Chiropractic Care For Seniors
As we get older, our bodies start to deteriorate, creating a higher risk for injury and disease. This means that older adults are more susceptible to chronic pain and degenerative conditions. To maintain a high quality of life into older age, it’s crucial to take care of the body by maintaining mobility, strength, and balance.
Chiropractic care is a method of hands-on treatment that can help seniors attain general wellness and lasting pain relief. While chiropractic care has been shown to provide numerous benefits for people of all ages, seniors, in particular, may improve their quality of life through consistent visits to a chiropractor.
Some of the benefits of Chiropractic treatments are pain relief of the head, neck pain and lower back pain. Regular chiropractic treatment can also help improve your range of motion, nerve function, and structural abnormalities.
Is Chiropractic Treatment Safe for the Elderly?
Some people assume that chiropractic procedures might be too forceful for the elderly because of the manipulation techniques used by chiropractors. However, techniques used for older patients are gentle and they depend on the patient’s condition. Today’s chiropractic procedures provide a safe, non-invasive and effective treatment plan that reduces the spinal pain and improves mobility and flexibility. Chiropractors are specifically trained in identifying and treating subluxations and the effect they have on the central nervous system. The benefits of chiropractic care for the elderly are endless; they receive the much-needed relief from neck and back pain, digestive problems, insomnia, and arthritic pain. Treatment includes low force muscle release, which is why it’s safe for everyone, including those who suffer from arthritis, osteoporosis, and low bone density.
Benefits of Chiropractic Care For Seniors
Seniors can enjoy a range of notable benefits from regular chiropractic care. While benefits will vary from patient to patient, the most common pros of chiropractic care for seniors include:
Increased Mobility
Loss of mobility is a common complaint among seniors. Unfortunately, a limited range of motion can hold you back from participating in your favorite activities. From golfing to gardening to playing with their grandchildren, mobility is important for seniors to get through life comfortably.
Chiropractic care can help seniors make big strides towards restored mobility. By improving flexibility, aligning the joints, and alleviating tightness in the muscles, chiropractic treatment may allow seniors to move with ease. Your chiropractor may also give you strengthening exercises to target weak muscles, which can also improve your range of motion.
Pain Relief
Whether due to an injury or a chronic condition like arthritis, many seniors experience daily pain. Chiropractic treatment can be highly effective in pain management throughout the body. By working to ease tightness and build strength, chiropractic care promotes long-term pain relief for senior patients. Plus, chiropractic care and physical therapy work together in injury prevention. With a lower risk of injury, older adults can be more active while staying safe.
Improved Balance
By improving spinal health and alignment, chiropractic treatment can improve balance in senior patients. Specifically, chiropractic treatments have been shown to stimulate spinal receptors for heightened coordination. Elderly individuals who are at risk for falls can largely benefit from the improved balance in the body that consistent chiropractic care provides.
Overall Well-being
Seniors who partake in consistent chiropractic care report several perks to their overall wellbeing. Better quality sleep, improved mood, and higher energy levels can all be attained by older adults who attend regular appointments with their chiropractors. Your chiropractor can also develop a specialized treatment plan to target your individual wellbeing concerns.
Geriatric chiropractic care can be useful for many other ailments that affect the aging population, like headaches, migraines, vertigo, and dizziness, as well as neck, back, shoulder, hip, knee and joint pain, be they as a result of an injury or disease.
Fall Prevention
Did you know that roughly ⅓ of seniors 65 and older fall each year? Fall prevention should be taken seriously, especially if you are 65 or older. Falls are the leading cause of injury and death for this at risk group. For seniors who have been hospitalized after a fall, the risk of losing their independence is great. In fact, 40% – 50% of seniors hospitalized after a fall will enter a nursing home.
Fall prevention entails many things, such as ensuring good vision with yearly eye exams, and removing or avoiding environmental hazards. However, it is also important to address balance problems, weak muscles, pain in the back, legs, and other parts of the body, as well as difficulty walking.
Because chronic conditions, like arthritis, can cause problems and pain for senior patients as well as negatively impacting walking and balancing, it is important to seek treatment that helps relieve stiffness, joint pain, and improves mobility. Geriatric chiropractic care can help tremendously with these issues.
The Role of Spinal Manipulation in Treatment
Spinal manipulation is the manual movement of the vertebrae through various techniques and is used to restore normal range of motion, relieve pain and nerve compression, and help return the patient to a normal state of function.
Some techniques often used during spinal manipulation are:
- High velocity, low amplitude (traditional adjustments)
- Low velocity, low amplitude (gentle adjustments)
- Instrument assisted manipulation (Activator, ArthroStim)
- Specialized tables (drop table, flexion distraction)
- Soft tissue mobilization/myofascial release
Helpful Links:
https://www.spineuniverse.com/professional/news/chiropractic-care-safe-effective-older-adults