How Chiropractic Can Improve Your Exercise Routine

By Dr. Molly Casey

Does chiropractic help me with my exercise routine? The short answer is yes. We’re here and we’re alive and we live in this body, but we have to take care of it. Research shows that when the body stops moving it starts decaying. Regular chiropractic care assists the body in achieving optimal levels of motion, movement and function. Incorporating regular chiropractic adjustments into your health and exercise routine is beneficial and wise, in my opinion.

Exercise: What’s The Point?

Movement is life. Our society is less mobile and healthy than ever before. Eighty-six percent of Americans sit all day for work. If movement is life, this pattern is deadly.

Is the point of exercise to lose weight? I say no. The majority of the weight reduction process occurs with nutrition. As the saying goes “abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym.” The point of exercise is to move. Move your body. Strengthen your lungs. Exercise supports life. When folks start realizing the importance of simply moving one’s body in any way possible -- and acting upon it -- life will get better in many ways.

First, get your mind straight. You are exercising for the quality of life and the sustainability of life. Second, commit to implementing movement into your life in any and every possible way: stairs at lunch count, walks with the dog count, 10 push-ups after dinner count, stretching before getting out of bed counts, playing tag with your children counts.

I’ll say it again: exercise supports life.

How Does Chiropractic Help?

You live your life through your nervous system. It is the communication system of your body. Your brain sends messages through the spinal cord and out through the nerves to every single cell, system, organ and structure in your body. They function based on that information. Those cells, systems, organs, and structures send information back to the brain through the nerves, into the spinal cord, and up into the brain. It’s a loop. Your spine protects a portion of the brain and all of the spinal cord as well as part of the nerves. Chiropractic is about ensuring the communication system has the opportunity to function at its highest possible level by keeping the spine as healthy as possible through proper movement. Really, chiropractic is about preserving the greatest expression of life.

Chiropractors assess the movement of joints, primarily spinal joints and secondarily the extremity joints. When there is a decrease in joint motion. there will be a decrease in your body’s ability to move overall. This is true regardless of whether you feel, see or experience the decreased ability to move. Remember, movement is life. If your joints aren’t moving to the fullest degree, you aren’t either. And that means you’re being restricted from experiencing the maximum that life has for you to enjoy.

Chiropractic adjustments involve putting joints into specific placement and applying a thrust that frees them from any restriction. In doing so, it increases the range of motion and joint performance. This increased movement at the segmental level improves one’s ability to move in global ways; imagine deeper squats with more weight, faster running, more push-ups. So yes, chiropractic helps your exercise routine. And even more so, the communication loop is then given the opportunity to function at a higher level without interference -- and all of your health can improve.

Remember, movement is life. The point of exercise is to move. Chiropractic improves movement, decreases interference and increases nervous system communication. If you’re looking to improve your exercise routine and your life, choose to make regular chiropractic care a non-negotiable part of your health routine.

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