A preventative approach to muscle and joint health includes regular Chiropractic Care to complement your congruent thoughts, healthy diet and regular exercise. The regularity of your Chiropractic Care should have a real world reflection of the waxing and waning of your life stresses and tensions.
Course of Chiropractic Care
In an ideal world, a course of Chiropractic Care would reflect the condition of the person with the issue. For example 5 people with a sprained ankle could have 5 different recovery times, depending upon their age, fitness, medical conditions, social support and work flexibility.
How fearful or scared we are can significantly affect a pain experience, especially in an acute situation and perhaps more subtly in a chronic situation. When we protect we can over protect which prevents movement and thus sensation and potential healing. Holding it protecting it could mean you’ll keep it (forever), Chiropractic is that ‘Control Alt Delete’ function, you need to step out of the stymying effect of (over)protection.
How Long?
If a Care Plan is finished early, muscles and joints can remain injured (5), leading to greater longer term pain and expense (6). you’ll certainly not be ‘fixed’ in 3-4 sessions!
The process of muscle and joint change requires adequate time, transitioning from a movement fault to a healthier habit of movement is akin to learning a new PIN number for your bank card. You are required to learn the new but also forget the OLD PIN number. It is in the forgetting the OLD that takes the time (4).
Chiropractic helps your body componentry move and thus be noticed by your brain due to the sensation of its movement, and we know that sensory neurons drive tissue repair (8,9), or in short:
‘MOVEMENT PROVIDES FEELING,
AND
FEELING LEADS TO HEALING’
Chiropractic Care (7) is Defined by the General Chiropractic Council as
‘interventions by Chiropractors that are designed to improve health’,
including but not limited to:
Manual Interventions
Advice, Explanation and Reassurance
Exercise and or Rehabilitation
Making Referrals
Promoting Behaviour Change
and adjunct therapies such as Ultrasound and Interferential.
References:
(1) Underwood M et al (2004) UK BEAM Trial, BMJ 11;329(7479):137
(2) Bronfort G, Haas M,Evans R, Leininger B, and Triano J. (2010) Effectiveness of Manual Therapies: The UK Evidence Report Chiro Osteo 18 3
(3) Bronfort G, Evans R, Anderson AV, Svendsen KH, Bracha Y and Grimm RH. (2012) Spinal Manipulation Medication or Home Exercise with Advice An RCT Ann Int Med (2012) 156 1
(4) Fiona Kumfor and Sicong Tu. (2015) How our Brain Forgets Information to make room for New Memories. The Independent Newspaper, Sunday 7th June 2015.
(5) Hides JA et al. (1996) Multifidus Muscle Recovery is Not Automatic after Resolution of Acute (pain) first episode. The Spine Journal
(6) Wasiak R et al. (2006) Work Disability and Costs caused by Reoccurrence of Low Back Pain Episodes: Longer and More Costly Than First Episodes. The Spine journal
(7) General Chiropractic Council. The Code (2016), Glossary.
(8) Abraira VE and Ginny DD (2013) The sensory Neurons of Touch. Neuron 21;79(4): 618
(9) Yen-Zhen Lu et al (2024) CGRP sensory neurons promote tissue repair healing via neutrophils and macrophages. Nature 628:604