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Should You Crack Your Own Spine?
I’m a chiropractor and yet when I see people showing me how they ‘crack’ their own neck or back in my chiropractic office in Barcelona it makes me cringe. Why? The answer to this is ‘specificity’. Let me explain…
When spinal joints get stuck in a poor position, causing nerve irritation often local muscles will tighten up to try to protect the area. Patients can feel this and it’s annoying for them. They get the sensation that if they could just crack it the irritating muscle tightness they’re experiencing might go away. This is actually true, but the tricky part is… getting the right joint to release.
You see, when you adjust yourself you can’t be specific to a particular joint in the spinal. So, any joint can release. If the problematic joint is more restricted than the other local joints and you adjust yourself, you can’t localise the correct joint so ANY joint will release. In fact, when you adjust yourself the restricted joint is the least likely to move. The more the other joints move, the less the jammed joint will move, so if you keep doing it, it can get worse.
If you’re not properly trained in manipulation you shouldn’t be adjusting anyone, let alone yourself. Chiropractors don’t even adjust themselves. Even after 5 years of full time study and 30 years of experience in practice, I would never adjust myself. I just book in to see a chiropractor myself. If you get the correct joints to release, the urge to adjust yourself will go away.
