“Why did you adjust there?”

by Dr. Michael Weir

There are times that I treat my patients and I do not adjust the area of their complaint. Their question usually is, “If it hurts there, why do you not adjust there?”

To answer this question I first have to give a short anatomy lesson. Our spines are made up of 24 individual, freely moving bones called vertebrae. Each of these freely moving vertebrae work together as a unit to allow you to turn your head or touch your toes. Think of your spine much like a stack of children’s building blocks. Each block is its own piece of square wood, but if I took the bottom block of the stack and twisted it, it would affect the whole stack. When you twist the bottom one it also causes the one on the top to twist as well

A great example of this is a patient that came in to my office a few years back seeking treatment for low back pain. I took x-rays of his low back and examined it thoroughly. He had some alignment issues in his low back and I began to treat him for these misalignments. In the weeks that followed my patient saw a small amount of relief, but nothing near what I would have liked to see with him. After some frustration on my part I decided to reassess what I was doing with him so I did a full workup from the head down. It turns out he had a huge misalignment in his neck causing his back to compensate. When we started to treat the neck, the low back pain completely went away!

Now I look at the whole body, from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. So the next time I adjust you in an area of your body that may not hurt, know that its because my main goal is to get your entire body working as a whole.