As the center of your musculoskeletal system, your spine can cause pain and discomfort in a variety of ways if it is misaligned. Regularly visiting a chiropractor can provide you with many health benefits, as chiropractic care focuses on using spinal manipulation to improve spinal alignment and health with hands-on treatment. Many people tend to seek chiropractic care for pain relief, but chiropractic care can provide many more benefits beyond that.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most common chiropractic care health benefits, from pain relief and improved digestion to using chiropractic care for increased vitality and energy.
7 Chiropractic Care Health Benefits to Consider
Below, we’ll discuss a few of the benefits that routine chiropractic care can provide to help you get a better understanding of how it can improve your daily lifestyle.
Pain Relief
Opioid pain relievers are often prescribed to people with chronic pain to alleviate their discomfort. However, chiropractic treatment may lessen the need to take these pain relievers. A chiropractor can reposition your spine and ease tension in your muscles to relieve neck pain. Short-term or chronic back pain can also be treated with chiropractic adjustments as an alternative to invasive treatments like surgery or injections. Certain types of chiropractic adjustments restore motion and evacuate the inflammation caused by chronic osteoarthritis.
Improved Physical Performance
A chiropractic adjustment may enhance your athletic performance by increasing your mobility and reducing movement restrictions. Chiropractors are often hired by sports teams and professional athletes because of this, as adjustments can relieve pain and tension due to sports injuries or other activities. They can also reduce inflammation and boost the immune system to help the body perform better and recover faster.
Improved Blood Flow
Blood pressure medications can cause severe side effects, including fatigue, nausea, anxiety, dizziness, and fatigue, which is why many professionals prefer noninvasive approaches. Studies have shown that chiropractic adjustments can be as effective as blood pressure management medicines at lowering blood pressure, as upper cervical adjustments can lower blood pressure by 16 mmHg, which is enough to reduce someone from hypertension to normal ranges. However, this effect is likely neurological and does not directly affect the arteries.
Reduced neck curvature, or lordosis, has been shown to diminish arterial blood flow to the brain. Chiropractic care focused on curvature improvements, not just adjustments, can restore blood flow to arteries and improve blood supply to the brain; this can be especially important to people with a family history of dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Improved Digestion
Your digestive system and neuro-musculoskeletal system maintain a very close relationship. Your spinal alignment influences how well your body digests food, and misalignments of the spine can interrupt this process. For example, your nerves control the sphincters of your stomach that prevent stomach acid from coming up the esophagus. If you have a spinal misalignment, this can irritate those nerves and weaken myoelectrical signals to the muscles that keep the acid in, causing you to suffer from acid reflux, indigestion, or heartburn. This concept also holds true for the nerves in the lower back that control your intestines; if the lower back nerves are inhibited by a spinal misalignment, this can slow your digestion and lead to gas, irritable bowel syndrome, or constipation. Chiropractic treatment can relieve digestive problems by gently removing inflammation from your thoracic and lumbar spinal nerves through realignment, allowing your nerve signals to work properly.
Increased Range of Motion
During chiropractic care, your body is realigned to maintain and even improve your range of motion. In addition to loosening tight muscles and improving joint function, chiropractic treatment and exercises can also strengthen your weak muscles and speed up your reflexes. Because of these improvements, chiropractic care may reduce your chances of suffering severe joint and cartilage degeneration as you age. Chiropractic exercises can also help keep your spine in an optimal alignment to help you maintain the improved range of motion you receive from adjustments.
Improved Breathing
Having a misaligned spine and poor posture puts more pressure on your lungs and causes problems with expansion and contraction when breathing. Visiting a chiropractor to realign your vertebrae can help you get more oxygen and recover faster from workouts. Chiropractic care improves breathing mechanics by increasing chest expansion and flexibility of the ribcage so the lungs can take in more air. Another example of improved breathing comes from reducing forward head posture, which can increase lung capacity by 20% to 30%.
Increased Vitality
Stress can cause muscle tension and inflammation, making it difficult to perform daily activities. However, chiropractic care can alleviate muscle tension and joint pain to help reduce this inflammation. This also aids in relaxation and helps patients get better sleep to improve energy levels. The combined results give your body a vitality boost, which allows it to become stronger and healthier.
Improve Your Life with Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic treatments can be a great way to improve multiple areas of your health without invasive procedures. By improving your spinal alignment, you will experience better circulation and nerve function to help your body function optimally.
At PostureWorks, we work with you to understand your health goals, whether you’re looking for pain relief, stronger workouts, or reduced blood pressure. With the use of Chiropractic BioPhysics®, we can help you reach those goals and reap even more chiropractic care benefits so you can have a healthier lifestyle. While the benefits we’ve discussed are all amazing, they’re only a small portion of what you could notice with routine care.
Chiropractic BioPhysics®, or CBP, is a deeply researched and results-oriented corrective care technique. CBP-trained chiropractors aim to realign the spine back to health and optimal function while eliminating the source of pain and circulatory and nervous dysfunction. As with all chiropractic care, CBP is conservative, painless, and non-invasive. Contact us today to learn more about chiropractic care health benefits or to schedule your appointment.
