Gainesville Chiropractor | Gainesville chiropractic care | GA |

Chiropractice treatments relieve pain without drugs or surgery

What is chiropractic care?

Chiropractic is a natural method of health care that treats the causes of physical problems - not just the symptoms alone. It's based on a simple - but powerful - premise: Your body is better able to heal itself when your spine functions normally and your lifestyle is healthy. There's nothing mysterious about chiropractic. In fact, it's simple to understand. Many people say, "It's just common sense."

The spinal column is the critical pathway of your nervous system. It consists of individual bones called vertebrae. Each vertebrae is separated by a tough gelatinous material we call a spinal disc. Spinal discs are the soft padding between two hard bones. They enable our spine to be flexible. Spinal discs cushion the vertebrae and prevent them from touching and grinding together as we move.

The spinal discs and vertebrae are held in position by muscles and ligaments. Muscles help the bones move. Ligaments are the guide wires that hold the joints in place.

The spinal cord travels through a hollow in every vertebra. At each vertebra, there are a pair of nerves that exit the spinal cord on both the left and right sides. These nerves control all of the organs and systems in your body. Everything from head to toe.

All of the nerve pathways in your body travel through the spinal column.

The spinal cord is the conduit for the feelings, movements and functions of your entire body. The nerves of your head, hands, arms, back, legs and feet, as well as all your internal organs travel through your spinal cord (click here to view diagram). In short, the health of your entire body depends on a smooth, unobstructed nerve flow through the spinal column.

When your spine is naturally aligned and healthy, your body is able to work just fine. But when vertebrae are misaligned it puts stress on your neural pathways and your body will not function as nature intended. This often leads to pain or disease.

For example: Imagine you have a headache. Your neck protects your spinal cord and spinal nerves, while supporting and balancing the 10-pound weight of your head. The nerves in the upper neck lead to your head and if your spinal column is misaligned it puts pressure on these nerves. This misalignment is often the cause of recurring headaches.But the cause of your spinal misalignment (called a subluxation) could be many things: Poor posture, sports injury, spinal deterioration, work stress, or just plain wear and tear. But the headache pain is a signal. Something is wrong!

To relieve your headache pain, you could take drugs to make it more bearable. But drugs do not cure the cause. They only mask the symptom. Remember, pain is your body's warning that a problem exists. When you feel pain, it's your cue to take action to find and fix the cause.

Many problems are caused by pressure on the nerves due to spinal misalignment. This pressure is the result of vertebrae (spinal bones) that have become twisted, tilted, rotated or damaged. A spinal misalignment (called a subluxation) can be caused by traumatic events, such as automobile accidents or sports injuries, but more often they are caused by poor posture, repetitive usage, overexertion, stress or wear and tear from daily routines.

Then, nerves are pinched by the vertebrae as they leave the spinal column and travel to other parts of the body. That's why a misaligned spinal bone in your lower back can cause intense leg pain (sciatica), or muscle tension in your upper back and neck can contribute to headaches or arm and shoulder pain.

Your chiropractic doctor is trained to recognize the problems caused by spinal misalignments and with gentle spinal adjustments, realigns the spinal column to its natural position. Once the spine returns to a more natural position, pressure on the nerve pathways is relieved and the physical problem - along with the pain - goes away.