What a Chiropractic Adjustment is Actually Like in Portland, ME

Hi, I'm Dr. Rob Liguori, with Chiropractic & Sports Health here with Austin. Today, we're gonna go over a chiropractic adjustment for the neck. Talk a little bit about that, why do you get adjustments in the first place?

Why Adjustments Are Important For Neck Pain

The main reason why we're trying to do this is because what we want to do is help improve the range of motion in areas that are restricted in any type of injury that you may have, you're gonna find functional deficits, whether that's in strength or mobility. While we do exercises for the strength piece, we want to improve that mobility with the adjustment. So that's what we're looking for here today.

Areas Of The Neck We Target For Adjustment

So in the case of the neck, I've got Austin sitting here, we're gonna first go through a range of motion, just kind of see if there's any obvious areas where he's restricted. So I'm gonna first have you look down straight to the floor, and then go up toward the ceiling as high as you can go back to center, and let's have you look all the way to your left. And then all the way to the right. Back to center, don't have you tilt your head as far left as you can go and try to touch your ear to your shoulder, and then come back the opposite direction. So those are the major areas of movement for the neck that we're looking for any type of or any obviously noticeable reduction of movement.

How We Perform Adjustments On The Neck

So let's have you go face up now. Austin's case, he's in pretty good shape, so nothing that's too obvious there. But still, we're gonna look even deeper here. Now we're under something called motion palpation. Trying to feel those joints look for anything that feels really restricted. So I'm gonna go right up down through his neck. So there's actually seven vertebrae in your neck, any of which could be restricted. And at this point, what I'm really doing is just kind of pushing each one around looking to see if it'll spring or if I feel like it's really restricted there, and doesn't quite want to move properly.

So in Austin's case is I get right down to the lower portion of his neck, he does feel a little tight there. So we're going to adjust that. So in this case, what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring his head right over a little bit this way, and give him a little adjustment. Just like that. So it actually moves pretty easily. So we're going to actually do the same thing on their side help with that rotation to the left. There we go.

So again, pretty easy adjustment here, no problem at all. And he's nice and loosened up.

Learn more about Chiropractic Care and Neck Pain.