Does getting adjusted hurt?
People who have never been adjusted are usually nervous about letting someone work on their spine due to their fear that the adjustment might hurt. That fear is understandable because they have never been adjusted, and most people have a healthy fear of the unknown.
Moving the vertebrae of the spine through chiropractic adjustments looks barbaric in videos on YouTube, but in reality is done with light force and high speed. That means that the push on the bone is not hard at all, it is just done quickly, so as to move the segment that the doctor is touching, instead of everything else around it. The light force means that for almost everyone, getting adjusted is easy and comfortable.
All that being said, there are times that patients come in the office in terrible discomfort BEFORE they get adjusted. For those people, getting adjusted is not always a walk in the park. As their condition improves, the adjustments should get more comfortable.
Along the lines of comfort with adjusting, patients should expect that they will experience soreness following their first few adjustments. This soreness is due to the inflammation that is a result of moving vertebrae. The new position of the bones results in different stresses on the musculature and ligaments, causing inflammation. That inflammatory response becomes less as the body gets familiar with the new position of the bones and the new mobility that results from proper joint alignment. A great analogy for this experience of soreness is working out at the gym for the first time. If you haven’t been working out, the first few times you exercise, you will be sore, but if you continue, that soreness will decrease each workout until it is not a problem anymore. It is the same with getting adjusted.
In closing, chiropractic adjustments are low force and should be comfortable for most people, and are only uncomfortable for those who are already in a lot of pain.