Elderly Care: Helping You Deal With the Dying Process

How An Aging Body Can Benefit From Chiropractic Care

30 December 2014

Julio Carr

Changes occur in your spine as you get older. With those changes often come decreased flexibility and range of motion, loss of muscle strength, slowed mobility, balance and coordination problems, and sometimes chronic pain. But through spinal manipulations, use of exercise, nutrition counseling, and other treatment modalities, chiropractic care can help improve your health and quality of life.

Reasons for the elderly to seek chiropractic care:

• Joints, muscles, ligaments, and spinal discs become weaker. Over time, the cartilage between your bones and joints wears down from the pressure everyday movements puts on your bones. When age-related arthritis sets in, so can pain in your back, hips, and knees.

• Pain from arthritis becomes worse. Osteoarthritis, also known as degenerative arthritis, usually affects the weight-bearing joints. As the cartilage loses its elasticity and wears away, the bones can rub together causing pain. Like other chronic diseases, the pain often gets worse as you get older.

• Injuries occur more easily. As you get older, your muscles lose elasticity. Stiff muscles not only hurt but are more prone to injury. When your body isn't limber, any sudden or awkward movement can be bad news, as soft tissue damage can cause pain and limit your mobility.

What chiropractic care does:

• Reduces neck pain, lower back pain, and chronic joint and muscle pain. Chiropractic treatment involves hands-on spinal manipulations to relieve pain. Trigger point therapy, therapeutic exercises, and manual stretching are additional forms of soft tissue manipulation your chiropractor may use to treat musculoskeletal pain.

  Your chiropractor may also use supportive therapies, including massage, moist heat, and nutritional supplements, to reduce pain, increase circulation, and improve function.

• Increases flexibility. When your muscles are more flexible, they become stronger, allowing you to move better. Chiropractic adjustments help reduce muscular tension and strengthen the muscles surrounding the spine.

• Improves mobility. When you're unsteady on your feet, it's easy to lose your balance and fall. Falling isn't a risk you should take lightly, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that each year, one out of three older Americans falls.

  Since good posture keeps your body aligned, changes in posture related to aging can cause balance problems, which may slow or limit your movements. Restoring proper body alignment improves balance and coordination.

  When bones in the spinal column become misaligned, the condition frequently leads to strained muscles and pinched nerves. The resulting pain can restrict mobility. Without adjustments to correct misalignment and reduce nerve compression, the joints and surrounding soft tissues can deteriorate more quickly.

• Minimizes effects of degenerative joint disease. Spinal manipulation is most effective in reducing pain and improving mobility when used in combination with exercise and stretching tight muscles. Chiropractic treatment for degenerative joint disease often includes range of motion exercises and applying gentle pressure to the joints to help relieve pain.

  Eating a healthy diet can also offer pain relief. As part of your treatment, your chiropractor may counsel you on dietary and other lifestyle changes.

For more information, contact a local clinic, like Vanderloo Chiropractic.

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