Chiropractic
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on diagnosis, treatment and prevention of bodily disorders of the musculoskeletal system. Generally it is considered an alternative medicine and just recently has come of the coverage of health insurance. Basically chiropractic treatment works by manual therapy and includes spinal manipulation. Traditionally it works with the manipulation of the vertebrae as many situations can cause the vertebra to come out of alignment. This is called subluxation.
“In simplest terms, a subluxation (a.k.a. Vertebral Subluxation) is when one or more of the bones of your spine (vertebrae) move out of position and create pressure on, or irritate spinal nerves. Spinal nerves are the nerves that come out from between each of the bones in your spine. This pressure or irritation on the nerves then causes those nerves to malfunction and interfere with the signals traveling over those nerves.
“How does this affect you? Your nervous system controls and coordinates all the functions of your body. If you interfere with the signals traveling over nerves, parts of your body will not get the proper nerve messages and will not be able to function at 100% of their innate abilities. In other words, some part of your body will not be working properly.
“It is the responsibility of the Doctor of Chiropractic to locate subluxations, and reduce or correct them. This is done through a series of chiropractic adjustments specifically designed to correct the vertebral subluxations in your spine. Chiropractors are the only professionals who undergo years of training to be the experts at correcting subluxations.” (1)
D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s and his son B. J, Palmer quickly expanded it in the early 20th century.
”The Early Years… D.D. Palmer
The first chiropractic adjustment was performed in Davenport, Iowa in the year 1895 by a man named Daniel David Palmer. D.D. Palmer was a frontier renaissance man. During his lifetime, Palmer would be a school teacher, a farmer — developing a new variety of raspberry, which he called “Sweet Home” — a grocer and eventually practicing as a “Magnetic Healer”* in Davenport for a number of years prior to founding chiropractic.
”*Contrary to what its name suggests, magnetic healing had nothing to do with magnets. Rather it was a cross between massage and meridian therapies–which is based upon the concepts of acupuncture and Chinese medicine.
Magnetic healing rose up as an alternative to main stream medicine at the end of the civil war. In 1895 it was still common for medical doctors to use blood letting as a method for curing disease.” (2)
As with many forms of alternative medicines there are those who question chiropractic. I have found it to be quite helpful for me. It is another aspect of health and wellness.
1. http://www.echiropractic.net/what_is_a_subluxation.htm
2. Walter Wardwell, PhD., entitled, “Chiropractic: History and Evolution of a New Profession” Published by Mosby, 1993.