Are you one of the 55 million Americans living with arthritis? If so, you understand firsthand the inflammation, pain, and stiffness the condition brings. These symptoms impact your ability to carry out daily activities and hinder your mobility.
To combat the swelling and pain, many people turn to pain medications and anti-inflammatories. These drugs, however, can have unwanted side effects that impact your health and quality of life, such as dependency, delaying the healing of cartilage, and degrading your stomach lining.
At Peak Physical Medicine in Visalia, California, our experts, take a holistic approach when providing care to our patients. One way we achieve this is through chiropractic care for arthritis sufferers. This alternative arthritis treatment provides relief without the unwanted side effects of most drugs.
Keep reading to learn how chiropractic care can complement your arthritis treatment and help you feel and move better!
Focus on function
Chiropractors look at the way the structure of your joints and spine affect your overall well-being and ability to function. When any area is out of balance, including joints affected by arthritis, your body is out of alignment.
Being out of alignment makes it difficult for your body to move and function normally. For people with arthritis, the imbalances may be more pronounced since the structure of arthritic joints is often compromised.
Chiropractic care works to restore structure to your joints and improve your alignment. As these factors improve, your joints function better, and movement becomes easier.
Chiropractic treatments for arthritis
Chiropractic care offers a minimally invasive, drug-free way to address your arthritis without surgical interventions or prescription drugs. At Peak Physical Medicine, our approach is holistic and integrative. As such, we typically recommend a combination of treatment modalities to improve the symptoms of your arthritis.
Some of the chiropractic treatments we use with our arthritis patients include:
- Adjustments, or spinal manipulation, a technique in which manual force is applied to the joints to realign your body
- Nonsurgical spinal decompression, a technique that uses a decompression system to reduce pressure on your nerves and alleviate pain
- Diet and nutrition counseling, to provide you with the information you need to help regain control of your body and limit the progress of osteoarthritis
Our treatment methods are safe, low-risk options for arthritis sufferers. In fact, chiropractic care is among the safest arthritis therapies used to treat arthritis pain in your neck or back.
Before your treatments begin, your chiropractor at Peak Physical medicine reviews your medical history and examines your joints as well as lifestyle factors to determine the right treatment plan for you.
Treating compensatory pain
When your joint is inflamed or swollen, it may not be prudent to use direct chiropractic manipulation on the affected joint, but chiropractic care still helps improve your symptoms and quality of life.
In addition to offering nutritional support, hot and cold therapy, exercise recommendations, and ultrasound, your chiropractor can address and treat any areas of your body that have compensatory pain. For example, if arthritis in your knee has you walking with a limp, it’s likely you also have an aching hip or low back pain due to imbalance.
Chiropractic care helps these areas to minimize compensatory pain and improves any dysfunction.
If you’re ready to alleviate arthritis symptoms with chiropractic care, contact our Visalia office, or request an appointment online today!