Anyone who has been a patient in our clinic has heard the term "subluxation". This is not however, a word that most people understand or comprehend. When you hear the word "cancer", there is an instant vision of a very serious and possibly life threatening disease. When you hear the word "AIDS", you think of a terminal condition with a person suffering with no hope of survival. But what do you think of when you hear the word "subluxation"?

If your like many people, you probably have trouble even pronouncing the word. Then after you think about it, you probably still don't know just what to think. The fact is that most people today do not have even the slightest idea of just what a subluxation is or how dangerous it is.

A few generations ago, the people of that time probably never heard the word "cavity". But more than likely they all knew of the end results of cavities called "tooth aches". Only after years of public education by the dentists, did the world come to understand just what a cavity really was, and that it was the underlying cause of tooth aches. The same is true for subluxations. Most people are real familiar with the end results of subluxations, but most of them don't realize that a subluxation had anything to do with that end result.

The reason it is easier to understand cavities rather that subluxations, is because it is easier to see the end results of a cavity than the end results of a subluxation. Cavities have very few end results. Most people know that the end result of a cavity is a tooth ache or possibly even tooth loss. But with subluxations, a simple connection is not possible. This is due to the fact that a subluxation effects your nerve system function, which is a much more complex situation than a cavity on a tooth.

It is for this reason that we often refer to subluxations as the fundamental underlying "cause" of your problem. The difficult thing to understand is that subluxations, unlike cavities in your teeth, cause different problems in different people. In fact no two people with subluxation will have the same end results. It is also nearly impossible to predict what types of health problems a person will get from the subluxations they have. But one thing is for sure, subluxations will create a health problem some time. But to understand how serious, we need to know more about these subluxations as a "cause" of health problems.

The Cause

Just prior to your very first adjustment, it was explained to you that we had found the "cause" of your problems. To better understand just what the cause is, a quick understanding of how your body functions is needed. If you look in any anatomy book to find out how the body functions, you will see an explanation like this; "The brain controls and coordinates all the functions of the body." This basically means that everything you do, everything your body does, whether you know about it or not is controlled by your brain. The signals from your brain are transmitted over your nerves to every part of your body. In order for your body to function properly these signals from the brain must get to the various parts of your body without any interference, alteration, or change. If some form of interference does occur along the pathway from the brain to the body part, that part can not function properly and some sort of health problem will result. It may not show up immediately, but eventually it shows up.

The most common cause of interference to nerve signals is known as a Subluxation. A subluxation is when one or more of the bones in your spine move out of position and pressures a nerve or nerves and therefore interferes with proper nerve messages.

It is the job of the Doctor of Chiropractic to find any of these subluxations that are affecting your nerve system and then correct or reduce them as much as possible. It is these subluxations that we have found are the fundamental underlying cause of your problems. If no subluxations had been found in your spine, we would not have been able to accept you as a patient for chiropractic care.

Result

To answer the original question "Subluxations, how dangerous are they?" You must keep in mind how important your nervous system is. Then you must ask yourself the question how important is it to my health to have my nervous system functioning without interference. If you've answered these questions correctly, you don't want any subluxations