Almost two years ago, I was working as a hostess in a restaurant in order to pay rent during graduate school. Not being the type of person to stand at the doorway with a plastered smile, I prefer to always be on the move. I was constantly shuffling between the upstairs office and the front host stand, deliberating with managers and welcoming and ushering customers to their seats. One late October afternoon, I slipped walking from the back kitchen on my way to the dining rooms and my head hit the thick molding halfway down the wall behind me, I jumped up in shock and shook it off. I wrote a report, took some aspirin, and went back to work with an aching head, promising to buy better gripping shoes.

After the bruises went away, I never thought much about it until one morning in February I woke up and couldn’t move my head to the left, necessitating keeping it cocked to the right. I was sent home from work because some customers thought I looked like I was in pain and I made an immediate appointment with someone who wasn’t my normal chiropractor. This woman adjusted everything including my jaw and wondered how this happened. I shrugged, but when my mom mentioned my fall months earlier, it was confirmed as the cause. Since October is National Chiropractic Month, have you experienced a hard fall or do you have a prolonging ache? Look deeper into chiropractics.

Chiropractors primarily adjust clients due to complaints of back, neck or joint pain, and headaches using a drug-free approach to healing. Chiropractics can be joined with medication if prescribed by a doctor as part of rehabilitation or in response to a chronic type of pain and is one of the options cancer patients have used in order to curb the pain of chemotherapy or recovery associated with remission. Physicians skilled in chiropractics manipulate the tissues of the body—especially those along the spine—in order to push air bubbles out of the tissue (this is the “pop” that is heard) to allow for greater circulation and better range of movement of the joints. Chiropractics has been a big help for many suffering from annoying back pain or stiff neck syndrome and has even proved healing for our canine friends.