Question
I am currently seeing a chiropractor who has adjusted me twice I have some lower back problems which it has helped with and I was in a car accident 15 years ago and had whiplash on my neck. Which she has been adjusting both neck and back. The back is fine the neck adjustment was fine right after but when I woke up in the morning I could not move my left arm or shoulder. I went to a massage therapist and they said it was bad with the muscles not aligning after the adjustment. The chiropractor also said I was out of alignment. Help do I go back for adjustments or just say forget it at this point. Or find another chiropractor.

Answer
Laurie,

First, since you felt okay right after the neck adjustment, that means that there was no spraining of your neck, or significant straining of your muscles.  Forget about alignment: there's no such thing.  It is common for DC's or PTs' or LMT's to use the work misalignment, but the reality is that it doesn't truly exist.  We feel stuff with our fingers and note what feels tight or thick or stiff, and that's all you can assume.  You cannot assume what the alignment is like, and even if you saw an x-ray, the presumed misalignments would likely not have any correlation to where or why you are feeling pain.   Your DC should consider that something in your neck got irritated and whatever it is, combined with whatever your neck did overnight as you slept, caused you to be in the spot you're in now.  It could be a strained muscle or the fascial connective tissue.   It could be an irritated disc in your neck that was subject to some force during the adjustment but swelled overnight as you slept.  Regardless, the DC must check your neurologic signs: upper extremity muscle strengths, reflexes, and skin sensation.  She also must orthopedically test if a disc got irritated: neck compression test axially (straight down) and at an angle (a foraminal compression test or Spurling's test).   If you are neurologically and orthopedically in tact, then the DC must assess if you would respond to more joint manipulation, massage, or other sorts of muscle techniques, for example, such as: post isometric relaxation maneuvers, "muscle-enegery" techniques, proprioceptive neuromuscular reeducation (it sounds complicated but it's not).  Some of these you can do yourself with guidance.  If you have (+) neurologic signs such as loss of finger grip strength or diminished biceps reflex (for example) then you will have to discuss options with the chiroprator (if you are still comfortable with her).   Sometimes you simply have to give it a day or two and wait for resolve.   

'Hope this was helpful.

Dr. G'