CHIROPRACTOR Vernon BC

Some people think that chiropractors "crack" joints, which can sound unsavory. At our clinic, this is never the goal, although it can sometimes happen incidentally with certain types of chiropractic adjustments. If this bothers you, we have plenty of other techniques to use, and these “cracks” can be avoided entirely without compromising results. If you enjoy the sounds, we can honor that, too, but it's important to know that adjustments should never hurt if they are done properly, although you may experience some tenderness in the hours that follow as your body adjusts to the correction of poor postural habits.

Adjustments can be modified in many ways to ensure your comfort. Our chiropractors have helped everyone from pregnant moms and newborns to the fragile and elderly. Sometimes we only use the pressure of a coin. If you are in agony when you first visit, we’ll do everything in our power to create a relaxing and comfortable experience, and our goal is always to help you feel better as fast as possible. 

Well, that can sound a bit intimidating! It’s important to know that how often you visit a chiropractor is always your choice, because we believe in empowering you to make your own healthcare decisions. Chiropractic is a system of healthcare focused on enhancing your alignment and making sure that your nerves are carrying all of the vital healing energy required to live a healthy life. Just like how going to the dentist to achieve great oral hygiene is important, so, too, is seeing your chiropractor, who can help you maintain great alignment and avoid future breakdown. But, whether you seek regular adjustments for optimal health, occasional adjustments for relief when you are hurt, or intermittent check-ups when you feel a tune-up is necessary—it’s always your choice.

All things in life that you truly care about need to be maintained. Your house, car, teeth, eyes, and even your pets. Looking specifically at the human spine, healthy joints all have common characteristics when seen on an X-ray. The human spine deteriorates and develops joint arthritis when the cartilage surfaces wear out from too much stress and strain over time.

You are a timeline history of all the minor and major injuries you have experienced from the day you were born. These small and large injuries inflict abnormal forces to the joints and soft tissues in and around your spine. Add them all up over the years and decades and that should be one good reason why you should see a chiropractor.

A healthy and strong posture is a manifestation of muscle tone and neural balance creating structural symmetry. Muscles need to be strong to support your posture. Too much tone and muscles become ropey, tight, and hypertonic. Not enough tone and muscles become flaccid, weak, and hypotonic. These imbalances over the years put our skeletal and spinal joints at risk for even more wear and tear. That should be another good reason to have your spine checked by a chiropractor.

Good habits to develop are: exercise, drink water, sleep well, and eat clean food. Preserve and maintain the joints of your body and you will move well into your later years.

Throughout our lives we have many minor injuries that will sprain the delicate joints of the back and neck, as well as many minor strains that will damage the muscles of our back and necks. While our bodies do an amazing job of repairing these strains and sprains, there is often a small amount of instability in the spine that will either prevent full motion of the joints or lead to too much movement in an unstable joint.

Your body does well to compensate for these old traumas, but over time, with extra stress (sitting too long, repetitive chores, those infrequent heavy lifting jobs) they will lead to wear-and-tear on the joints that are not moving perfectly.

Also, the energy that we had in our youth (think back 10 years ago) is not the same, so our postural and core muscles will fatigue faster with physical tasks, or even with a full day of activity. Between these two situations, the neck and back will be under a constant, low level of strain, that over the days, weeks, and years, will manifest as headaches, neck pain, shoulder pain, low back pain, and/or hip pain.

This is where chiropractic care can come to the rescue. A chiropractic doctor can assess, though a full history and exam, what the problem is and come up with a treatment plan that will improve the problem contributing to your discomfort and pain. This is usually accomplished through joint mobilization (adjustments), soft tissue therapy, stretches, exercises, and home therapy.

This is a chiropractor's passion. To identify and treat the underlying cause of your pain and discomfort, and then to treat the cause, allowing for full and optimal movement of your neck, back and hips so that the stress is minimized, and your discomfort subsides.

Lower Back, Mid-back, and Neck Pain: These are the most common things we see in a Chiropractic practice. Spinal pain affects many people at different stages in life and it can be super disabling. Whether it's an acute attack of pain that floors you, or a nagging first-time pain, we will work to find out why it's there.

Pain that Radiates down Legs or Arms: There are so many places through which nerves trace, including the doorways between vertebrae, as they make their way to your hands and feet. The spine is there to protect your nervous system, and when it's in great alignment, it provides support and protects those delicate nerves. But when it's not, and nerves get pinched, look out!

