Are Spinal Adjustments Good For Your Health?

Hello,

I feel compelled to write this e-mail because of your comments about chiropractors which I linked to off your article regarding x-rays. Funny, because I just started seeing a chiropractor and I signed up for his treatment package based on the results of the x-rays he did. I guess I regarded chiropractic care as 'alternative' medicine and thought that this approach might be healthier and better for me than seeing my traditional family doctor. I understand that some and maybe most chiropractors might be motivated by the same monetary 'needs' as traditional doctors. But are you also saying that spinal adjustments aren't effective as treatments for certain conditions? Or that they are not useful for helping promote general good health?

Thanks!
Barbara L.

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Many thanks to Barbara L. for sending in some important questions about spinal adjustments.

I believe that spinal adjustments can be effective for specific health conditions and help to promote good general health. I also believe that spinal adjustments can be detrimental to your health and can cause unnecessary financial strain if they are applied without proper consideration of your circumstances. I have summarized my personal views on spinal adjustments in this article. Please know that most practitioners will disagree with the many of the views presented in this article.

Although I think it is best to view each practitioner as a unique person with a unique style of practice, in general, I believe that most practitioners belong to one of two groups.

I think of the first group as being high volume practitioners who focus mainly on providing spinal adjustments during patient visits. These practitioners can treat up to several hundred patients per day, with treatment sessions lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes.

I view the second group as practitioners who provide more comprehensive treatments that involve spinal adjustments and one or more therapeutic measures to address unhealthy muscles and ligaments. These practitioners usually schedule between two to six patients per hour, with each treatment session lasting anywhere between 10 and 30 minutes.

I believe that both groups of practitioners can provide beneficial spinal adjustments. However, I think that you are more likely to receive competent care from practitioners who arrange their schedules so that they can spend more than just a couple of minutes on your treatments.

Many practitioners tell their patients that spinal adjustments help to prevent the bones of their spines from moving out of place and pinching on nerves that supply all of the body's organs. I believe that this is a simplistic and inaccurate view of spinal adjustments, one that is used for the main purpose of giving potential patients an easy-to-visualize image of the usefulness of spinal adjustments. If you truly had a bone in your spine that was out of place, you would almost certainly be in serious trouble and require immediate medical care.

I believe that the main benefit of a spinal adjustment is the range of motion that it promotes in the joint(s) being adjusted. Joints are not as well supplied with blood as muscles and organs are. In order to receive a healthy supply of blood, joints need to move on a regular basis. The more your joints move, the more blood they receive from the small blood vessels that supply them.

Are spinal adjustments absolutely necessary if you want to experience healthy range of motion in your spinal joints? My answer is no. I believe that most people can achieve and maintain healthy range of motion in their spinal joints if they:

1. Stretch all of their major muscle groups on a regular basis. I highly recommend a beginner's yoga routine for just about everyone.
2. Avoid sitting in one spot for more than 45 to 60 minutes at a time on a consistent basis. If work or school require that you sit for long stretches at a time, you will do a world of good for your spine by getting up for a two-minute stretch and walk every half hour or hour.
3. Avoid sugar and unhealthy fats and oils. Movement and stretching are good for your spine because they promote a healthy supply of blood for your spine. But no amount of movement and stretching will promote a healthy supply of blood for the long term if you don't have healthy blood vessels to deliver the blood. And the health of your blood vessels depends largely on what you eat. Sugar and unhealthy fats and oils are the worst offenders to the health of your blood vessels.

If you are following these steps and still experiencing a stiff back and/or unexplained discomfort, I think it is worth your while to visit a practitioner who can perform an appropriate examination and provide a recommendation on whether you should or shouldn't receive spinal adjustments.

Traumatic injuries and cases that involve chronic pain are also situations that I believe merit a proper examination and consideration of the potential benefits of spinal adjustments.

Here are some specific thoughts that I would keep in mind when visiting a practitioner for spinal adjustments:

1. Some practitioners will take routine x-rays of your spine during your initial visit and point to normal, degenerative changes and other clinically irrelevant findings to try to convince you that spinal adjustments are necessary to prevent serious problems down the road. Given what we know of the real dangers of all forms of ionizing radiation, I believe that x-rays should only be taken if a practitioner wants to rule out an underlying condition like a fracture, malignancy, or unexplained symptom that would make spinal adjustments potentially dangerous. In my opinion, a competent practitioner who is looking to do what's best for you will recommend taking an x-ray to rule out these possibilities only after spending substantial time learning about your health history and current status through a comprehensive examination. If you sense that your practitioner is using x-rays to "sign you up" for a schedule of treatments, I suggest that you look elsewhere.
2. Unless your practitioner uses extremely gentle techniques that don't involve quick movements of your spine, I recommend that you avoid morning appointments. Your blood circulation is at its worst in the morning and improves steadily throughout the day as you move around. You have a greater chance of suffering sprains or strains from spinal adjustments delivered during morning appointments vs. afternoon or evening appointments.
3. Maintenance visits are fine if you can afford them. But if the time and money involved in receiving maintenance care takes away from the likelihood of stretching, exercising, and making healthy food choices on a regular basis, I believe that it is best for you to pay attention to your basic lifestyle choices rather than look to regular spinal adjustments to keep you healthy.

On a personal note, I find it sad that I feel a need to warn people about what to look out for when visiting a practitioner for a spinal adjustment. I think that many people who decide to become chiropractors do so with idealistic visions of helping others with their health through natural means.

In order for a chiropractor to make an honest living without having to try to turn every person who walks into his or her office into a long term maintenance patient, my best guess is that the chiropractor would need a population base of at least 20,000 people to serve. Nowadays, in most major cities in North America, my understanding is that the ratio between number of chiropractors and local population size is as low as 1:1000, with a more typical ratio being 1:3000. With such a small population base to serve, a chiropractor who tries to solve each patient's problem without promoting maintenance treatments would find it extremely difficult if not impossible to survive.

When I was in chiropractic school, I was quite surprised to learn that approximately 50 percent of the people who graduate from chiropractic school do not end up practicing chiropractic. At that time, I thought that those people just didn't have enough passion and work ethic to make it in the real world. Today, I believe that many of the folks who graduated from chiropractic school and are not practicing chiropractic were unable to bring themselves to compromise on what they feel is right, making it difficult to create and maintain a viable practice.

Ultimately, I believe that a significant root cause of having too many chiropractors for today's population is the number of chiropractic schools in existence and the number of students that they are churning out by the semester. Ultimately, these schools are businesses that have every incentive to accept as many students as possible and basically no incentive to control the number of chiropractors who enter the work force.

The good news is that there are some naturopaths, osteopaths, chiropractors, medical doctors, and other holistic health practitioners out there who are providing honest and valuable services that can really help you with your health. I hope that the information in this article and throughout this Web site will help you find a skilled and compassionate practitioner should you ever need comprehensive guidance with your health.

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