How Am I Doing?

This is one of the most common and most difficult questions to answer to anyone who has started chiropractic care.

This inquiry comes from a good place; from a place of concern and interest about our health and the progress we are making.

The answer is undoubtedly: “you are doing better!” But in which context and in reference to what are we doing better? As soon as an adjustment is given and a subluxation is corrected, there is an improvement in the physiology of the nervous system and stress reduction on that system.

This in turn causes the entire human body to perform as intended by nature, to have a normal immune response and to heal at its natural speed. Does this mean there are tangible changes in the symptomatic picture or in the way we feel? Most of the time yes, but not always.

One person may have been unsuccessful at fighting a bacterial infection and as a result of adjustments may experience vomiting and diarrhea. This is the body’s way to flush unwanted bacteria out of the digestive tract. Another person may develop a very high fever in order to combat a viral infection, while yet another one is experiencing pins and needles as life returns to an area previously deprived of proper nerve supply. Those people certainly feel awful, yet they are getting better!

In other instances immediate relief may be gained, after one adjustment, from the excruciating pain caused by a disc injury or a hip problem. Tennis elbow may vanish in one visit from a cervical adjustment.

Years of debilitating headaches may disappear in a few visits as neck adjustments causes the body to regain normal vascular control over the blood flow to the brain. Those people feel better and are doing better, yet a lot more is to be gained!

In some situations no discernible changes can be felt at all. Nevertheless positive biological processes are taking place inside by the sole fact that nerve transmission has been improved.

For example, young children and people, who have started care without symptoms because it makes sense to maintain the integrity of the spine, will experience little to no noticeable effects. They may not get sick as often, recover faster from injuries or be more energetic than before but those are difficult associations to make.

So in response to the question; “Am I doing better?” the answer is by logic: “Yes!” Because regardless of the way we feel, the condition we may have or the years we have accumulated, the human body is always better off with a good nerve supply than with one obstructed by vertebral subluxations.