Snap, Crackle, and Pop

When you first hear those words you probably think of a popular breakfast cereal, but that is not what I am discussing in this post. What I want to talk about is the common comments I get from people when I tell them that I am going to be a chiropractor. The some of the most common phrases I have heard from people is "Oh you are going to be one of those back crackers" or "Good I need someone to pop my back" and others like that. I hope to be able to dispel some of these misconceptions about chiropractors and show what they are really all about.

First off, lets talk about the pop that some of you may have experienced under care of a chiropractor. The sound is not coming from any bone on bone grinding. The sound you hear is actually coming from one or more joint capsules. Most of your joints have a fluid filled capsule that helps it move freely and when they get stuck in a position the fluid is not getting replaced and is not filling the capsule correctly. When a force is put into the joint to free it from being stuck fluid rushes into the joint causing the popping (or cavitation) sound that you often here when moving around or on the chiropractic table. You can think of it this way, when you have a suction cup stuck on a window and you suddenly pull it off, the rushing air makes a popping sound. This is the same principle that happens in your joints.

Now that I have explained the sound, lets talk about what the chiropractor is trying to do. There is a common misconception that chiropractors are bone doctors. In reality we work on the nervous system. The nervous system is the information super highway of the body with the brain as the control center. Every tissue in the body communicates with the brain and the brain communicates with the tissues via the nervous system. When there is a disruption anywhere in the communication highway, misinformation or lack of information is being communicated to the tissues and/or to the brain and they do not function to their fullest potential. One of the greatest culprits of disrupting the communication highway are misaligned vertebra in your spine. Since nearly every nerve in the body has to pass through small spaces between vertebra, if that bone is misplaced, even to an extent of a couple millimeters,  the effects down the line of the communication highway can be drastic. So the chiropractors job is to find the misplaced vertebra and correct it via a chiropractic adjustment to free up the communication pathways. Yes chiropractors move bones but it is a means to a different end. It is for the purpose of helping the nervous system function at its fullest potential.

There are many different ways that a chiropractor can go about moving bones to help the nervous system work correctly. Only some of the techniques will actually elicit the sound that we talked about before. The method that I plan on using in my practice is a low force, gentle adjustment (with no cracking or popping) that uses the bodies own systems to work out the fixations of these bones that are disrupting the communications from brain to body and/or body to brain for a better functioning whole person.

I hope that I have been helpful in explaining what chiropractors really do in their offices. I plan on explaining some of the topics in this post in greater detail later. If you do have any questions, feel free to comment on this post or shoot me an email at mike.r.epperson@gmail.com.

-Mike E