How Chiropractic Adjustments Keep Your Spine Healthy
Is your spine as healthy as it could be? The spine supports your weight and makes it possible to walk, run, jump, bend, and stretch. Life can take a toll on your spine, causing back and neck pain, headaches, stiffness, and health issues. Chiropractic adjustments keep the spine properly aligned, ease pain, and play an important role in overall health.
All About the Spine
The spine consists of 33 small bones called vertebrae. Rubbery discs between each vertebrae help absorb shock when you move and permit smooth, easy movement. Small joints called facet joints connect the vertebrae, while ligaments stabilize them. Muscles in the back and neck support the spine and offer added stability.
In addition to supporting your body, your spine protects the spinal cord, the long tube of nervous system tissue that extends from the base of the brain to the lower back. Nerves extend from each vertebra and travel throughout the body.
Poor posture, minor and major injuries, repetitive movements, and stress affect the health of your spine, causing pain and misaligned vertebrae (subluxations). Misaligned vertebrae press on nerves and tissues, triggering pain and inflammation. Subluxations may affect your health if nerve signals are incomplete or don't reach organs or key systems, like the immune system.
Improving Spine Health with Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic adjustments restore the normal alignment of the spine. Your chiropractor uses hands-on pressure or an activator to apply controlled force that painlessly realigns the vertebrae. Benefits of adjustments include:
- Straighter Posture. It's easier to maintain good posture when your spine is correctly aligned. Posture issues stress muscles in the back and neck and may cause pain, headaches, digestive, and breathing problems. Poor posture also stresses joints, ligaments, and tissues, triggering chronic back, neck, and joint pain. In addition to performing adjustments, your chiropractor can recommend posture-friendly exercises that strengthen the muscles that support your spine.
- Improved Flexibility. Stiffness and reduced range of motion can occur if you have subluxations or tight muscles. Limited range of motion increases your injury risk and strains joints and ligaments. Adjustments restore normal movement to your spine, helping you avoid injuries that affect the back or neck. Your chiropractor may also use massage and other soft tissue therapies to improve your flexibility and range of motion.
- Less Pain. Improving spinal alignment with adjustments reduces pressure on soft tissues and nerves. Once pressure eases, inflammation and nerve irritation decrease, causing painful symptoms to subside. Chiropractic treatment offers a natural pain relief solution that could help you avoid prescription pain medication for back pain. According to a study published in PLOS One in 2025, spinal pain patients who received spinal manipulation therapy had a lower risk of opioid-related adverse drug effects. The researchers theorized that this could be because patients who received adjustments were less likely to be prescribed opioids.
- Decreased Need for Surgery. Avoiding or delaying back surgery may be possible if you receive adjustments and other chiropractic treatments for herniated discs. Herniated discs happen when the soft inner portion of spinal discs breaks through the outer casing. The bulging part of the disc irritates and compresses nearby nerves, triggering pain, numbness, tingling, and weakness that may extend to the arms or legs. A retrospective cohort study published in BMJ Open noted that spinal manipulation therapy can significantly reduce the need for a discectomy, the surgery that removes a herniated disc or the damaged portion of the disc.
- Better Health. Reducing pressure on nerves with adjustments ensures that organs and systems receive signals from the brain needed for normal functioning.
- Preventing or Slowing Arthritis. Adjustments could reduce your risk for arthritis and other degenerative conditions that affect the spine. Improving alignment and mobility reduces pressure on the spine, decreases inflammation, eases stress on the vertebrae, and can slow wear or tear on the spine that may cause or worsen arthritis.
Chiropractic adjustments offer an excellent way to enhance your spinal health. Contact our office today to schedule your appointment.
Sources:
National Spine Health Foundation: Chiropractic Care, 1/25/2023
https://spinehealth.org/article/chiropractic-care/
American Chiropractic Association: Back Pain Facts and Statistics
https://handsdownbetter.org/health-and-wellness/back-pain-facts-and-statistics/
PLOS ONE: Association Between Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation for Sciatica and Opioid-Related Adverse Events: A Retrospective Cohort Study, 1/28/2025
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0317663
NCBI: BMJ Open: Association Between Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation and Lumbar Discectomy in Adults with Lumbar Disc Herniation and Radiculopathy: Retrospective Cohort Study Using United States’ Data, 12/16/2022
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9764600/
Cleveland Clinic: Spine Structure and Function, 10/18/2023
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/10040-spine-structure-and-function