What Chiropractors do Different

Damage to joints and tissue in your body lead to inflammation, weakness, soreness, swelling, bleeding, joint misalignment, and more importantly...scarring.

Quite often, the key to reducing or eliminating all of the above symptoms is to address the joint misalignment and the scarring.

Scarring can be the result of many different things:

• trauma (an auto accident, a fall, an impact) resulting in damaged nerves, bones, joints, muscles, tendons, or ligaments
  
  
• aging: arthritis
  
  
• repetitive motion resulting in degenerative joint disease
  
  
• improper posture resulting in degenerative joint disease

How a Chiropractor's Adjustment Affects the Body

Chiropractors help restore the motion in your damaged joints, by providing treatment which reduces scar tissue restrictions in your joints and/or surrounding tissues. The chiropractor's adjustment also helps reduce and restore the conduction of nerve impulses that may be impeded by pressure.

A chiropractor's adjustment is a high velocity, low intensity force that is applied to the joints within your body, including joints of your spine, hips, legs, and arms. An adjustment is safe and painless and results in the following beneficial outcomes:

• Joint Misalignment Correction - a joint this is subluxated (aka, slightly dislocated or misaligned) is repositioned and reseated back into its correct anatomical position. This reduces the excess tension on the supporting ligaments, muscles, tendons and tissues that react to stablilize the misaligned joint.
  
  
• Restoring Range of Motion - the thrust moves the joint back through its full range of motion, increasing and/or restoring the range of motion that it is intended to have
  
  
• Scar Tissue Break Down - Scar tissue (aka collagen adhesions) is "broken up" when the chiropractic thrust is applied. This enables the joint to regain the motion it may have lost because of repetitive motion scarring or scarring from traumatic injury.
  
  
• Restoration and/or Improved Nerve Function - When a joint is misaligned it causes the surrounding muscles to contract to stabilize the joint. These hyper-contracted muscles often put excess pressure on the surrounding nerves. The extra pressure on the nerves may cause tingling, numbness, and weakness to the muscles and tissues the nerve is feeding. The chiropractic adjustment often restores proper nerve function by reducing the pressures that muscles and/or bones are placing on nerves.
  

Other Techniques we use to Address Scarring

Active Release Technique ® (A.R.T.) is a soft tissue technique that treats problems with muscles, tendons, ligaments, fascia and nerves. Headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, knee problems, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART. These conditions all have one important thing in common: they are often a result of overused muscles.

How do overuse conditions occur?

Over-used muscles (and other soft tissues) change in three important ways:

* acute conditions (pulls, tears, collisions, etc),
* accumulation of small tears (micro-trauma from repetative motion)
* not getting enough oxygen (hypoxia).

Each of these factors can cause your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up, muscles become shorter and weaker, tension on tendons causes tendonitis, and nerves can become trapped. This can cause reduced range of motion, loss of strength, and pain. If a nerve is trapped you may also feel tingling, numbness, and weakness.

What is an ART treatment like?

Every ART session is actually a combination of examination and treatment. The ART provider uses his or her hands to evaluate the texture, tightness and movement of muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments and nerves. Abnormal tissues are treated by combining precisely directed tension with very specific patient movements.

The content above, beginning at "Other Techniques we use to Address Scarring" was copied from the Active Release Technique website. For more detailed information about Active Release Technique, please visit their website.

Our Address: 256 East Hamilton Ave., Suite F, Campbell, CA 95008, 408-379-0133