The First Domino
The First Domino
Have you ever wondered why your chiropractor examines areas of your body that don't actually hurt?
Perhaps your neck is painful, yet your chiropractor spends time assessing your upper back, shoulders or even your feet.
The answer is simple: we're looking for the first domino.
A Chain Reaction
Imagine a row of dominoes standing side by side. When the first domino falls, it creates a chain reaction until eventually the last domino falls too. The last domino isn't the cause of the problem—it's simply where the effects become most noticeable.
The human body often works in much the same way. Pain is not always the beginning of the story. More often, it's the final domino to fall.
The Body is Brilliant at Adapting
One of the most remarkable things about the human body is its ability to adapt. As we discussed in a recent newsletter, your spine is made up of many individual joints. Each joint contributes a small amount of movement, and together they create the larger movements we rely on every day.
When one joint stops contributing its share of movement, the body rarely gives up. Instead, it adapts. Neighbouring joints may move a little more. Muscles may work a little harder. Your movement patterns may subtly change. Initially, this is a good thing. The body's priority is to keep you moving.
However, while these adaptations are incredibly clever, they are not always the most efficient. Over time, the additional workload placed on other joints, muscles and surrounding tissues can increase physical stress throughout the body.
Eventually, one area may struggle to keep adapting—and that's often when symptoms begin. This is why so many patients tell us:
"The pain just came out of nowhere."
In reality, the underlying changes may have been developing gradually for weeks, months or even years before pain became noticeable.
Why Pain Isn't Always the Problem
Many people think pain is the problem itself. In fact, pain is often a protective response from the nervous system.
Your brain constantly receives information from your joints, muscles and other tissues, deciding how best to protect your body. Sometimes pain is the nervous system's way of encouraging you to change how you're moving or to reduce stress on an area that has been working harder than it should.
This doesn't necessarily mean significant damage has suddenly occurred. Instead, it may be the point at which the body can no longer compensate as effectively as before.
The Nervous System: Your Body's Communication Network
The spine does far more than support your body—it also protects the spinal cord, a key part of the nervous system.
Every joint in your body contains specialised receptors that send constant information to your brain about movement, position and balance. Your brain uses this to coordinate posture, movement and muscle activity every second of the day.
You could think of movement as information. The better your joints move, the clearer the information your brain receives.
When movement becomes restricted, that information can change. Rather than chasing the last domino—the area where symptoms are felt—we're trying to identify the first domino that may have started the chain reaction.
Understanding why symptoms have developed is often just as important as understanding where they are.
The Chiropractic Lesson
One of the biggest lessons in chiropractic is that the body works as one connected system.
Joints, muscles and the nervous system are constantly communicating and adapting to the demands placed upon them. These adaptations are often helpful, allowing us to continue working, exercising and enjoying everyday life. However, over time, they can also increase stress elsewhere in the body.
Our role as chiropractors is not simply to ask, "Where does it hurt?", It's to ask, "Why does it hurt?"
By identifying areas of altered movement and compensation, we aim to understand the first domino that may have led to the symptoms you're experiencing. So never neglect days, weeks or months before your symptoms started.
Enjoy the rest of the warm summer!
Rhodes, Vera and The Team at Backs and Joints