Chiropractic Care - What Is It And How Can It Help It appears that Americans are searching for answers to their health care problems that they are not getting from the mainstream approach. In 1990 Dr David Eisenberg, a Harvard graduate, conducted a survey to find out what people were doing for their health. Many were surprised when he found that Americans were using alternative care practitioners at rate equal to 1/3 of the visits to primary care physicians in the United States. In 1997 the survey was repeated and they found that alternative care was on the rise. Visits to alternative care practitioners in 1997 actually exceeded the visits made to primary care physicians. Alternative care has essentially become mainstream care. Chiropractic care was the most frequently used form of alternative care sought out by the public. Chiropractic is the third largest licensed health care profession in the United States. Chiropractic does not rely on drugs and surgery to improve health, instead it relies on your body's innate programming within your nervous system. Your nervous system is constantly working to keep you healthy. Chiropractic's focus is on restoring normal structure of the body in order to permit normal function. Specifically, Chiropractic works to eliminate any irritation or interference with the nerves coming from the spinal cord between the bones of the spine called vertebra. Your brain resides inside your skull and controls all functions in your body. Your spinal cord is a direct extension of your brain and travels down the center of your spine. Spinal nerves exit the spinal canal from your spinal cord to connect your brain to your lungs, your heart, your muscles, your skin, your stomach, etc. Every cell in your body is connected to your brain by your nerves. Your nervous system controls and coordinates all the organs and structures of the human body and relates your body to your environment. Therefore it is important for your nervous system to be operating at 100%.   It only takes the pressure from the weight of a nickel to cause irritation to a nerve. If you've ever had a pebble get caught in your shoe you've experienced nerve irritation and in all likelihood you removed it at your earliest opportunity. The pebble in your shoe is always much smaller than what it feels like. The pebble is irritating a nerve in your foot the size of a needle. That's all it takes to irritate the tiny nerve in your foot and cause your discomfort. Your spinal nerves are much larger and more important than the tiny nerve in your foot. It's like comparing an extension cord in your home to the big power lines exiting the electric company. You can imagine that if it only takes the little pebble in your shoe to irritate the tiny nerve in your foot it doesn't take a whole lot of dysfunction to irritate your spinal nerves. Would an irritated nerve going to your stomach, your muscles, your skin, your heart, enable normal function? It does not seem reasonable to think anything would be operating normally with an irritated nerve controlling it. Your Doctor of Chiropractic is specially trained to detect areas of your spine that may be disrupting normal nerve function and remove the irritation. By eliminating the nerve irritation, normal function is restored. The closer you get to normal function, the closer you get to operating at your optimum potential.