Recovery

At Grand Chiropractic, our primary goal and objective is to provide patients with a quicker and more complete recovery. We achieve this through our Three Step Injury Recovery Program:

Chiropractic plan-of-care
Multi-level work conditioning and hardening
Proper dietary supplements and nutritional/weight management education

Our program produces better results because it:

Addresses fear avoidance beliefs;
Increases pain-free days;
Decreases disability; and
Reduces time off of work.

Acute pain should be relieved promptly and effectively to prevent the development of abnormal, self-perpetuating pain reflexes. Our goals are to reduce sympathetic arousal (the “fight or flight” response) and decrease blood flow restriction, thereby changing the perception of pain. Drugs or immobilization that prevent appropriate physical activity can hamper recovery. Also, prolonged use of narcotic medications may result in both physiological and psychological addiction, which reduces the body’s supply of endorphins, causing a delayed recovery.

Chiropractic Plan of Care

The chiropractic plan of care involves effective adjustments and manipulation. An adjustment is made to a specific joint showing abnormal motion using a high-velocity, low-amplitude force.

The high velocity produces a mechanical and a neurological effect. Mechanically, the high velocity helps overcome the joint’s barriers to correct alignment. Neurologically, the velocity stimulates and recruits the maximum amount of mechanoreceptors in and around the joint. The high velocity force takes the joint to its maximal normal end range of motion, stimulating the receptors.

These effects enhance the muscular sense (kinesthesia), producing both temporal (several impulses from one neuron over time) and spatial (impulses from several neurons at the same time) summation. Individually the stimuli cannot evoke a response, but collectively they can generate a response. Successive stimuli on one nerve are called temporal summation; the addition of simultaneous stimuli from several conducting fibres is called spatial summation. The increase in nerve recruitment can be beneficial, for the adjustment stimulates an abundance of mechanoreceptors. This mechanoreceptor stimulation blocks nociceptive (pain) impulses. This, in turn, decreases the pain-spasm-pain cycle and brings about relief of pain symptoms.

The low amplitude thrust takes the joint through the restrictive barriers, but not beyond. As a result, the mechanoreceptors are stimulated and recruited.

Research indicates that mechanoreceptor depolarization:

Helps restore the body’s sense of the relative position of neighboring parts of the body, or proprioception.
Reduces the pain experienced through nociceptors, the nerves that sense and respond to damaged body parts. When activated, these nerves transmit pain signals (via the peripheral nerves, as well as the spinal cord) to the brain. The pain is typically well localized, constant, and often with an aching or throbbing quality.
Improves the patient’s ability to move through both conscious (segmental somatomotor modulation) and unconscious (segmental autonomic modulation) effort, as well as overall posture (suprasegmental motor control).

Over all, the chiropractic plan of care improves range of motion, overall motion (kinematics) and the body’s motion (biomechanics).

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