How We Help

At the Healthpraxis – Faversham Chiropractic, we’re committed to WHO we help, WHY we help and HOW we provide our service. Our focus is on helping you improve your spine and nerve system function. Which in turn, very often means overall body function is enhanced, showing that caring for you is more than just about pain.

Many others before you have experienced improvements in their symptoms and life as their health and vitality grow. While care with us is not directly to treat the following conditions, these are some of a wide variety of symptoms that people nowadays experience.  

Low energy / fatigue 

Your adrenals glands sit on top of your kidneys and alongside the other glands. Like the thyroid gland together, they all play a significant role in helping you adapt to stress. Your adrenal glands regulate and release hormones, and they contribute to turning on your fight/flight stress response. And if needed, they can change their behaviour to help you relax after the threat has passed. 

Today, our stress often lasts longer than a few minutes. It would’ve only taken our ancestors minutes to resolve a dangerous situation. These days, we can be so caught up in physical and mental habits that reinforce the fight/ flight response in our bodies that for years if not decades, there is very little rest… 

Long term or chronic stress is very inefficient for your body. The nerves become irritated and are overworked. This also means your brain is on high alert, and your body can’t keep up with daily tasks of healing and repair. 

Our role is to analyse-detect and correct what’s causing your nerve system stress. So, if your body has become stuck in fight & flight; leading to fatigued adrenals and low energy.

Interestingly you might like to know that an efficiently working nerve system can return a lot of wasted energy back to you. And when that happens, you’ll likely feel a BIG shift in how you go about your life. Meaning your internal systems have a better opportunity to shift out of stress and into growth and repair. 

Sleep problems 

Trouble focusing 

Chronic stress pushes brain function down to the more primitive hindbrain (also known as the reptilian brain). It’s one of the first parts of the brain to develop, and it is more reactive and instinctive, which helps keep us alive. 

This does make sense for very short stress; you must react immediately and take in as much information as possible so you can survive. However, when you are persistently overwhelmed, your brain flicks over to a mode that is fixed in fight and flight. Now you won’t be able to sustain this for very long, and focus and memory are affected.  

If your nerve stress system gets wrapped up in a fight-flight-fright response like this, your brain-body will stew in stress hormones. And these hormones actually change the way your brain works. And Stress hormones like oestrogen reduce activity in the frontal lobes (located in the forehead). The frontal lobes allow you to do planning, have a clear thought, decision making, etc. They’re where the best version of you can be expressed. 

When you reset the stress in your nerve system and help your brain-body cool down and move out of height alert, your brain function changes. Then you’ll find it becomes easier to pay attention. Then you will likely see the bigger picture, and feel at ease letting your attention rest on one thing at a time without internal stress pulling you away. 

Headaches 

It’s important to know which factors are contributing to your headaches. For example, by gently relax neck bones as well as correcting the alignment of the head as it sits above the spine. Stress and tension may likely be reduced from the nerves that are causing pain. And from what we’ve seen, people then often become less reactive to their own unique headache triggers once their spine is at ease. 

Neck Pain 

Neck pain or low back pain is often a reason why people seek Chiropractic care. When the build-up of tension is slow yet constant, symptoms can come on slow and then be incredibly distracting once bedded in. Which you may know makes it difficult to focus and enjoy what’s right in front of you.  

You might find yourself always moving or stretching your neck to find ways to make the pain go away, and that can also be extremely frustrating. Frequent having your head in front of your shoulders like when leaning over the phone will cause neck tension to build up. And, neck pain will frequently limit the range of motion. For example, many people describe how difficult turning their head is as they back their car out of the driveway.  

Neck pain may also cause fatigue, difficulty concentrating, headaches and shoulder or upper back pain. And when the tightness increases, it becomes easier to feel mentally overwhelmed, and harder to find your centre and relax. 

Many factors do contribute to your neck pain. If it’s only a muscle problem, this will usually resolve on its own within a few days. When your neck pain continues or frequently happens, a Chiropractor can determine if there’s underlying spine and nerve system changes that is causing pain to stay there. 

If it is safe to help with Chiropractic care, we can gently realign the small, movable bones of the neck. Using only specific force for the adjustments to happen, your spine can start moving with ease again, and the nerves (and muscles) can better relax. 

Low Back Pain 

Disc / Sciatic Pain 

For many people, Intervertebral Disc (IVD) issues show up just like “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. Often a person bends over to pick something up as you’ve done a million times before, and suddenly you seem to hear a ‘pop’ and your body tenses up.  

It’s crucial to remember that except in cases of massive trauma, your disc will only bulge, protrude or herniate after years of accumulated strain and fatigue and dehydration. When the tough outer fibres supporting the softer, centre part of the disc start to give way, the middle part can bulge out and press on ligaments, mucsle-tendons and nerves, which may cause sensations to radiate through to the arms or legs. 

And disc issues, either in the low back or neck, can be scary. Pain is often acute and severe and can interfere with any and all types of movement or even sitting and lying down. Additionally, if the issue is not corrected, your medical doctor may even recommend surgery. 