Numbness, Tingling, Neuropathy: Nerve irritation can come in many forms, and if a nerve is compressed for long enough, sensation can be affected in any region that this nerve supplies. Chiropractic has a nice track record for helping people with certain types of numbness and tingling.

Headaches and Migraines: Who hasn't had a headache at one stage or another? There are a huge variety of headaches and migraine types, and it's up to our Chiropractors to help figure out what could be causing this pain. It has been estimated that the majority of headaches are "cervicogenic", meaning that they stem from the structures of the neck. Text neck (or tech neck) is basically forward head posture, and this poor alignment can cause headaches.

Sciatica, Disc Injuries, Disc Bulges: Those flexible cartilage discs between your vertebrae are an engineering feat, no doubt. They can absorb an awful lot of shock and dampen a great deal of force while allowing uber flexibility. But, if they fail, or wear out and compress over time, they can cause pain when they blow, and they can also compress other delicate things like the nerves, which will always let you know when there is a problem!

Hip Pain: Hip Pain and Low Back Pain often go together because the hips and back work in sync to support your frame. Hip replacements are a fairly common surgery, and when it's needed, at the end stages of hip degeneration, it can be magical. We like to focus on prevention, on managing alignment issues before hip surgery becomes necessary.

Muscle Soreness: So you have an active life? Or maybe you're a couch potato? Muscle soreness can be the result of nutritional issues, poor alignment (causing certain muscles to work harder than they need to), injuries that have set up poor firing patterns, or just plain disuse and poor conditioning. Figuring it all out, and trying to help, is our job as Chiropractors.

Poor Sleep or Fatigue Due to Pain: Let's face it-pain can cause poor sleep because it hurts to lie like this, or like that, so you have to flip and jiggle and wobble around all night trying to get comfortable. It can really take a toll on a restful night's sleep, robbing you of needed healing time and leading to fatigue the next day. On the flip side, being in pain all day, for days on end, can be fatiguing and depressing, affecting energy levels and mood. And that's why we take pain so seriously-because it has ripple effects into most other areas of life.

Chiropractic Child and Family Care. Whether you're pregnant and having issues as your body changes, a parent who wants your kids to have proper postural alignment in such a techie world, or an adult struggling with health challenges, our Chiropractors have the experience to help all aspects of family care.

Chronic Pain. Are you an elder or grandparent, as many are in the Okanagan, trying to get the most out of a well-deserved retirement but held back by pain or chronic conditions? We help a lot of seniors improve mobility, maintain their balance, reduce chronic pain, and get the pain relief they're looking for.

Care for Athletes. Maybe you're a high-performance athlete, on a rec league, or a weekend warrior. Either way you'll need superb alignment and joint function for peak performance. Our doctors have helped many athletes overcome and manage sprains, strains, tendonitis, wear-and-tear conditions, and so much more! We love helping out with sports injuries.

Complementary Care Team, All In-House. As Chiropractors, we like to refer to other practitioners in our building that we trust, so we can all collaborate to help you out. For further health support, we might suggest you see a Physiotherapist, Registered Massage Therapist, Osteopathic Practitioner, or Reflexologist, all of whom are on our team and ready to help you accelerate your healing.

Onsite Digital X-ray Facility. To make a full diagnosis, sometimes it's important to pop the hood and look at the engine, so to speak. Many spinal-related conditions can be identified by taking spinal pictures, and many spinal conditions can only be found BY taking spinal pictures. Patients requiring x-rays are thrilled that these can be taken on-site without having to wait or go through their medical doctor. They're usually satisfied to finally see, in black and white, why they might have pain. To see is to know!

Spinal Decompression Therapy for Disc Bulges and Disc Injuries. If you have suffered a disc injury, disc bulge, disc protrusion, or a compressed disc, spinal decompression will likely help it heal, especially when other things are not working. If this injury is causing referral pain, numbness or tingling (from your neck down your arm, or from your lower back down your leg) we find that this therapy can be especially helpful as it helps to open up the little doors between your vertebrae where your nerves exit and run down your extremities. This therapy is gentle and effective.

Posture, Ergonomic and Gait Analysis. A big focus of our clinic is your alignment (aka your posture) and how supported and dynamic your posture is while you sit and while you move.

Custom Orthotics. Your feet are the foundation of your whole body when you're in motion, so naturally your foot alignment is also of utmost importance in whole body function and in helping to identify foot and lower-extremity pain. This is why we prescribe custom foot orthotics and gait assessment in cases where it's appropriate.