There was a crooked (wo)man…
Monday, 18 June 2012 
4 Comments
So I went to a chiropractor last Thursday for the first time in my life. Mostly because sitting behind the computer all day long makes my throat/neck so tight that every day from about 11am onwards I feel like I’m suffocating. Not a nice feeling, trust me.
After the initial assessment I found out that the problem is not actually in my neck, it’s in my pelvis. Apparently it’s rotated and causing my spine to be crooked, which means that one side of my back is totally stuffed – it’s 7kg heavier than the other side, and it’s tight and full of knots and scar tissue.
I ‘suffocate’ when sitting at the computer because my neck muscles swell due to the tightness in my back.
Awesome. Just awesome. My body is breaking down before I even hit 40.
All of this does explain though why my left quad is bigger and stronger than my right one – it’s trying to overcompensate the imbalance.
It does also explain my knee niggles. Most running niggles are to do with your glutes or your pelvis. The glutes I can work on with exercises but the pelvis needs to be somehow manually rotated by the chiropractor… and as far I understand it’ll never be even (when I was born my right hip was dislocated by the oh-so-ungentle Soviet nurses that pressed my big 2-weeks overdue body out of my mom) but he thinks he can at least halve the unbalance in the weight distribution between the two sides of my body.
I have actually sort of known for a while that my back is crooked – my right side has always had limited movement when I do yoga and whenever I have a massage I get told that I’m uneven… but to actually see the unbalance in numbers and also the measurements that show my one shoulder higher than the other is sort of freaky.
At least I’m not overweight anymore and I have strong legs and abs… so there’s something good going for my body. But – I do feel bad that I haven’t paid even more attention to my sitting posture and that I’ve always carried my kids on one hip when they were little… But then again I’m glad that I can sort some of this out now, before I do hit 40 or 50 or 60. I still want to be running half marathons when I’m 60 so I really need to be good to my body.
I will be seeing the chiropractor twice a week for the next 2 weeks and then have a reassessment again before my 2-month holiday in July/August. I’m hoping for a miracle, I’m hoping the 7kg will be reduced down to at least 4.
As for in between the appointments – I have adjusted my office chair the way it was recommended, I am trying to carry my bag on my left shoulder instead of my right, I will not pick up Oliver anymore as he’s too heavy anyway, I will do some pelvic straightening exercises every day and carry my water bottle in my left hand when running (that one is weirdly very difficult, I tried it on Saturday :|).
And now enough rambling about my crooked body and time to book a session of deep tissue massage ;) (oh, and with the GP to get a referral for all of this so that my insurance will cover the costs :D).
P.S. Half of my friends think that chiropractors are miracle workers and the other half think that they’re money-grabbing crooks. I guess I’ll make up my mind one way or the other by the end of my treatment.
So I went to see a chiropractor for the first time in my life last month. I was skeptical about going, mainly because I had heard some not-so nice things about the practice in general. All I can say now is that I wish I would have gone sooner! My hip has been killing me with training for a half this time around. And even though I know my being overweight definitely doesn’t help the situation, I knew something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t. He explained that my pelvis on the left side is not properly aligned, possibly from giving birth. Whenever I leave the office, I feel so much better! And he specializes in sports injury (and my insurance covers it all). He sadly just advised me to stop pushing the double jogger until my hip can properly heal.
Good luck with getting aligned!
Good on you for going and giving it a try. If you went and decided that the chiropractor was a spoof, then at least your comments would have been made having tried it first hand. I think a lot of the complaints come from people who have never been to a chiropractor. Good like going straight:)
I am all for cranial therapy and chiropractors. I am seeing a guy and he really does work wonders.
Sounds like the people who dis chiropractors have never visited one and the ones who sing their praises are the ones who actually know what they’re talking about.