The smoking gun
Pain is typically the last alarm bell to sound when something isn’t right. Long before pain shows up, your body has already been signaling dysfunction under the surface. Your nervous system continuously adapts, compensates, and copes to keep you moving through life often without you feeling a thing. When communication between your brain and body becomes disrupted, your system quietly shifts functions like how you move, how your muscles work, and how your joints absorb stress. This compensation can continue for minutes, weeks, or even years before pain finally appears.
So, when someone says they “threw their back out” shoveling snow, the shoveling wasn’t the cause it was simply the final straw. Earlier signs your nervous system may be struggling include frequent headaches, fatigue, poor sleep, reduced mobility, digestive changes, recurring tension, and other subtle symptoms we tend to dismiss as “normal.” Instead of waiting for pain to be the wake-up call, focusing on nervous system function can help prevent dysfunction from escalating into symptoms. Chiropractic care supports this by influencing neuroplasticity, which is your brain’s ability to form new neural pathways which helps the brain process movement and sensory input more clearly.
Adjustments stimulate areas of the brain like the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in how we interpret and regulate pain. By assessing and correcting areas of spinal dysfunction rather than chasing where it hurts, chiropractic care works to address the root cause, supporting a healthier, more resilient nervous system before pain ever has a chance to take over. We can even affect the chronicity of pain that is experienced through routine chiropractic care as opposed to being seen strictly for symptom relief. If your body has been whispering warning signs, it may be telling you something is going on. Listen to the signals before they become a yell.
Eklund A, Jensen I, Lohela-Karlsson M, Hagberg J, Leboeuf-Yde C, Kongsted A, Bodin L, Axén I. The Nordic Maintenance Care program: Effectiveness of chiropractic maintenance care versus symptom-guided treatment for recurrent and persistent low back pain-A pragmatic randomized controlled trial. PLoS One. 2018 Sep 12;13(9):e0203029. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203029. PMID: 30208070; PMCID: PMC6135505.
Haavik H, Niazi IK, Holt K, Murphy B. Effects of 12 Weeks of Chiropractic Care on Central Integration of Dual Somatosensory Input in Chronic Pain Patients: A Preliminary Study. J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2017 Mar-Apr;40(3):127-138. doi: 10.1016/j.jmpt.2016.10.002. Epub 2017 Feb 10. PMID: 28196631.
