I am often surprised how readily people put their aches and pain down to just wear and tear and blame it on their job, lack of exercise, poor posture or an old injury. The fact is that the human body is pretty fantastic at healing itself if we let it.

After injury there is always the need for a period of time for rest to allow tissues to repair – for muscles this may be a number of weeks, for ligaments up to 6 weeks and for serious injuries it can be many months. What I often find is people present to me with an issue caused by a particular event. When you start to investigate there is actually a long history of low-level complaints that grumble on eventually getting so bad that help is needed. 

Alternatively serious issues that have been overlooked or misdiagnosed just become accepted as normal. There is also a tendency when trying to help those with underlying systemic conditions to put the blame on a specific condition i.e. arthritis  and not to look for other problems that can be corrected and help that persons quality of life and overall health.



Here are some of the things that I find people are willing to put up with but should not be ignored.

-      You should be able to sleep for 8 hours and get out of bed without pain

-      You should not be waking in the middle of the night in pain, with pins and needles, numbness or cramping in you arms or legs

-      You should not be considering wear and tear as a possible issue till you get close to your 60’s – and if you have a diagnosis via x-ray or MRI for wear and tear before that age - you should be asking why.

-      Recurrent problems that do not go away - even those that are being treated by health professionals - should be reassessed.

-      Any problem that results in lack of power in any of your limbs should be looked at.

-      Recurrent headaches should be looked into especially if they are new or getting worse.

-      If you are a sports person or in the gym and having recurrent injury or many of the same type of injury particularly tendonitis, or muscle tears it may be that you are doing too much, returning to play too soon - but could equally be some other factor that has been overlooked.

-      If you find yourself having to hold your breath to achieve a simple task.

The traditional view of chiropractors is that they are bonesetters only dealing with spinal misalignment.  Before doing any spinal adjustments, I am far more interested in trying to understand all the other possible factors that can impact on musculoskeletal health. When you have a good understanding of why somebody is presenting with a particular problem you have a much better chance of giving good advice and helping him or her to solve it.