I’d like to start by first defining what a subluxation is because that term can trip up a lot of people, even some chiropractors. So I want to make sure that everyone who will be listening and reading this will understand that a subluxation is when the spinal bones get misaligned.
When these bones are out of place, since they are designed to protect your central nervous system, if they are out of place they can irritate the pain nerves they are designed to protect. Stress, tension, poor posture, accidents, falls; all can create these misalignment’s in the spine which then put pressure on the delicate spinal nerves choking off that vital nerve energy or the flow of information from the brain to the body and from the body back up to the brain so the brain can monitor how everything works. So that’s what a subluxation is.
Now the easiest way to treat that is what we call a chiropractic adjustment. Now an adjustment is a gentle force applied in a specific direction at a specific time to realign the vertebrae and get the pressure off the nerves. Now there are many different techniques that are used to apply what’s called the chiropractic adjustment.
Some of them use moderate energy, some of them are very light touch, and some of them even use no force. So it really pays as a chiropractor to have many tools at your disposal. So my treatment is unique in that I use about three of four different techniques combined to get the job done.
For some people it might be very simple and it might be just a hands on adjustment and sometimes when we use some energy and make the adjustment some people hear that little pop and that’s called an audible release and some people are afraid of that some people love it, it’s really very interesting the dichotomy we see across our patient base.
But that’s not the only technique we use. There are activator techniques which uses a very small spring loaded mallet, and that’s very gentle and we can use that in a lot of older adults. It can also be very effective at treatment working with infants and children that might not be able to handle a moderate force technique.
Then there are no force techniques, which is just a very gentle light touch applied to the spine or the vertebrae in particular that is misaligned and that can help those vertebrae get realigned.
The other thing that we do that is very unique in our office is we use an upper cervical specific technique which is called a toggle, and it’s a very gentle maneuver that uses a piece that drops out and we use the force of gravity and the acceleration of that to actually make the adjustment.
So they’re very varied techniques within chiropractic themselves, but with certain patients this technique might be better or we might have to use it if somebody has osteoporosis, we’re not going to use a moderate force technique, we’re going to use a very low force technique. So they’re very different types of treatments for those specific subluxations and all techniques work well but sometimes it can work better when applied specifically to a specific patient with different needs.
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 20 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (917) 534-6484 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
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