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How can chiropractic treat anxiety?
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If you have anxiety, it can be frustrating to find that few treatments work. Or perhaps you don’t want to go down the prescription medication route and are willing to try anything if it means living a little more peacefully.
While chiropractic isn’t a traditional treatment for anxiety, some patients have found it to be beneficial in managing their symptoms.
So how does chiropractic work to treat anxiety?
How does chiropractic work?
Chiropractic aims to correct incorrect functions in the body, primarily in the spine and nervous system. These misalignments are called subluxations, and they can prevent the nervous system from sending the correct signals from the brain to the relevant body part or system.
With adjustments and manipulations, chiropractors help the body to heal itself – and give their patients a greater sense of self-awareness and understanding of their body and how it functions as a series of connected systems.
The nervous system and anxiety
It’s believed that people who have anxiety (specifically General Anxiety Disorder or GAD) have subluxations in the spine that keep the nerves constantly ‘on’. So rather than responding to perceived danger as and when it happens with the ‘fight or flight’ response, the signal is constantly being sent out to be alert and on edge.
A chiropractor, in this case, can perform adjustments and manipulations to correct these incorrectly sent signals.
This assumption is backed up by several studies, including one published in the Journal of Upper Cervical Chiropractic Research. It found that chiropractic treatment to the next could help alleviate anxiety and depression symptoms.
And while chiropractic care can’t treat the causes of anxiety, it has been shown to lower the negative impact of stress from anxiety on the body and it systems.
So while there’s no absolute guarantee that chiropractic treatment will totally alleviate your anxiety, the good news is that it might help.
If you experience anxiety, speak to a chiropractor in your area to find out more about their treatment and how it might help you.
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