Spinal discs are soft, compressible cushions that are primarily water and that serve to separate the interlocking bones (vertebrae) of the spine. The IVD act as shock absorbers in the spine, allowing you to flex, bend, and twist. Degenerative disc disease (the discs start to lose water, height and composition) can take place anywhere in the spine. Still, it most often occurs in the discs in the lower back (lumbar region) and the neck (cervical region). This often but not always results in neck and back pain which leads to Osteoarthritis. This type of condition may put pressure on the spinal cord and nerves, leading to increasing pain and symptoms that commonly disc herniation produces. If the spinal cord is affected, it may cause systemic problems within the body. 

During chiropractic examinations, it can be identified if you need a referral to a medical doctor. If you’re a candidate for Chiropractic care, spinal adjustments can help restore normal motion and positioning in your spine.  

Chiropractic care, along with time, good general movement and a supportive lifestyle has helped many people avoid surgery and get off pain medications.

Joint Pain 

With our Chiropractic googles, we’ll look to discover if your injured joint is moving through its full range of motion. Or if it’s become stuck for another reason, leading you to pain and reduced mobility. Also, can examine the alignment of your spinal bones to see if any contributing factors need to be addressed.  

Many people find that correcting their whole-body posture takes pressure off their strained joints. Which, in turn, helps their body heal, easing up their pain, and in some cases helping push back or even avoiding joint surgery. For those worried about the effects of cortisone shots and other medications, our powerful drug-free approach to helping the bodywork better can be much appreciated! 

Pregnancy 

Pregnancy Chiropractic can be a fantastic, drug-free resource for pregnant mums. During pregnancy, many changes are happening for mum as her baby and baby develop. Your low back, spinal curve can increase as the baby grows, overall pelvic alignment shifts, and your posture adapts to a new centre of gravity. All of which can result in additional load on the spine, and may cause a general elevation of stress, tension and sometimes cause pain. 

Chiropractor’s like us are trained to gently examine the spine and determine if spinal misalignments and nerve stress may be negatively affecting your posture. When the spinal bones are moving well, mums often report having less pain and more ease with the changes they’re experiencing.  

Chiropractic may also release intrauterine constraint. This allows more space for your baby to get into the best possible position for delivery. This can support a mum’s pathway to a more comfortable, non-invasive delivery. And when stress is released from the mum’s body and nerve system with low force adjustments, the baby will likely benefit from fewer stress signals too. 

Potential benefits with Chiropractic care during your pregnancy can include: maintained strength, balanced mobility, more energy, better sleep, reduced nausea, easing of spine and pelvis pain. And maintaining a healthier spine and nerve system during your pregnancy may help with your labour and following needs of breastfeeding and movement during your 4th trimester.

Children’s Conditions 

Your spine has 24 movable bones and many more joints. Each part of your spine is linked with your brain by nerves. This helps the body’s computer regulate, movement, growth, immune function, emotions, digestion, repair, and, everything else. If the small spinal bones get stuck, for any reason (like falling while learning to walk or sitting for hours at school, etc.) this can skew the information sent to the brain. In turn, this can put the brain on alert. Now, the child’s body holds onto the ‘stress response.’ This is when the more primitive, survival part of the brain runs the show. Causing muscles to tighten, and it becomes harder for them to concentrate, learn and play. 

With Childrens Chiropractic care, the spine and nerve system is given optimal chances of expression. , We’ve often seen Children become more adaptable and playful after their care. 

Stress Symptoms 

Many different symptoms show up, when you’re suffering from stress, your symptoms may severely impact your quality of life. People under stress often suffer things like: poor sleep, low energy, digestive issues or stomach pain, depression & anxiety, brain fog, high blood pressure, and hormone issues just to name a few. Stress can also lower your motivation, making you limit socialising and connecting with others. 

If the brain seldom ‘resets’ itself from the stress that comes by each day, it will trigger the fight/flight response in the nerve system. Your brain then thinks about being in defence mode. But when your body is hyper-focused on defence and survival, there’s not much room for growth, healing and life enjoyment. In this case, it might be very frustrating when looking for help and recovery. Even with a diagnosis, often the effects of treatment create new, additional problems.  

Now people are looking for natural, effective ways to turn around the stress that has built up within and get healthy without medication. 

If during a Chiropractic examination it shows that your brain and nerves are holding stress, we can help. Using very specific, techniques, we can help your brain and nerves switch out of survival mode and into recovery. Then when your brain finally gets it ‘reset’, often many stress problems can begin to self-regulate. This probably means your body has started moving towards balancing your neuro-hormonal-transmitters (brain chemicals), helping you feel generally better. 

Chiropractic and some other stress-busting techniques we use can be wonderfully profound. And they do frequently help relieve stress symptoms, meaning you can get back to living your life.

Sports Chiropractic

Sports Chiropractic can help athletes improve in many areas of their sport. Here are four possible benefits for you to consider: 

Faster injury recovery, ask any injured athlete their number one goal and the answer is likely to get back to their sport of choice as quickly as possible. And sports chiropractic is considered as a valuable part of this process. 

Injury prevention, If the neuro-musculoskeletal system is out of sync, due to over-training for instance, it can create tension in one or many areas of the body. And if this tension is addressed beforehand sprains and strains, may be minimised. 

Improved strength, evidence often finds that chiropractic care can help athletes improve their level of strength. Increased flexibility, “Athletes can benefit from performance flexibility” according to the United States Sports Academy, because being more adaptable offers greater injury protection and improved responsiveness. 

Life Enjoyment / Personal Growth