This time of the year I tend to hear many stories of people slipping and falling on an icy sidewalk or taking a bad spill while skiing. Rightly so, most people understand the damage that can be done to their spine when a hard impact or fall takes place. We call these traumas and they can have drastic effects on your health. Most of the time, the residual symptoms to our damaged areas (pain, stiffness, numbness) remind us that we should have our spines, joints or muscles taken care of after a traumatic event.

While this is common sense, most people do not understand that a slip and "almost fall" incident can be just as damaging as the previously described event. In fact, in many cases the quick jerk of the muscles can be more damaging than an actual fall to the ground. You see, when we quickly react with our muscles to catch ourselves, a fast muscle jerk reaction takes place. Typically, this occurs in many different parts of the body as you contract your muscles to aid in stabilization and avoid a fall.

The residual symptoms of such "micro-traumas" may cause long term effects on your body that last well beyond the incident. You see, muscles are attached to the main structures of your body which happen to be your bones. When muscle contraction occurs in order to stabilize your body to prevent falling, the muscles may cause a slight disruption of your foundation by quickly jerking on those bones.

Most importantly, the muscles that attach to your spinal bones may cause slight disruption of the placement of the twenty four bones that make up your spine. Seeing as a fall is likely to quickly engage the muscles of your core and back, it is likely a quick reaction of this kind will pull on these attachment points with the spine.

If the spine is misaligned, it may cause interference to your spinal cord and nerves that travel to your body and carry millions of messages every second. This is diagnosed as a subluxation at a Chiropractic office and has the potential to interfere with every function of your body.

Many times subluxations will not present themselves with symptoms right away. In fact, it can take days, months or even years to manifest symptoms, which is why they are more difficult to detect. There is a misconception that if subluxations are present in your body then you will immediately experience back pain, neck pain or headaches. This is why in the case of a micro-trauma, like bracing for an "almost fall," it is extremely important to have your spine checked immediately.

If you would like more information on subluxations, or would like to learn how to improve your health this year visit our website at www.cdahealth.com or call us at (208) 667-7434.