Chiropractic therapy is a complementary and alternative medicine founded back in late 1895 and widely used today to address a number of mechanical disorders in the musculoskeletal system. The most common type of chiropractic care is the adjustment, which involves spine manipulation to alleviate chronic pain conditions and improve joint function.
In this field of medicine, there are two types of treatments — Manual chiropractic adjustments and instrumental chiropractic adjustments. The subtle difference between the two treatments is that manual chiropractic only involves the use of hands to manipulate the spine while the instrumental chiropractic performs the adjustment using external equipment.
For instrumental chiropractic, a wide range of chiropractic adjusting instruments are available at the chiropractor disposal. Your doctor will customize the treatment based on your specific conditions. However, if your considering going for chiropractic treatment the following are some of the techniques you can expect in a chiropractic office.
Common Performed Chiropractic Techniques
Gonstead chiropractic assessment and treatment technique
This is a manual chiropractic adjusting technique that often involves adjusting the low back or pelvis. It requires the patient to lie sideways for the chiropractor to perform hands-on spine manipulation which mainly helps to relieve pain, muscle stiffness, realigning joints, increase mobility and patients’ range of motion.
This is a basic adjusting technique students learn in their first years of chiropractic course.
Activator Spinal Adjustment Device
Activator technique uses a handheld adjusting instrument to administer tender impulse force into the vertebral sections of the spine. The force is equal to a light thumping sensation and it’s used to address a range of issues including low back pain and migraines.
Patients normally associate the impulse force with a light thumping sensation and it’s ideally recommended to seniors. This technique is so effective because the chiropractic adjusting instrument targets each vertebral segment individually.
Flexion Distraction
This is another common type of chiropractic adjusting technique used in many chiropractic clinics and preferred treatment when treating conditions such as facet joint pain, scoliosis, disc degeneration, disc herniation and other conditions. Most of these conditions occur over time as a person ages and it often worsens with old age. But this non-invasive procedure can guarantee fast and permanent pain relief.
Thompson, Or drop table, Technique
This technique uses a specially designed adjusting table fitted with padded platforms that slightly drops an inch down when pressure is applied to make spine adjustment. The slight drop motion has a very comfortable vibration feel so it can be used to treat chronic spine asymmetry, pain and other extremities.
Diversified Technique
Similar to the Gonstead technique, this type of chiropractic treatment is effective in treating spine issues and extremities. It’s a universal technique used across all chiropractic clinics involving hands-on thrust focused at restoring range of motion, mobility and spine alignment. The procedure doesn’t apply any chiropractic adjusting instrument but manual manipulation using hands.
Both manual and instrumental chiropractic adjustments complement each other to offer fast and permanent relief. However, when it comes to effectiveness, safety and accuracy chiropractic adjusting tools incorporate all that into yield good results. Manual chiropractic techniques are known to have a smaller margin for error while hands-on manipulation is also limited to achieve detailed motion adjustments.
Physical sciences are highly applied in this chiropractic care to understand how bones and muscles function. Understanding the mechanics of chiropractic adjusting equipment is also important for the chiropractors in determining the effectiveness of these physical therapy equipment over manual adjustments.
