Why Your Bones Don't Stay in Place
By Sara Butler
When your chiropractor talks about your bones staying in place, they refer to it as “holding” the adjustment. A natural question to ask about this concept is why on earth your bones don’t hold themselves in place themselves – and it’s a good question. Here’s why regular chiropractic adjustments are needed and why your body doesn’t do a very good job holding your bones together in the first place.
Your Spine Likes to Move
The bones in your spine, called vertebrae, are held in place by ligaments. They work to hold the bones in your spine together while still allowing it to move. It’s tricky since your spine needs to be flexible in order to support your body in a healthy way.
Many things can cause the bones in your spine to become misaligned, including:
- Repetitive motion
- Trauma
- Poor posture
- Bad ergonomics
When misalignments occur, then the ligaments holding it all together become irritated and swollen, losing their ability to hold your bones in place as they should while you move about.
Your Body Tries
Your body can never be accused of not being smart, and because it’s so smart it tries to immobilize or stabilize a joint that has become injured – including the joints in your spine. The muscles that support your spine tighten up to try to keep things together, often causing muscle spasms and pain. The swelling that causes all of these problems eventually goes away, but you’re still left with bones not in proper alignment. This leads to the ligaments attempting to support a joint that is weakened and often scarred.
Over time this will only become a larger problem because all the things that caused the problem in the first place will probably happen again. Eventually, this can lead to chronic conditions such as degenerative disc disease and arthritis.
What Adjustments Do
The chiropractic adjustments done by your chiropractor don’t just put the bones back in proper alignment; they also work to put the ligaments back in a proper position so that they can heal. This also happens to be the reason seeing a chiropractor for regular adjustments is recommended – because over time things will become misaligned again and lead to degenerative changes in your spine.
Your spine is complex, but your chiropractor knows how to deal with it and keep it aligned. This can have an impact on your overall health and wellness, which is why discovering the benefits of regular chiropractic care at The Joint is so important for so many people.