What is Chiropractic?

An Introduction to Chiropractic Health Care.

If you could recommend the most optimal health care system ever to a family member or to a friend, what would you suggest? Almost without question, we would want a natural method that utilizes the body's internal abilities to heal and to maintain and improve health status, without dangerous side effects.

This system of natural health care began formally in 1895 when a specific chiropractic adjustment, provided by Dr. Daniel David Palmer, was used to correct a significant hearing deficiency in a gentleman who could not hear the horses and carriages travel past him on the cobblestone streets in Davenport, Iowa.

Since then, millions of individuals have benefited from natural chiropractic care and statistical trends are demonstrating that progressively more people are turning to this effective form of health care as a first option. Chiropractic is now the largest natural primary health-care profession in the world and there are over 60,000 licensed doctors of chiropractic who have graduated from accredited colleges around the world. Even though this natural healthcare profession is misunderstood by some, approximately 30 million Americans utilize chiropractic care annually.

Although chiropractic care is relatively new as a formal profession, spinal manual adjustments, also sometimes called spinal manipulative therapy, has been described long ago. For example, Hippocrates, a Greek physician who was born in 460 B.C., was a strong proponent of spinal manipulation and stated in one of his books “Get knowledge of the spine, for this is the requisite for many diseases”. He believed that only natural forces could ever be responsible for true healing and that it was the physician’s responsibility to remove any obstructions that would potentially interfere with the body's ability to heal effectively.

Although chiropractic is typically associated with back pain, the history of chiropractic suggests that many have and can respond to natural healthcare options with a variety of physical complaints. Dr. Palmer saw patients with a wide variety of problems, including headache, sciatica, gastrointestinal complaints, epilepsy and heart problems, and found that many of these presentations responded well to conservative, natural chiropractic care. It is believed that the primary reason for patients responding favorably to natural chiropractic care has primarily to do with benefits associated with improved neurological function. Although there are no guarantees for a patient responding to a particular kind of treatment plan, many people are discovering the benefits of trying natural healthcare options initially on a trial basis. The word “chiropractic” was chosen as the name for this profession after a Greek prefix “chiro” which means hand, and “practic” which means practice. Hence, the word chiropractic, literally interpreted, means “hand practice”, reflecting the primary form of intervention utilized for this kind of health care.

Even though the manual adjustment is the primary form of health care used by doctors of chiropractic worldwide, there are many other health-care components utilized by many practitioners. These complementary therapies may include, for example, nutrition, functional exercise or rehabilitation, traction, specialized soft tissue techniques, various forms of electrical therapies, ultrasound, custom-made orthotics, functional stretching and consultations to discuss postural awareness and modifications of activities of daily living.