Chiropractic Care and Injuries

First up, let’s take a look at a study involving muscle function for stabilising the body, in which young, health students were the research subjects. To set the scene, you need to know that the muscles deep in the abdomen are part of your core stabilising system, and they need to be “turned on” before you lift your arm, so that you remain stable and don’t injure yourself. This should happen very fast and without your conscious awareness. This is called “Feed-forward” activation, because it is pre-planned by the central nervous system. It ensures that movement of the body is balanced, so that no injury takes place. 

The researchers found that in a group of 90 healthy students, 17 of them could not pre-activate their abdominal muscles before they moved their arms. This meant they were more prone to injury. Six months later, the researchers tested 13 of the affected students again and found that they still couldn’t do it. So what was going on with these students? To find out, they were given chiropractic assessments, and it was discovered that they all had tightness and restriction of joints in their pelvis. They were subluxated. So, these 13 students received chiropractic adjustments of their pelvis and guess what? 

 There was almost 40% improvement in their ability to pre-activate their core abdominal muscles. That’s pretty phenomenal! This study is really important because it has big implications. These students had no existing pain at all. But scientists think that poor control of the core muscles may be the cause of people developing pain or sustaining an injury in the future. We know from other research studies that people who have low back pain often have delayed activation of their core abdominal muscles when performing various movements.