The “subluxation complex” is a very specialized term to begin with. It is peculiar to the chiropractic profession. Chiropractors do almost all of the bone adjustments in the country so the term “subluxation complex” has a lot to do with adjusting a bone in your body, especially the bones in your neck and back but elsewhere, such as your elbow or wrist or ankle or knee or others. A lot of research has gone into the adjusting of bones in the last 50 years. This research has shown that adjusting bones is very valuable, especially in reducing or eliminating pain, and especially in the lower back, but elsewhere, too.
Once upon a time, adjusting one of these bones removed or reduced a subluxation but this expanded to being called a “subluxation complex”. Interestingly enough, you can have several subluxations and their associated complexes and not even know it. It’s sort of like a killer in a murder mystery. He/she is there but no one knows who it is. I can tell you from doing tens of thousands of bone adjustments that if you check the whole spine and other parts of the body there is always more than one bone to adjust to remove the subluxation. Usually there are 5 or 10. The person complains of his neck and upper back but you have to adjust his low back if you are going to be thorough. Most people come in when the pain appears. That is like only seeing the dentist when there is a toothache. This is one way to go about it. The thing is, that that tooth has been decaying for quite a long time before it started to hurt. People often see the dentist regularly so they catch a tooth in the early stages of decay or they get cleaning which tends to prevent decay. The same thing is occurring with a subluxation and the complex. The joint between 2 bones where there is a subluxation starts to decay within a couple weeks of a bone becoming fixated . That decay is one part of the subluxation complex. Part of the bone also starts to decay where there is a joint. A change of posture is part of the subluxation complex. People shift their bodies even slightly to reduce the stress on nerves and they do it subconsciously, not even knowing or thinking about it.
Tight muscles in the area of the fixated bone are part of the subluxation complex. Muscles and bones are two of the primary parts of the subluxation complex and addressing each of these as needed relieves pain and poor function. Correcting overall posture is also a way to begin returning a majorly subluxated person to normal. Have you ever seen a person whose head juts forward? Of course you have as it is very common. If you have someone stand up and you look at them from the side the middle of the ear should be above the middle of the shoulder. try this with a few friends and have them check you. If your posture is not correct then you have subluxations in your body. Any posture can be improved with better posture knowledge and practices and with removing subluxations. Again poor posture is part of subluxation complexes. There are other parts of the subluxation complex but you can feel and observe these. Did you know if you improve your posture it will extrovert your attention? Any fixation in the body introverts a person’s attention inward. Does not a head ache put your attention on your head and less on the environment?
I hope you enjoyed this article and please email me on this and better yet come see me in the office.
Sincerely,
Dr. Mike Spearman
