By Dr. Trina Ting
When should you get a chiropractic adjustment? I’ve seen dozens of reasons why people show up for chiropractic care, and the art of chiropractic is being able to diagnose and fix the problem quickly, getting you back to doing what you love. Here are my top 5 times when you should get an adjustment before the holidays:
1. When You’re Stressed Out: The holidays bring a lot of stress, even the good kind. Stress raises cortisol levels, which increases pain levels, tightens muscles and raises blood pressure, just to name a few physiological side effects. An adjustment may help to deal with the tension in your spine caused by stress and reduce the muscular tightness. As a bonus, our Registered Massage Therapists are here to also help with muscle issues.
2. After Putting Up Your Christmas Decorations: Unboxing ornaments, standing on ladders to install lights or put up your Christmas tree, and carrying heavy boxes up and down stairs are just some of the physical tasks that can take a toll on your body. Since it’s only once a year, your spine may not be used to these tasks. An adjustment to the neck, back, and shoulders may prove to be quite helpful!
3. After a Long Work Week: 40 or more hours of work is fairly common at this time of year, and with many people still working from home a few days per week, the lines between personal and work hours are blurred. While it’s nice to have a couple of hours off to get your kid to hockey, if often results in several more hours at bedtime working on your phone to play catch up. Also, in anticipation of taking time off for Christmas, businesses are in full swing before the end of year. If you’ve been spending more time at the office or at your desk, having a chiropractic check up and treatment may be just what is needed to undo the stress from work.
4. When You Have a Headache: We can get headaches for a variety of reasons, but many tension type headaches (dull ache in the back of the head, forehead or temples) can stem from spinal joints in the neck and upper back being irritated. Sleep positioning, stress, desk work and too much time on your cell phone can all contribute to this issue. The other thing I see often is dull headaches start to slowly increase in frequency, and many people just live with a constant dull pain. So if you’ve been noticing this gradual increase in headaches frequently, this may be a sign that your neck and back could benefit from chiropractic care.
5. When You Feel Perfectly Fine: This is almost always the best time to get an adjustment. The chiropractic technology is especially useful because we can detect spinal joint stiffness that is either only detectable when we scan or touch your spine. It’s sort of like having your teeth cleaned and checked before the tooth starts to ache, right? You may not even know that you have built up stress in your spine, but all you’ll know is that you feel better after a treatment. This is the most common reason people opt to do maintenance care, in which we do regularly scheduled adjustments in order to deal with asymptomatic spinal subluxations (stiffness) and prevent the issue from worsening.
These are just 5 good reasons to have an adjustment this month. There are dozens of other reasons, so stay tuned for future articles in which we discuss other good times to get adjusted. We have
three chiropractic doctors to help, and we will be open for chiropractic care as per our holiday schedule posted online and in our newsletter this month. Take advantage and give yourself some spinal care this holiday!
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