Flexibility is great for your health. Flexibility may help you thrive in the years to come. When individuals are taught to be flexible, it means they are pliable, adaptable, and responsive to change. The dictionary elaborates on this definition by adding, “… the ability of persons or things to accommodate to changing conditions.”

Many of us know people who are quite stiff, regimented and have a very difficult time relaxing. These people may have a difficult time accepting and adjusting to new circumstances. Being inflexible can add stress to relationships and become damaging to our health. In fact, research shows that being rigid and inflexible in our beliefs and behaviours can lead to heart disease. After suffering a heart attack, the medical doctor usually encourages the patient to “learn to relax,” that is, become more flexible in life.

Flexibility is a term we can apply to our physical bodies in addition to our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. Physically speaking we can look at the spinal column as a good example of “accommodating changing conditions,” because it is the most flexible joint in the body.

Research shows us that the body tends to grow less flexible as we age. Physical inflexibility may begin with stress and eventually lead to the interference of nerve function. When flexibility has been lost in certain areas of the spine, the spinal bones begin to degenerate and may eventually become so malformed that nerve function becomes blocked.

Chiropractors, who regularly see what happens to the spine when flexibility has been lost in certain areas, specialize in looking at the spine to see when and where the spinal bones have become rigid or misaligned. This abnormality is one aspect of what chiropractors call a “vertebral subluxation.”

If the subluxations are not corrected, overall health can be compromised. Many health symptoms may occur when the spinal bones become inflexible or misaligned. Low back or neck pain may be the first signal that spinal bones are misaligned. It is critical to have regular spinal evaluations to identify developing issues before they develop into more serious ones. If spinal bones remain subluxated and uncorrected they can begin to degenerate, reducing the size of the passageway through which nerves pass. This is one way nerve impulses are hindered from reaching certain areas of the body. One possible effect of this degeneration is that uncorrected low back pain may lead to loss of bladder control because necessary nerve signals were interrupted.

The bones of the spinal column encase and protect the delicate nerves passing through the spinal cord. This is why it is so important that the spine remain flexible and free of nerve interference in response to body movement. When the body is stiff, rigid and inflexible, it will have a breakdown in health.

Chiropractors help you maintain physical flexibility throughout the entire spine with regular spinal adjustments. Call your chiropractor for an appointment so that you can optimize your health by maintaining flexibility of attitude, behaviour and body.