What Does a Chiropractor Do?: Understanding How Chiropractic Care Can Help You
We are often asked about exactly what does a chiropractor do. While many individuals know that these health practitioners adjust patients’ spines, they may not know why or how they go about doing so. With more than three decades of experience, Dr. Stan G. Langford III provides chiropractic care to relieve back and neck pain, loss of movement, and a variety of other related health problems. By correcting misalignments in the spine and joints at his Chula Vista, CA, practice, he can help patients start recovering from unexplained or long-term pain.
Chiropractic Basics
A chiropractor’s essential job is to locate and readjust bone misalignments or “subluxations” so that the surrounding tissue can heal and rebuild. Defined as minor joint dislocations, subluxations are often subtle enough that patients do not notice them immediately. In fact, in most cases, the effects of the subluxation are more obvious than the cause.
Dr. Langford has provided treatment to patients suffering from a wide range of conditions, particularly those injured in car accidents and sports.
Whether the result of an accident or your normal routine, misaligned bones can not only damage nerves and other surrounding tissue, but also undermine their function. While the body will usually try to compensate for any such losses, this compensation will usually place undue stress on other parts of the body, creating a ripple effect of dysfunction.
Depending on where it occurs, subluxation can affect anything from basic movement to breathing. Most chiropractors focus on correcting subluxations in the spine because of the potential effect on other parts of the body, but they can often treat other vulnerable joints in the body, as well. While the specifics will depend on your case, treatment with a chiropractor usually falls into three phases: locating the misalignment, correcting it, and helping the body to rebuild afterward.
Types of Subluxations
While the most familiar types of subluxations affect connections between bones (such as the shoulders, knees, or hips), they can also have an impact on other areas of the body, as well. In general, subluxations are divided into three categories:
- Psychosomatic: This encompasses misalignments affecting connections between the brain and body.
- Viscerosomatic: This focuses on misalignments affecting connections between organs and the body as a whole. Corrections for these types of subluxations focus on nutrition, particularly diet changes and herbal supplements.
- Somaticsomatic: Also known as “body-to-body” subluxations, these misalignments affect joints. Common examples include whiplash, birth trauma, injuries from falls, sports injuries, and damage to the wrists, elbows, and shoulders.
It is important to understand that, despite these divisions, a single bone misalignment can sometimes impact more than one type of function. While the specifics of treatment will depend on the subluxation in question, Dr. Langford usually uses a combination of manual therapy, soft tissue therapy, and physiotherapy paired with home exercises to adjust the joints and rebuild lost function.
Dr. Langford’s Experience
While Dr. Langford can offer some treatments for psychosomatic and viscerosomatic subluxations, his specialty is body-to-body. In the decades since opening his practice, he has provided treatment to patients suffering from a wide range of conditions, particularly those injured in car accidents and sports. For those patients who he cannot treat at the office, Dr. Langford has a developed a considerable network of contacts and specialists to whom he can refer you.
Find Out How Dr. Langford Can Help
Chiropractors can often provide relief for patients who have not had success elsewhere. Contact our office online today to schedule an appointment with Dr. Langford and learn more about the kind of care he can provide.
