What is Chiropractic?
Chiropractic is many things: a philosophy, a science and an art. The foundation upon which it is built is the realization that health is the body’s normal state and good health is perfectly natural. Chiropractors know that the body possesses a unique internal wisdom that continually strives to keep the body in a state of good health. This innate intelligence controls our heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and all vital bodily functions. It is also the guiding, healing force which allows our body to self-heal and self-regulate, permitting us to adapt naturally to the influences of the internal and external environment. The ability of the body to maintain good health is dependent on its ability to adapt to the environment. Ensuring this capability is one of nature’s most remarkable communication networks: the nervous system. The nervous system is comprised of the brain, the spinal cord and the nerves. The brain sends mental impulses to each of the more than 100 trillion cells in the body, instructing them on how to function properly. These mental impulses are transmitted from the brain via nerves passing through the spine. Vertebrae in the spine can become misaligned and will interfere with the body’s natural communication process. These misalignments are referred to as subluxations. Subluxations can arise from three types of stress: chemical, emotional and physical. The effect of spinal subluxation is interference of the nerve pathway to cell, tissue or organ. Without a normally functioning nervous system, the body’s ability to self-heal and self-regulate will become impaired, resulting in poor health and disease. Chiropractic seeks to identify, analyze and adjust subluxations. The Doctor of Chiropractic restores the body’s nerve function by adjusting the misaligned spinal vertebra into its correct position. With nerve function improved, bodily processes are permitted to become more natural and healthy. Chiropractic’s aim is to ensure that the body’s natural health-ensuring processes are allowed to function without nerve interference due to misaligned vertebrae. Chiropractic does not provide ‘sickness’ care, ‘disease’ care, or ‘symptom’ care. It provides health care. As a philosophy, Chiropractic recognizes that the body has a natural ability to express its health potential to the fullest. As a science, Chiropractic deals with the relationship between the spine and nervous system and its effect on the body’s innate ability to express and maintain good health. As an art, it entails knowledge, skill and dexterity to locate and correct subluxations that impair and rob the body’s ability to maintain optimal health and wellness.
Chiropractic Philosophy
Chiropractic Philosophy differs dramatically from a Medical Philosophy of health. Medicine believes that in a diseased state, drugs are prescribed or organs are removed or transplanted to keep the system ‘functioning’. This approach to health is termed an outside-in approach where external factors such as drugs and surgery are used to effect a change on the inside of the body. Chiropractic Philosophy knows that innate intelligence flows via the nervous system to every cell, tissue and organ of the body and since we self-heal and self-regulate, blockage to the nervous system by way of subluxation will impair nerve flow. This causes malfunction of the body, eventually resulting in disease. This approach to health is termed an inside-out approach where the body is stimulated by an adjustment to correct itself naturally. Chiropractic neither removes nor adds anything to the body it only stimulates self-healing. The problem with a medical approach to HEALTH is that medicine deals with sickness care or crisis care and NOT wellness care or true health care. The side effects of drugs and surgery are the 3rd leading cause of preventable death and the 4th leading cause of death in North America.
