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Why do I get adjusted at more than one place?

Often patients come in and complain about lower back pain.  After we exam the patient we often tell them about another spot in their spine.  Because we examine the whole spine we often find more vertebras that need care.  There is a reason for that.  That reason is called the righting reflex.

Righting Reflex

For your brain to work, everything must stay level.  Maybe this is where being level headed comes from.  The righting reflex acts to keep your eyes level with the horizon.  By default this will also keep your ears level.  When your are not level, you will appear as if you’re drunk.  First you will have no balance.  Secondly you will have blurred vision.  Lastly you will slurred speech.  To avoid all this if one of your spinal bones rotate to the left either your head, another spinal bone, or your hips will rotate to the right.  This will keep your eyes level.  Hence we almost always find two areas of correction.

Why correct both?

Why do we correct both?  Some chiropractors focus only on the upper neck and some focus only on the pelvis, we focus on the whole spine.  As whole spine chiropractors it is our goal to determine which spot is the major and which one is compensating. Pain is not always the answer.  Often the spinal bone lower down is the most painful. It can be the most painful due to gravity.  The lower it is the more weight above it.  Since we do not gamble wit your health we adjust both.  Because in time one will reduce faster, this helps us determine the true primary.

Can adjusting more than one be harmful?

We actually did a whole video blog on this topic.  Click here to learn more about that.  But the short answer is no. Because if it does not need to be adjusted it will not adjust.