Three Causes of Subluxation – Why We Need Chiropractors – Part 1

Chiropractors treat and correct vertebral subluxations. These are vertebrae which have moved out of the correct position and are now causing nerve irritation. I am regularly asked, “What causes the vertebrae to go out of place?” to which the only reply is, “An injury to the spine.”

When most people picture a spinal injury, they imagine fractured (cracked or broken) bones. In reality, probably 95% or more of spinal damage involves no fracture, and the majority of those are of the non-dangerous and unfixable, but extremely painful, sort. The adult spine is made of 26 individual and moveable segments which are held in position by what are labeled soft (non-bone) tissues:  muscles, tendons, ligaments, discs and other cartilages, and various connective tissues. A trauma sufficient to stretch and tear these structures, or what is currently referred to as a ‘Repetitive Stress Injury’, causes enough damage to allow the vertebrae to shift out of their correct position and makes it almost impossible for the body to bring them back to their correct position without outside assistance.

In a variety of ways, many of which we have yet to discover, this position change (usually measured in fractions of a millimeter) causes irritation to nerves in the area, particularly the nerve roots exiting the spinal cord at that level. When the nerves are irritated they behave differently, and the messages they carry throughout the body become garbled, causing the body to malfunction in many different ways. The damage to the soft tissues alone causes plenty of pain, but any pain-signal nerves which are irritated will also report pain (for the area the nerve endings are located in) to the brain, even if that area has sustained no injury.

Soft tissues do not heal at 100%, even though with all the right care they can sometimes get close, and so after the initial damage has healed, there is always some degree of weakness and less flexibility which makes that area more vulnerable to re-injury than was the original structure; the less proper care rendered at the proper time, the more instability at those locations. Obviously, part of the “right care” is provided here at Val Vista Chiropractic – we help get rid of the subluxations with the associated pain and other symptoms they can cause.

In the next post we will examine the three things which cause the vertebrae to go back out of place again.

Getting rid of your pain,

Dr. Steven Ray, Chiropractor

Val Vista Chiropractic