What’s an Activator®?

Have you ever wondered what an Activator® is and how it works? Well today’s post is going to be brief summary about this little handheld tool that some patients lovingly refer to as “the clicker”.  An Activator is a spring loaded instrument that provides a gentle quick impulse to the spine and makes a “clicking” noise. The main purpose of this force is to restore motion to the targeted spinal vertebra or joint. The quick impulse causes the muscles to be less tense in response to resisting an adjustment. Unlike manual adjustments, the Activator is more local to the target area and there is no twisting or bending of your body and therefore you don’t hear cavitations. Some patients prefer the Activator over manual adjusting simply because they don’t like having their neck or low back twisted; you lie down on the table with your face down on the headrest. Some patients don’t feel any discomfort with an Activator and say it feels like you are getting your reflexes tested (like the one for your knees).  Some patients are more sensitive than others so they can feel sharp pain in certain areas of their body when the Activator is used on them.

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There are a lot of different techniques to adjusting and a lot of Chiropractors have an Activator or another instrument that they use in addition to manual adjusting, but there are some that ONLY use the Activator Technique which is very specific. The Activator Technique involves adjusting from your hips and up to your neck with a leg length analysis and testing neurological reflexes (there is more involved with this technique but I will save that for another post).  I personally use a combination of Manual (Diversified), Activator and Thompson Technique depending on what I feel is right for you based on your examination. 

I wanted to leave you with a link to a research article about the Activator® called Clinical effectiveness of the Activator adjusting instrument in the management of musculoskeletal disorders: a systematic review of the literature. There’s a ton of research out there and I think it’s worth a read if you are curious! 

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