Tag Archives: Back

Chiropractic Care Beyond Pain

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Hi, I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractor. Everybody knows that chiropractor is great for getting rid of pain. back pain, neck pain, headaches, things like that.

But, what chiropractors constantly try to educate your patients about is the benefit of chiropractic care beyond just pain and other symptoms like that.

So, it all boils down to the nervous system. We have different types of nerves in our nervous system. Some that our sensory nerves down here. These are the nerves that communicate pain, temperature, vibration, things like that sensation. These are really only a small part of the nerves and our nerve bundles that exit the spine. And keep in mind where nerves are coming out of the spine is where they can get compressed if alignment of the spine is incorrect. Disks and other structures can push on these nerves where they’re coming out of the spine. So that can cause pain but it’s really only one part of the puzzle.

We also have what are called motor nerves that run on our muscles in our body. We typically have pain nerves inside motor nerves inside of muscles rather. So that, you know pain, muscles get injured we can feel them. But, the motor nerves are totally separate from the sensory nerves. In other words, the nerves that run the muscles in your legs say, they don’t have any nerve supply that can give you the sensation of pain.

Likewise, for the autonomic nervous. These are nerves that go and run all of your internal organs, your systems like your digestive system and cardiovascular system. These are nerves that go all throughout your entire body. And again, they don’t deliver that sensation of pain.

So, if we have compression of nerves here in the spine we need to get that pressure off not just so that you can get out of pain which is important, obviously. But we also want to take pressure off that nerve so that it can function at its optimum for all the functions that it’s doing. Not just the sensation of pain. So, we want to boost up the nerves going to all three of these areas. The motor nerves go into the muscles. Autonomic nerves going to all the internal organs and systems. Also knowing where your body is in space. All those nerves are really important.

Chiropractic is not just about getting you out of pain, although it’s excellent at doing that. But, the way that we have success in chiropractic is all based on the same principles. So, it all comes back to taking pressure off of these nerves by restoring proper alignment.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with that Battaglino Family Chiropractic and this is your Health Minute

Why Adjust Your Back and Spine?

Hi. I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic in Petaluma, CA. A real commonly asked question is “Why do I need to get adjusted? My back doesn’t hurt” or “It might hurt a little bit, and then it goes away. It’s fine, it’s not a big deal.”

The answer to that question is this: Here we have a spine, Okay? This is the back of the spine and the front. These little nerves that come out at each level from the spine are basically sandwiched right behind the disk. There’s a disk at each level of the spine like a little shock absorber, and right in front of little joints in the spine that move to allow us to move around. The joints and the disk are on either side of these nerves. Now these nerves are really… These are the big nerves that basically run our whole body. In other words, each of these little nerves has over 10,000 nerve fibers to it. It’s like a fiber optic cable, but basically, some of those nerves are pain nerves, but only about 10%. So, things can be out of place in the spine putting pressure on these nerves and on the disk itself, which has nerves, and on the joints as well.

If the nerves, let’s say, are going to run the digestive system like the stomach or liver or pancreas, or if they’re going up to the heart and lungs, those are the nerves that are really important for our body, and it’s not anything that we’ll actually feel. In other words, there’s different types of nerves. Sensory nerves are ones where you can feel sensation like pain, and then there are autonomic nerves that go to run organs, which we don’t feel anything. It runs without us being aware of it. Though we really want to make sure that the body is structurally sound because we’re in gravity all the time. We’re taking all kinds of little traumas on a daily basis. Some big, some small, some repetitive like sitting at your desk for years. A lot of these misalignments called subluxations have been there before age 10. It’s the most common thing that we see because you think about how often toddlers and infants are falling and they’re trying just crazy things that they shouldn’t be, and we all did that as well. So, what happens is if these misalignments aren’t corrected, as you grow, they stay in part of the format there.

We can see the remnants of that. It’s like if you hit a little sapling tree with your car when you’re backing out of the driveway. As that tree grows, it’ll kinda grow with that crooked part in there unless it’s corrected, and these things can be corrected. It takes pressure off of the nerves. So, whether or not there’s actually pain there, it takes pressure off the nerve to allow it to do its job that it’s supposed to do properly, and also it takes pressure off of the disks and joints, so that you’re not running into premature arthritis and pain from that as you age. In short, getting adjusted is maintenance for your body’s structure. It’s like brushing your teeth. You don’t just brush your teeth when they hurt, do you? Well, same thing with chiropractic. Having a regular schedule of checkups of maintenance for the spine and body structure is one of the healthiest things that you can do for yourself. I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic, and this has been your health minute.