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Hi. I'm Doctor Filardo. I'm a Chiropractic physician and we just went through the first
segment. We are going to the second segment and we are here on behalf of Expert Village.
The second segment, which I kind of answered in the first segment: what a Chiropractor
actually does. What a chiropractor does is...we talked about moving bones. But, I thought
we'd mention how we actually do that. When we talk about the model of the spine, and
the bones, are pretty much the same. Although the neck, mid back and lower back are different
in size, the anatomy is the same. When we look at a bone, sometimes it gets locked.
What a chiropractor would do, a locked spine would look like this. What we do is, we actually
just do the opposite of that: open that spine up. As you can see, when we open the spine
up in flexion, it opens the hole where the nerve comes out of which is called the intervertebral
foramine. Often times, when a patient gets thrown off, they do have nerve stress. So,
when we do the x-ray, and we talk about that, we sit down and do a physical exam with the
patient and then we'll evaluate them. We'll do a digital palpation; we'll go along the
spine. A lot of patients ask "well, how can you feel that? I've got clothes on, I've got
tight muscles, big muscles, I'm a weight lifter." It's actually very simple to feel. If everyone
just kind of puts their finger on the back of their spine or neck, they will feel this
bone. Actually, the side bones, when they are rotated (when the spine is rotated), it
shows as a muscle spasm or a muscle knot around there. So, it's actually very easy to feel.
It is an art form. Chiropractic college was five years in addition to undergraduate. So,
you learn after a period of time. So, we'll come in here and we'll feel up and down the
spine. We'll notice any type of indentation or compression and we'll manipulate the spine.
Sometimes patients will say "well, guys, are you going to crack my bones today?" A lot
of chiropractors get that probably a hundred times a day. But, actually, there's no cracking
going on, luckily. But, there's actually cavitations. Cavitations are carbon dioxide and nitrogen
gas releases from the joint. So, when you decompress the spine, it releases that gas.
And the reason why that gas is in there is God put gas in between the joints so that
it can create space for lubrication to get in there so that we can actually move. Over
time, without manipulation, that gas gets less and scar tissue builds up and you actually
have less movement. So, what we do is we come in there and keep it moving in there. So,
that completes this segment, we actually manipulate and decompress.