What is Chiropractic?

Chiropractic is a “hands on” health care discipline which emphasises the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery. The practice of chiropractic focuses on improving the relationship between structure and function.

• Chiropractors look for vertebral subluxations in the spine which may be interfering with brain body connection and spinal motion

• We use specialised chiropractic techniques to adjust these subluxations and improved spinal function

• Helps with back pain, neck pain, headaches, hip pain, shoulder pain, cervicogenic migraine

Over 300, 000 Australians visit a chiropractor every week. Chiropractors play an important role in the spinal healthcare of everyday Australian by using a variety of non-surgical techniques, such as specific spinal adjustments, manual therapy, and low-force intervention. Chiropractors offer a drug-free, hands-on approach to spinal healthcare.

What chiropractors look for is interference to the nervous system, particularly through spinal or joint dysfunction. This interference is called a vertebral subluxation complex, or subluxation for short. The World Health Organisation notes, in its 2005 Guidelines on Basic Training and Safety in Chiropractic, that chiropractic has “an emphasis on manual techniques, including joint adjustment and/or manipulation, with a particular focus on subluxations”(1).

If you have these subluxations occurring in your spine, you may have symptoms such as neck pain, headaches, whiplash, low back pain, hip, knee, elbow or shoulder pain. These are all conditions for which the highest level research supports chiropractic as an effective treatment (2,3). But more often than not, those symptoms are the last thing to show up when your body has been in a state of dysfunction.

We recognise the value and responsibility of working in co-operation with other health care practitioners in your best interest. Our key role as chiropractors is to assess how your lifestyle stress (home, work, school, play, sport, nutrition) is impacting your spine and nervous system and general health.

We practice in a patient-centred model and deliver our range of techniques modified for your particular case – from pregnancy, infancy, childhood, adulthood, and for those with more miles on the clock! In delivering your chiropractic care, your needs and preferences are combined with clinical experience and best evidence to develop your unique care plan

The World Federation of Chiropractic has a suggested reading list – here's a great start if you want loads of the science and peer reviewed papers.

Interested? Want to learn more? Call us today!

Further reading and references for what is chiropractic?

1: World Health Organisation. WHO guidelines on basic training and safety in chiropractic. Geneva, 2005.
2: Bronfort, G., et al. 2010. Effectiveness of Manual Therapies: the UK evidence report. Chiropractic and Osteopathy. 2010. 18:3.
3: Clar, C. 2014. Clinical effectiveness of manual therapy for the management of musculoskeletal and non-musculoskeletal conditions: systematic review and update of the UK evidence report. Chiropractic and Manual Therapies. 22:12