Many people associate chiropractic care with body alignment, but chiropractic medicine goes far beyond that. While spinal and joint alignment is an important component, chiropractic medicine is a holistic approach that addresses the entire musculoskeletal system and supports overall wellness. It can also serve as an alternative method for recovery from a variety of physical and functional issues.

At Aliya Mental Health, we integrate chiropractic medicine into our comprehensive treatment programs to enhance healing and well-being. To help clarify what chiropractic care truly entails—and how it can benefit your recovery—let’s take a closer look at this holistic approach.

What Is Chiropractic Medicine?

Chiropractic healthcare goes by many terms, including chiropractic medicine, chiropractic therapy, and simply chiropractic. It is an alternative healing method based in science to look at a person’s whole wellbeing as related to their musculoskeletal system. To elaborate, your musculoskeletal system is the framework of your skeleton, including bones, ligaments, cartilage, tendons, joints, and tissues. Every movement of the body uses the musculoskeletal system. For this reason, people can feel when something is seriously damaged or unaligned. Most people who have visited a chiropractor went because of immediate pain.

However, chiropractic medicine goes beyond physical realignment. Mainly, the practice focuses on the spine, which acts as a central road connecting the body. As an alternative therapy approach, chiropractic examines the whole picture impacting someone’s unwellness. Included in chiropractic therapy is physical adjustment, soft tissue massage, movement education, stretching, and lifestyle changes. Chiropractors are neuromusculoskeletal experts. To serve clients, they complete a bachelor’s and Doctor of Chiropractic (DC) degree in addition to passing the national board exam and state licensing guidelines. Notably, chiropractic care is licensed in all 50 states.

History of Chiropractic Medicine

Chiropractic entered the mainstream in 1895 due to a well-renowned incident where chiropractor D.D. Palmer re-aligned the spine of a deaf janitor. He also coined the name chiropractic to come from the Greek words for “hand” and “done.” In 1867 Palmer founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic to teach the elements of musculoskeletal health to interested students. But chiropractic mainly became popular in the early to mid 1900s when public awareness grew.

What Does a Chiropractor Help With?

Because chiropractic is holistic in approach, it believes the whole body is affected by dysfunction in the physical structure, especially the spine. Pain, headaches, stress and overwhelm, and stiffness are all caused by disorder in the musculoskeletal system. Chiropractors treat the physical and the mental in therapy, which also improves spiritual wellness.

Pain Relief

Perhaps the most well-understood element of chiropractic is pain relief. When you feel physical pain in your body, it’s impossible to ignore, stretching into other areas of your life. Through soft tissue therapy, spinal realignment, and joint adjustments, chiropractors reduce pain with ongoing support. Sometimes improvements can be felt after one session, but it can take multiple sessions to treat the root of the issue.

Headaches

Headaches commonly occur due to pinched nerves, tension, and misaligned vertebrae. Even poor posture over time can lead to headaches and migraines. Chiropractors are equipped to trace the source of your headaches by looking at the overall health of your musculoskeletal structure.

Accident Recovery

Sometimes life veers in unexpected ways, bringing pain and discomfort due to injuries. Approximately 5.1 million car accident-related injuries get treated in the United States each year, representing significant pain. Chiropractors provide ongoing physical recovery for injuries to gradually reset the body back to a healthy state.

Stress and Anxiety

One lesser-known benefit of chiropractic medicine is stress and anxiety reduction. As chiropractors set the musculoskeletal structure into proper alignment, they also reduce tension, improve blood flow, and increase overall healing. These results lead to stress reduction and lowered blood pressure.

Flexibility

As people age, they lose flexibility and mobility, but this can be reduced and slowed with the right anticipatory care. As chiropractors realign the spine, their clients gain greater flexibility and range of motion with less pain in their movements. Notably, more flexibility can improve balance and pain relief.

How Can Chiropractic Medicine Help in Recovery?

If you’re wondering how the benefits of chiropractic therapy can impact you, here are just a few of the ways.

Pain Management

Often, people will attend chiropractic sessions for back pain, since they understand the spine is the focus of this medicine. However, chiropractic also treats neck, shoulder, and hip pain, as well as any joint pain, like in the knees, elbows, or pelvis. Essentially, the roots your physical pain traces back to can be surprising and chiropractors assist in determining the problem. By utilizing manual therapy for realignment, they provide a hands-on pain management methodology.

Stress Reduction

You can enjoy the surprising benefit of stress reduction from chiropractic. Studies show chiropractic lowers blood pressure and anxiety levels. Another study on chiropractic aid for major depressive disorder points out the connection between depression and imbalances in the autonomic nervous system. Since chiropractic manipulates the spine to regulate the ANS, it is an effective holistic treatment for depression. Markedly, mood disorders and anxiety disorders have overlapping symptoms of distress, anxiety, and overwhelm.

Thus, chiropractic can help you reduce stress and tension and regulate your nervous system.

Improved Sleep Quality

Interestingly, chiropractic therapy also has benefits for sleep quality and length by improving pain and discomfort and relaxing the nervous system. In fact, chiropractic is used in individuals who struggle with insomnia and obstructive sleep apnea. For many, the improvement in sleep is enough of a reason to give chiropractic a try!

Overall Well-Being

Chiropractic is an alternative healing method that is holistic in nature. Although it focuses on the physical, its results improve mental and spiritual health, too. Plus, another element of chiropractic therapy is lifestyle changes. As part of a chiropractic treatment plan, you can discover the benefits of exercise, nutritional counseling, and managing stress.

How Does a Chiropractor Help Mental Health?

The mind-body connection is a key part of chiropractic medicine. This refers to the link between the physical and the mental, also taking into account the way spiritual wellness follows. This includes one’s overall sense of identity, person values, and community. As noted already, chiropractic can have wonderful results on stress, anxiety, and overall mood. Resetting your internal system has amazing outward effects like better sleep, lower blood pressure, tension relief, and circulation.

Plus, when you prioritize your health you can rest easy knowing you’re taking steps to become the best version

Chiropractic Medicine as Part of an Individualized Treatment Plan for Mental Health

At Aliya Mental Health, we provide both traditional therapies (called psychotherapy) and alternative therapies like chiropractic medicine to ensure comprehensive recovery. You will experience the greatest results from chiropractic when it’s combined with other evidence-based therapy for mental wellness. Every guest to our program follows an individualized treatment plan. Set up your initial consultation with us to get started with yours.

Chiropractic Medicine in Recovery at Aliya Mental Health

While chiropractic may not be the first therapy that comes to mind when you consider mental health and substance abuse rehab, it’s a valuable addition! Chiropractic medicine should not be overlooked as a holistic treatment approach such as we offer at Aliya Mental Health. You can include chiropractic services for whole-body wellness into your custom service plan. One of the best parts is how you can continue to experience results after finishing recovery programming with us, since chiropractic is accessible in all 50 states.

We would love to get you set up with a transformative care plan that includes chiropractic, so please contact us as soon as you’re ready to begin!