Pain is a complex function.  It has a vital role in alerting us to problems that may threaten our body’s operation, if not our very survival.  Since any number of things can cause pain, finding the source of that pain is paramount.  This is particularly so since the source, ultimately, dictates the solution.

When it comes to musculoskeletal pain—that is, pain of the joints and muscles—one entity is almost always present, and that’s the vertebral subluxation.  A vertebral subluxation, or just subluxation, is spinal joint fixation; it’s a joint that has lost its full range of motion.  Essentially, a subluxation is a stuck joint.

Joints that are stuck cause a number of problems.  First, and most obviously, they decrease a person’s ability to move properly.  All restrictions are the same, frustrating and painful, and they force us to compensate elsewhere, usually to the determent of our bodies.  Movement is necessary to life, and without it, our ability to function properly is severely diminished.

The next thing a subluxation causes is muscle spasms.  Because the body sees a stuck joint as an injury, it will create spasms in the muscles surrounding the joint to protect the area.  Basically, the body wants to prevent any sudden movements from injuring the joint, and it does so by a process called “guarding”.  When your body goes into a guarding reaction practically all movements hurt—you’ll feel stiff and sore like you just can’t stretch the muscle out—almost guaranteeing that you’ll be laid out for awhile.

A third consequence of subluxations is an inflammatory reaction.  Inflammation is the painful swelling of a tissue—in the case of a subluxation it could be the swelling of a joint, ligament, muscle or tendon.  Inflammation is characterized by pain, swelling, redness, and loss of function.  It’s that tender-to-the-touch feeling of an injury that we’ve all experienced whether spraining an ankle, bending a finger back, catching your thumb with a hammer, or being sunburned—these are all examples of an inflammatory response.  The same thing happens with subluxations—they are just as painful!  You know there is inflammation going on when you press on the sore area and it’s tender to the touch.

The fourth and final problem a subluxation can cause is irritation to the nerve tissue as it exits the spine.  The nerves that come off the spinal cord exit from small holes in the spine called foramen.  The foramen are not just empty spaces but filled with nerves, blood vessels, lymphatics and fluid.  When a joint is stuck it can lead to stagnation of the fluids in the foramen, and this can irritate sensitive nerve tissue.  Irritated nerve tissue causes pain, like in sciatica; but more importantly, it can wreak havoc on the function of the nerve.  Because the nervous system controls and coordinates every process in the body, irritated nerve tissue could adversely affect the organs and tissues that sit at the end of that nerve, which can eventually lead to dysfunction.  Organic and tissue dysfunction can diminish the health of the whole body, so the consequences of subluxations reach far beyond the pain and discomfort they cause.

So if you are experiencing pain—low back pain, headaches, neck pain or pain between the shoulders—you likely have a subluxation.  Subluxations not only hurt but prevent you from functioning normally in your daily life; and even worse, they can lead to dysfunction that has a wide reaching effect on your overall health and well being.  The only way to have your subluxations detected and corrected is by visiting your local chiropractor.  Come back for my next article as I explain exactly how a chiropractor removes subluxations…and pain.

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