I get asked fairly often by patients whether their problem is a muscle or a joint, and have to answer, "yes." Making sense of that answer requires understanding a little of how chiropractic adjustments work. The best way to think of things is as a two-way street between the joints and the soft-tissues. The muscles are recruited by the brain based on joint movement, and joints can be restricted by tight muscles.
There are two kinds of information coming from the joints to the brain. The first is a position sense, called mechanoreception. It tells your brain what position the joint is in, and is an important component of balance. The second is what eventually becomes pain, a sense called nociception. Only about ten percent of all nociception makes it to a conscious level, but nociception affects the nervous system regardless of whether conscious or not. This subconscious discomfort is one reason people sometimes have trouble sitting still.
These two exotic sensations are competitive for bandwidth in the nervous system. The more pain, the less position sense, and the more susceptible to injury person is because they can't feel where their joints are as well as they should be. Vice versa, the more position sense, the less pain, and the more stable, strong, and safe the body is.
The traditional chiropractic adjustment is described as being high-velocity, and low-amplitude. This means we move the joint very quickly over a very short distance. This mechanically floods the nervous system with position sense, and therefore, abruptly decreases pain, increases stability, and gives the nervous system what it needs to properly recruit muscles. However, some muscles remain short from scar tissue and continue to imbalance joints. Breaking up the scar tissue using Active Release Techniques, along with chiropractic adjustments, can break the cycle. Restoring function this way allows the body to do the healing, the way it was designed to.
