What exactly do chiropractor’s treat? Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, a chiropractor at 57th Street Chiropractic in New York City, gives us the scoop:
Chiropractic is about total health and wellness. Wellness includes the whole body. It is not just about back pain and neck pain in my office. People think of chiropractors as back doctors. In my practice and in the world of chiropractors, we don’t heal anything, rather, the body heals itself. When your nerves get pinched in your spine, the energy gets blocked from traveling through your nervous system and into your immune system which controls all the healing in your body. We adjust spinal misalignment prevent your body from healing itself, so you can function at your optimal.
A common case which we see in my office is when one has pinched nerves in his lower back and/or sciatica, which is pain from a pinched nerve in your lower back which travels into one of your legs. Frequently, people who have sciatica have constipation or diarrhea because the same nerve that goes along the back of the leg has other branches that control your intestines and your digestive system.
Additionally, people with different types of headaches such as tension headaches have pressure that builds up in the cervical spine, the nerves from your neck, recur, or travel up into your head and can cause tension headaches. We would work to adjust to relieve the nerves from that pressure.
A severe case would be when someone comes in with herniated disks that are putting pressure on the spinal nerve. When that is the case, we do manipulation to realign the vertebrae and get the pressure off the disc so the disc is no longer going to swell up and hit the nerve as much. Then, that it is going to return normal function to the nerve and the patient is going to feel better.
I had a women come in with two herniated discs. She was supposed to be going in for two different surgeries, one on her neck and one on her lower back. Her cousin happened to see one of our ads in the newspaper and sent her into my office without ever having met me – to this day the woman has not had either surgery. She still has pain on occasion but she has never had the surgery. That surgical option is always going to be there. Surgery should always be the last resort.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
