body: chemical, emotional, and physical stressors.
Macrotraumas and Microtraumas
Focusing just on the physical, there are macrotraumas and microtraumas. A macrotrauma is anything from a car accident to a sports injury to a fall that injures those joints.
Microtraumas, which we see more often, are the little things we do every day, like poor posture, poor sleeping position, or poor positioning at work.
When we have people with low back pain, we ask them about their trauma history and see if we can determine when those subluxations occurred. Sometimes they can occur way back when we were little ones learning how to walk or ride a bike, or even during the birth process itself.
Correcting Subluxations With Chiropractic Adjustments
We see a lot of patients with low back pain here. What we do to correct subluxations in the spine is called the chiropractic adjustment. That helps relieve pressure on the nerves, allowing the nerves to communicate better, relieving some of that pain in the low back, and allowing your body to function better and heal.
Massage Therapy and Chiropractic Care
So, what’s the difference between seeing, say, a massage therapist or a chiropractor?
While a massage therapist is great, they’re focusing on relaxing or relieving the tight muscles surrounding the spine. As chiropractors, we’re going to get to the cause of why those muscles are tight in the first place.
Looking at the spine again, you have the disc between the vertebrae and the nerves, and surrounding the spine are muscles. When those bones are out of alignment, those muscles will spasm to protect the joint. By correcting the subluxation, or the cause, those muscles will relax.
Conventional Medicine and Chiropractic Care
The difference between using conventional medicine and chiropractic care is, again, that chiropractic care gets to the cause of the symptoms, allowing your body to function better and heal.
By taking medications, there are side effects, and they’re not addressing the actual cause of why the low back pain is there in the first place. Chiropractic care is safer and more effective.
