I am in love with chiropractic. In all the wide and ever widening landscape of healthcare with all of its wonders there is nothing that does what an adjustment can do. Nothing. Staying adjusted.

The thrill fades, however, when the epiphany that is that first good adjustment becomes only a glimpse of success and turns instead into a long trail of adjustment after adjustment with no real signs of lasting change. I’ve been there. There has to be reason and hope. The high bar for success of the chiropractic intervention must be staying adjusted. Being really fixed. But how? Let’s dive in.

What is an adjustment? [1] There are official definitions of the entity that the adjustment seeks to address. This is called a subluxation. In fairness to our consumer public, it is a broad and technical definition that, in my opinion, fails to yield the firm handles required to grasp the matter and steer it to it’s successful end. In the moment an adjustment is delivered, two things are addressed. Motion and alignment. The chicken and the egg, but for this one I’ve chosen which came first. It’s the motion. With a good adjustment, a segment that was “out of line” is put back. But wasn’t the real problem the fact that it couldn’t move back on it’s own? If a joint is really well, isn’t it able to move normally?

Joints or muscles? Another chicken and egg question, except that I don’t always have the answer. The chiropractic model has long been an articularly focused model. Move the bone. And it works, but it has trouble lasting. If the issue is motion, there is no motion at any joint anywhere in the body without normalized muscle function. If the muscle doesn’t yield and participate, the joints can’t move. If the joints can’t move, how can a muscle get short or long normally? And if you’re on my adjusting table, which do I approach first in order for you to stay adjusted? This keeps my job from becoming boring.

So much for the nuts and bolts. But you aren’t an automobile, you’re a person. You are far more than just muscles and joints. There is a triad that imposes itself upon us- the structural, the functional and the environmental. We’ve discussed structure, but what about function. It has been said that form follows function follows form follows function. It’s true. If you come to us and your frame needs adjusting, your form and your function have accommodated your disorder. You have become it and it has become you. Some function disorders require a healthy dose of wax-on/wax-off. Disorders of form always require some combination of conditioning and healing. Everyone is different but we always find ourselves engaging the fundamentals.

Environmental. This can be elusive. Nutrients, toxins, stresses– all of which affect us from within and without. This part of the picture can take more time to develop. As for intervention, do we test, or do we treat? The upper management person proudly proclaims, “what you can’t measure, you can’t manage.” The lower management person snickers and says, “those that can’t manage, measure”. They are both right. Often our most valuable diagnostics come to us in the form of response to care efforts. There are times, however, when the path forward requires more vision and possible testing.

Life is a journey, and your health, strength and wellness are part of that journey and are, as well, essential to it. We feel our role is to find the need and fill it. Ministration and care as treatment as well as counsel and guidance are how we find a way to help people stay adjusted. We look forward to being of service.

We will be posting a series on staying adjusted to our Youtube and adding them to our blog.

[1]U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.-a). Spinal manipulation: What you need to know. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/spinal-manipulation-what-you-need-to-know