What Are Structural Shifts?

Hopefully, you’re aware that there are established ranges of normal for the body. There is a normal range for blood pressure or cholesterol. The same is true for your spine, while no one is structurally perfect, there is a normal range for your structure. When viewing an x-ray your spine should be straight from the front and if it is shifted to the right or left then your spine is shifted abnormally.

These established normal ranges are established in nearly every facet of our lives.

If something was abnormal with your car how would you know? Fortunately, a light would come on your dashboard to alert you that something is out of the normal range. This is because your car’s computer has been programmed with the normal ranges. When something moves outside of that range the computer triggers an alert in the form of a light on your dash.

Your body uses a very similar method to alert you when something is abnormal. Unfortunately, we do not have a dashboard with lights to tell us what is wrong, but our body does tell us that something is wrong before it becomes absolutely catastrophic.

The body presents with a multitude of symptoms to warn us something is abnormal. It then becomes important to correct the problem to avoid catastrophe. When a Structural Shift occurs in the spine, it commonly appears as a multitude of symptoms. These symptoms are what we refer to as Secondary Conditions.

Secondary Conditions alert you that there is something abnormal with your body. Think of these secondary conditions as if they are the dash board lights in your car. When something goes wrong with your car, do you put duct tape over the lights? We certainly hope not. Hopefully, you want to correct the problem that is causing the lights to come on (Secondary Conditions). That problem could be a Structural Shift of the spine. This is why at Corrective Chiropractic we focus on correcting the primary Structural Shift because we know that Secondary Conditions are typically just like the dash lights in your car.