Symptoms, such as pain, do not appear out of thin air. They build up over time like the analogy of straws on a camel’s back. Hundreds of straws are stacked up over time, yet with the addition of the thousandth tiny straw, the camel’s back suddenly breaks. It’s the same with symptoms – the problem can build up unnoticed over time, and then suddenly symptoms make themselves known in a big way.

A symptom may only be the tip of the iceberg – with a much bigger problem lying under the surface¹. After all, a symptom is just a symptom – it isn’t the cause.

Symptoms are a bit like the fire alarm going off, to warn you that there is a problem. The fire alarm is not the problem, the fire is! So don’t turn the fire alarm off and ignore the problem, go find the cause and put out the fire.

For a chiropractor to help you, it may take several visits. If your problem took time to build up to the level it is at today, more often than not it will take time to resolve it too^{2 3}.

It is also important to understand that symptoms may be due to dysfunction in a part of the spine that seems unrelated to the problem area ^{1 4}.

Here’s an example. It may be that you have pain in your left knee. It’s hard to imagine that this pain could have anything to do with your spine. But, if your spine is not moving properly, it may be interrupting the flow of information from your leg to your brain and back again^{5 6}. Because of this, your leg may be receiving faulty messages from your brain, which means your knee moves in a less-than-ideal way. Poor movement sustained over time often creates an imbalance in your body and may cause pain.

Remember that your body is one big interconnected system – no part of it operates in isolation.

The objective of chiropractic care is to restore healthy communication throughout your body, and to maintain this communication over time, leading to better function, fewer accidents, and a healthier you!