Many people who are unfamiliar with or new to chiropractic often ask me how chiropractic works. To understand chiropractic, we ask these simple questions of patients and prospective patients here at Bell Family Chiropractic that makes it easier to think about how chiropractic can work best for you:

• What controls the functions of the entire body? The brain.

• How does the brain communicate with the body? Through the nerves. Signals come from the brain through the nerves to tell your stomach how to be a stomach—how to make the cells that make your stomach, how to move, how to digest the food you put into it.

• What would happen to the stomach if the signals from the brain were not getting through, say, because the nerve was cut? It would stop working. Exactly. It would not know how to function.

• So what would happen if the nerve were to be compressed? Only part of the signal would get through.

• And what could that lead to? The stomach would know how to do some things and not others. Maybe you would have problems. Precisely. Problems like acid stomach, stomach cancer, ulcers, indigestion.

When your spine is out of alignment, the bones and soft tissue can impinge or compress on the nerves coming out of the spine that travel to different body parts and organs in your body; this is called a subluxation. Chiropractic adjustments apply a controlled force to the spinal joints to gently move the joint back into alignment. By moving the spine gently back into place, you allow the nerve flow to resume and your body can function the way it should.

It takes time for the spine to learn where it needs to be—like getting braces. Once your spine is used to being out of alignment, it needs to be trained back to optimal alignment.

We have worked with thousands of patients to adjust their spine back into alignment and get them back to optimal health. Not only can it prevent any future problems, adjustments can help your body to repair damage already done after an extended period of nerve compression. However, while your body is capable of healing after months, and sometimes years, of nerve damage, letting the spine stay out of alignment for too long can cause sometimes irreversible damage. Make sure you have your spine checked as soon as possible!