What is a Chiropractic Adjustment?

Hi there, Dr. Ryan Hetland here today answering a question what is a chiropractic adjustment?

Chiropractic adjustment, you go to a chiropractor and they're going to assess your spine or any joint. You can adjust the shoulder, a knee, an ankle and any kind of joint that's movable you can get to "adjust" or manipulate.

So you go to a chiropractor and they assess your spine, your neck, your middle back, your low back or your hips and they say we need to do a chiropractic adjustment to correct this. What is it that the adjustment is?

Now, there's a number of name techniques. Some of them, chiropractic doctors use their hands to move a joint itself. Some use instruments called Activators, integrators or Atlas Orthogonal. I believe, I'm not an expert in that, but I believe it's an air puff or a vibration into just the atlas of the neck.

So there are a lot of different techniques here. I'm going to kind of dissect what I'm good at and that's the Gonstead method of chiropractic which is a hands-on technique, so I'll kind of dig in here a little bit, but when you do go to a chiropractor who does a hands-on technique, you're going to have an adjustment which is designed around correcting misalignment of the spine.

So vertebra somehow find its way out of position, whether it's a trauma from an injury, sports, a fall, or just over time, repetitiveness of something, maybe sitting at your computer and over time the head's going forward. There's a million different ways you can get subluxated but this video is what is an adjustment and that is the treatment a chiropractor uses to precisely move a vertebra and realign it and lock the vertebra from its subluxated state.

So, we have to do another video on exactly what that is but basically, the vertebra is out of position in the spine and the chiropractor's going to use an adjustment to realign that, unlock the vertebra and help open the holes up where the nerves come out, which is really important.

So, what is the sound when you go to a chiropractor who uses their hands and it makes this popping, grinding, cracking noise or maybe you're just moving your own neck and you're hearing a popping, cracking?

Well, that's the joint, usually the synovial joint releasing gas and it could be oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and it's just a release of that when you move a joint relatively quickly.

Now a lot of people adjust their knuckles and get popping sound and some people will adjust their necks or their back. I will never recommend that; it's very dangerous and if you feel the need to do that, you know you have a problem and you need to go to a chiropractor to make sure that your neck is getting aligned properly and not making it worse, even though it feels good when you do it.

So the adjustments designed around that, I want to just kind of describe to you the difference between general adjustments and Gonstead adjustments.

So, a general adjustment, a lot of times, uses rotation to adjust the neck or the spine and a lot of times, with the popping sound that you're getting when you're adjusting that way is this facet joints in the back of the spine. Usually you'd get a couple of adjustments.

A really generalized adjustment, not very specific adjustment is when you go to adjust the neck and you hear three, four, five, six, seven different things popping in adjusting or you do the back and you adjust one way and adjust many different sounds, then you do the other way and, again, you'd get a ton of noise.

Adjustments, a really good Gonstead type chiropractic care that's specific and precise is not just trying to get the bunch of noise when we do an adjustment.

An adjustment is a specific and precise technique that allows the repositioning of a specific vertebra back to its original state to allow for a normal, healthy motion of the joint, opening of the nerve holes and restoration of the spine. And so, the Gonstead adjustment, the reason that makes it a Gonstead adjustment is, one, it's very, very precise. We're only trying to adjust the vertebra that need it and not adjust anything else that's healthy.

If it isn't broke, don't fix it. If it doesn't need an adjustment and you give it an adjustment, well then, it wasn't necessary to begin with, so want to really make sure you're only getting the vertebra adjusted that need it and that you're only getting the right amount of adjustments. We don't want to over adjust an area because that's not good either.

But, Gonstead adjusting is not just we're really not wanting to twist the neck at all, but we're trying to move the vertebra over the disc itself, so you have two bones and a disc in here, and then these facet joints in the back that make up part of the spine.

And the vertebra getting corrected over the disc is why Gonstead is such a great technique for disc issues and a great technique for just overall spinal health because you're not just getting the back joints to move, but you're actually correcting the vertebra misalignment over the disc, which is one of the main things that keeps the spine healthy and strong.

So great care is taken to figure out where the problem is in the spine and exactly which vertebra is needing the adjustment, and then, when we give the adjustment, it's repositioning that vertebra over the disc, restoring the normal healthy motion, and the sound of which, a lot of times with these manual chiropractic techniques, you'll get a popping sound and that's just oxygen, carbon dioxide and different gas being released from the joint.

And so, there's a common joke that I'll say in my office when I get to know patients and that is when I adjust you and when you make that popping sound that it's gas that's being released, that's the only appropriate time to pass gas in my office.

So I hope this is helpful for you and feel free to ask any more questions. Comment below the YouTube video, subscribe to our link and check us out at Riverheightsclinic.com for more information or to come visit me at Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota.

Have a great day.