If you've ever been to a manual chiropractor (that is, a chiropractor who uses his or her hands to make the adjustment), you've no doubt experienced "the pop". The pop is the audible noise that occurs when the adjustment is delivered. Many patients grow to love the pop, since they associate the sound with the relief they feel after the adjustment.
If you've ever been to Johnson Family Chiropractic, you know that we deliver our adjustments with the Activator instrument. Since the Activator adjustment produces no associated popping noise (called a "cavitation"), some patients initially think that the adjustment didn't happen. After all, the adjustment must occur when the popping sound is heard, right? Not according to research. Many journal articles have been written which maintain that the sound of the pop and the delivery of the adjustment are two separate and distinct things. The most recent in a long line of articles in the renowned Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics states that "the presence of joint sounds does not influence the overall activity of the autonomic nervous system following a joint manipulation or contribute to the reduction of pain in patients with chronic neck pain." In that study, the researchers were producing the joint popping sound without actually delivering an adjustment. And they found that without the adjustment, there was no nervous system input, which meant that the patient felt no relief and was not healing. The joint popping sound is really nothing more than a simple physics experiment. Almost every joint in the body is encased in a small ligamentous sac filled with fluid, called "synovial fluid". The fluid bathes the cartilage in the joint, delivers nutrients to the cartilage cells, and cushions the joint. When the joint is suddenly moved by a shear force (parallel to the direction of the joint) to the limit of its movement capability, a small bubble of gas is fomed inside the fluid and instantaneously popped. (There's another current theory that holds that the cavitation noise is actually the sudden release of a vacuum created inside the joint). You can "pop" your own joints. Many people do (although it's not recommended for several reasons, which I'll address in a future blog post). However, a pop isn't the same thing as an adjustment. This is good news for many people who actively dislike hearing noises coming from their joints. The Activator doesn't cause a pop because a pop only occurs when the joint is stressed or pulled as far as it can physiologically go. The researchers behind the Activator instrument realized that far less force is necessary to move the bone than was first thought. Since the Activator thrust doesn't move the bone "too far", no pop is produced, even the adjustment was successfully delivered. This reduction of force is what allows Johnson Family Chiropractic adjustments to be gentle yet effective. The Activator instrument does not make your bones pop, but it does produce an exceptional and repeatable adjustment.
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If you were the unfortunate recipient of a nasty cut, you most likely made the trip to a local ER for some stitches. After a little local anesthetic and some skilled suturing, your cut looks a lot cleaner. Even better, after a few days when the stitches come out, you can barely notice that an open wound was once there. So did the stitches do the healing?
Stitches and chiropractic adjustments have one thing in common... neither actually do the healing. Sure, both are provided when an injury takes place. But both are designed to only create a 'cleaner' environment for the intelligent, healing power inside your body to do the job. Stitches line up cut skin edges to mend and adjustments line up misaligned vertebrae to ease nerve pressure, but it's the power of life coursing through you and time that does the healing. The next time you come in for an adjustment to instantly fix your headache, your sciatica or your sleeping problems, understand that it isn't the adjustment that produces the results. It only improves the environment for the healing to take place. It takes your innate healing power and time to get the job done. Content provided by Principle33. Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria wishes you and your family a happy and wonderful Passover and Easter season this year!
Spring time is outdoor project time and that means more trips to the local home building center. The largest of them all, Home Depot, attributes its success and growth (nearly 2,000 stores in the US, Canada and Mexico) to one simple concept: INDEPENDENCE. Their motto "You can build it, we can help" celebrates that spirit. They've discovered when given the choice to pay someone to do a project or to just "do it yourself," many people choose the latter because of the sense of accomplishment, satisfaction and pride they feel from completing the job themselves. Not to mention, saving some money in the process! Our principled, chiropractic philosophy shares the same concept. When given the choice to have a doctor heal you with drugs or surgery from the outside or to heal it yourself from the inside, most people would rather choose INDEPENDENCE and heal the problem on their own. When we tell our patients, "You can heal it, we can help," we profess an innate truth that healing is a do-it-yourself job, and all we do as chiropractors is open the lines of communication. Life heals as long as there's no interference. Content provided by Principle33. It has often been said, "Where there's life, there's hope." In the miraculous case of this infant, however, that cliche was reversed: "Where there's hope, there's life." The developer of chiropractic, B. J. Palmer, often wrote about the power of life, calling the uncanny ability of the human body to heal on its own an "innate intelligence." All humans, whether young or old, tall or small, by virtue of their humanity has complete access to life and the ability to thrive. Sickness, disease, and death only occur when outside or exterior forces prevent the human body from fully expressing its ability to live and thrive in an intelligent fashion. This baby, against all medical odds, expressed its ability to live in a remarkable way. I often marvel at the power of the human body to heal and to thrive, to achieve and maintain health, to grow. These mechanisms that we take for granted are, in reality, completely unfathomable by current medical science. What happened with this baby probably has a perfectly wonderful and reasonable explanation, but one that is currently beyond our understanding. A long-distance telephone conversation nowadays is commonplace; two hundred years ago such an ability would have been considered a miracle. Just as our understanding of communication has grown, so does our understanding of our complex and astounding bodies. We are always learning.
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DisclaimerUnless otherwise attributed, all content is written by Kyle Johnson, DC, of Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria.
All images used are under Creative Commons license. Although every effort has been made to provide an accurate description of our chiropractic care and its benefits, the information given on this website and blog is not intended to be, nor should it be interpreted as, medical advice for any condition. If you have any questions regarding your condition, you should seek the help of Dr. Johnson in person, so that he may properly assess your condition. This blog is provided by Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria, S.C., proudly located in Peoria, IL. |