Chiropractic Care and Arthritis

Arthritis is one of the most common health issues in America at a rate of over 50 million people. That is over 20% of the entire population who suffers from chronic pain. It is estimated that if the current trends continue, because of the aging population, almost 80% of Americans will have some form of arthritis by 2040. 2040 may seem like a long way away, but is only about 20 years away when the youngest of the Boomer generation are in their 80s. If you are 60 years old now, you will likely see this estimated arthritis rate, and watch your friends and family suffer from it. The arthritis treatment Shawnee, KS provides aims to keep you from being one of these statistics. Keep reading to learn more about how to treat arthritis and prevent it from progressing.

Arthritis is quite simply the inflammation of joints, however, there are over 200 variations of arthritis that affect all areas of the body. The most common types of arthritis are Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis, but at the end of the day, the type of arthritis isn’t as important as understanding how chiropractic care and decreasing inflammation in your body are the keys to stopping the progression and relieving your pain. There is hope for pain when you are using the right arthritis treatment, Shawnee, KS has to offer.
 

Chiropractic Care and Arthritis

Many people assume when they have pain the first place to start is with pain relief medications or anti-inflammatory drugs. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The right place to start for arthritis treatment is with a mobile and aligned spine. You may think that is crazy if it is your fingers or knee that aches from arthritis, but your body is an amazingly comprehensive web of connections that all depend on each other. The spine is the epicenter of these connections since all nerves signaling from head to toe and arm to arm must pass through the nerve connections of the spinal column.

Nerve signaling controls how the brain communicates pain and how chemical messages are sent to the tissues in the body. In other words, without good nerve signaling, all the different parts of your body may be at risk of not getting what they need. When the body cannot signal effectively through the nerve connections in the spine because the vertebrae are misaligned, this can cause inflammation. Inflammation is always at the root of arthritis- always. When your spine is properly aligned through the assessment and treatment of a chiropractor, nerves signal appropriately, and this decreases inflammation. Any decrease in inflammation is going to give the body a chance to heal itself and relieve pain. This is not to say that simply getting spinal adjustments from a chiropractor will heal your arthritis. There is usually more to the story, but your body will be ready to do the work of healing, and pain can be diminished while other treatments are utilized.

Poor body mechanics through not moving or exercising, sitting too long, and looking down at devices also play a key role in inflammation that develops throughout the body. These simple, but persistent improper movements lead to tissue and joint damage, and arthritis. The rehab team at LifeWorks Integrative Health is well-trained at identifying imbalances in movements that contribute to more pain and eventually joint and tissue damage.
 

Causes of Inflammation and Arthritis

The cause of arthritis is always inflammation, but inflammation can come in many forms from many different causes. It is vitally important to consider what is driving YOUR inflammation. When you can determine this, you can make the necessary lifestyle and treatment adjustments to decrease it and stop your arthritis. There are usually multiple reasons you developed arthritis in the first place. Therefore, consider how inflammatory foods, heavy metal toxicity, leaky gut, stress, lack of exercise, or mold toxicity may play a role in the inflammatory load your body is carrying. Because we have a comprehensive team of chiropractors, functional medicine doctors, physician assistants, rehab specialists, and more you can be sure we have the right people to get to the root of your inflammation.

When the inflammation load is greater than what your body can adapt to, your body will start communicating through symptoms. It is important to learn to listen to your body when it first begins this communication. This is listening to your body when it “whispers” to you in the form of a decreased range of motion, intermittent aches and pains, poor digestion, headaches, etc. This can help address the causes of inflammation earlier before your body has to “yell” at you in the form of chronic pain/disease, fatigue, autoimmune disease, and severe/persistent pain.
 

Treatment for Arthritis

A combination of treatments is generally most effective in decreasing inflammation, supporting healing of damaged tissues, reprograming nerve signals causing pain, aligning the spine, and learning how to correct biomechanics. The LifeWorks Team assesses the exact combination of therapies you need based on your unique situation. Your chiropractor will determine which of these are needed for your pain relief and to stop arthritis from progressing:

• Spinal alignment

• Rehab/physiotherapy

• Infrared laser light therapy

• Regenerative regenerative therapy

• Functional medicine therapy