Tight joints act like circuit breakers. Like the trip switches on your fuse box at home, tight joints affect the nervous system, switching off muscles, partly to protect the area.

When circuit breakers trip out in your house, you have to work out what’s blowing the circuits. Is it the kettle, the washing machine, etc. or some other dodgy wiring? So you can unplug things, test the wiring and reset the switches. In that way a chiropractor can be rather like an electrician – we need to check how the circuits in your nervous system are working, to workout what’s overloading you.

If the circuit breakers trip out in your house and you simply reset them without changing anything, what happens? It blows again, doesn’t it? Same with your nervous system. That’s why it’s not only important for you to get the appropriate treatment to restore the signals between body and brain but also you’ll need to do something different. That is you’ll need change the way you’re doing things to find some way to reduce the physical, chemical and emotional stresses that are overloading your circuits. It’s about learning how to look after yourself in a way that naturally supports your system rather than straining it.

One of the easiest ways we’ve got of seeing if your brain and body are communicating properly is to check whether your muscles can react properly. When you’ve a problem tripping your circuits it usually results in areas of weaker muscles. We can use these patterns of weak muscles and your responses to different stresses on the nervous system, to figure out what the source of the problem is and recheck them, to see if the they’re corrected after your treatment. We can also use these as a baseline measure and recheck them on your follow up treatments to see if you’re improving.

All your joints, muscles, skin and soft tissues are full of sensors^#, creating little electrical impulses, which travel up to your brain. When your joints are well positioned and moving properly they create a lot of signals. Your brain then uses these to signals to create an image of your body, which it uses to guide the messages it needs to send to your muscles. When working these sensors act like the batteries for your nervous system. They help your brain to work out where your body is and how to work it well, to do the things you need to do.

When your joints, muscles, skin and soft tissues are tight, the electrical feedback to your brain changes. Your joints that are out of position and restricted in movement don’t fire as many signals to your brain. This lack of healthy signals is instead perceived by your brain as pain. Your brain then has to make a best guess as to what’s going on in your body and the map of your body it builds is less accurate. Unfortunately the lack of accurate awareness means your body can’t respond so well in everyday actions. You may feel a bit stiff or sore, somehow disconnected, that you’re not performing as well as you want, ultimately you become more vulnerable to injury. This lack of normal movement in your tissues also triggers protective reflexes which shut down some areas of your body. They act like the electrical trip-switches on a fuse box, stopping things working for your protection but making the body weaker and less adaptable.