People should receive chiropractic care for arthritis primarily to prevent additional arthritic change from progressing. Arthritis, as most people know, is a degenerative process that will continue over the course of time. When the spinal joints of the vertebral column get misaligned, when they are not moving with proper mechanics, they have a tendency to grind on each other, which can wear away the cartilage, cause inflammation and cause the arthritic changes that we see on the bones, which usually includes disc space narrowing or shutting down of the joint space and eroding away of the cartilage. If that is allowed to progress, eventually you get to the condition of bone on bone. So, if someone has arthritis, chiropractic care can help slow down the progression and maybe even reverse some of the symptoms.

Another reason to get chiropractic care to treat arthritis is to get the spine and joints adjusted. People don’t really know if they have misalignments in their spine or in any other joints, but when those joints misalign they will put pressure on and start to irritate the delicate spinal nerves that exit in between the vertebrae. If there are irritations of those nerves, it affects the way the nerve system communicates from your brain to the rest of your body, and that interference can affect your health in a lot of different ways. The better your nerve system functions, and the better your brain is connected to the rest of the body, particularly your heart, lungs, kidneys, spleen, intestine and immune system, the better overall function you are going to see in the body.

Chiropractic care can prevent additional arthritic change and slow down its progression. Even in children and adults, you can prevent arthritis from ever even starting if you improve the mechanics of the spine. That is why in our office, we talk about seeing infants and children through every stage of growth and development, and adults should be doing periodic check-ups. Just as a dentist will do periodic check-ups on the teeth to make sure that they last you a lifetime, you need to check your spine periodically to make sure that your spine and your nerve system stay healthy throughout the course of your lifetime.

It is just that simple and that is why people suffering from arthritis should receive chiropractic care and people who don’t have arthritis who want to prevent it, should also be receiving chiropractic care.