How do you know if your back needs to be adjusted?

Signs You Need a Chiropractic Adjustment Chiropractic care offers a natural way to treat sciatica, an annoying condition that causes pain to spread from the back to one or both legs. Sciatica occurs when the nerves in the back become inflamed and irritated. The problem can occur if a herniated disc or a misaligned vertebra presses on the nerve. Fortunately, the chiropractor can treat sciatica with adjustments, cold therapy, massages, spinal decompression, ultrasound and electrical nerve stimulation.

If you've been struggling with tension headaches or migraines, your chiropractor offers drug-free relief for your painful symptoms. Adjustments and other treatments increase blood flow to the head and relax tight muscles. Chiropractic treatment can improve migraines and headaches that originate in the neck, based on evidence-based practical recommendations provided by The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. Reduced blood flow or nerve problems may be to blame if you feel numbness and tingling in your hands, feet, legs, arms or other parts of the body.

Adjustments decrease pressure on nerves and blood vessels, reducing pain and improving blood flow. Spinal decompression therapy has been shown to help with disc bulging and sciatica. How a C1 setting could stop your headaches. After examining the patient, the chiropractor will use their hands to detect areas of misalignment in the spinal column called subluxations.

This technique is known as palpation, and involves feeling points of sensitivity, tension, heat or other sensations throughout different parts of the body. With experience, a skilled chiropractor can detect subtle changes in muscle tone or joint movement that indicate the presence of an area that requires adjustment. Let's say you feel general stiffness in your joints or muscles or that you have a limited range of motion due to a pre-existing medical condition or poor lifestyle management. In that case, chiropractors can help intervene and improve range of motion.

They work intensively with joints and muscles, and exercise and physical therapy can help restore function in the best possible way. If you have poor posture, it could be a sign of misalignment of the spine or a limited range of motion of a joint for several reasons. The chiropractor usually works with the muscles and bones of the joints to help improve posture and alignment. When you tell your chiropractor that you are feeling pain, tingling, numbness or weakness in a certain area, he is able to translate those signals.

For example, a tingling in the elbow may mean that the shoulder joint is misaligned. Lower back pain after a car accident is likely to indicate a herniated disc.