Frequently Asked Questions
Quick Answers to Common Chiropractic Questions
Chiropractic care naturally comes with plenty of questions. Below are quick answers to some of the questions we hear most often about chiropractic care, posture, spinal alignment, pain and choosing a chiropractor in Cape Town. Where we have explored a topic in more detail, you can follow the related article to learn more.
There’s no single best chiropractor for everyone, because a desk worker, a pregnant mum, a baby with latching issues and a CrossFit athlete all have different needs. Look for someone with experience in what you need help with, and someone you personally connect with and trust.
No. How long you continue depends on your current spinal symptoms and your future health goals, whether that’s short-term pain relief, longer-term corrective care or regular maintenance visits. The choice is always yours.
Read more: What to Expect Before and After Your First Chiropractic Adjustment
A good chiropractor assesses you properly, explains what they find in plain language, sets clear goals with you and checks whether care is helping. You should feel listened to, cared for and never pressured. Be cautious of anyone who claims they can fix all your problems in just one or two visits.
Read more: What to Expect Before and After Your First Chiropractic Adjustment
The pop is gas being released inside the joint as pressure changes, not bones cracking. It’s harmless, and an adjustment can work just as well without any sound.
Read more: What to Expect Before and After Your First Chiropractic Adjustment
Your spine supports your body, protects your spinal cord and nerves, and allows you to move freely. When its natural curves are well balanced and aligned, your muscles and joints don’t have to work as hard to hold you upright. More than ever, we’re recognising that the shape and structure of the spine can have a significant impact on how you feel, how you move, how long you live and how many health issues you experience over your lifetime.
Read more: The Ideal Spine
Yes. Chiropractic care can help with many types of musculoskeletal pain, especially low back pain, neck pain and headaches that start in the neck. Guidelines recommend spinal manipulation among the first non-drug options for low back pain.
Read more: Lower Back Pain and Neck Pain.
Getting a full-body posture assessment with a chiropractor is a great place to start. They can use adjustments to improve your alignment, provide exercises to strengthen your upper back and core, and suggest ergonomic changes for your workplace. Small, consistent changes often work better than immediately investing in an expensive sit-stand desk or forcing tight muscles with posture exercises alone.
Read more: The Effects of Rounded Shoulders and How to Improve Posture
In 2026, a first visit in Cape Town typically costs around R900 to R1,100, with follow-ups between R800 and R1,000. Extras such as dry needling or additional soft-tissue work may cost more.
A pop without pain is usually a harmless joint release. If pain or spasm followed, it’s more likely to be a muscle or ligament strain, which will often settle with gentle movement. If you’re getting shooting pain into your buttock or leg, you may have a disc-related problem. See a chiropractor to have it properly assessed and work out what to do next rather than trying to self-diagnose online. If you have numbness around the groin, bladder or bowel changes, or significant leg weakness, you may need to go to the emergency room.
Read more: Lower Back Pain
Most neck pain comes from strain on the muscles and joints, often from long hours at screens, forward head posture or sleeping awkwardly. It can also result from a whiplash injury, a disc problem or a “pinched” nerve.
Read more: Neck Pain
Look for someone who has experience with people like you, carries out a thorough first assessment and explains their findings and care plan clearly. Asking a few questions and looking through their Google reviews before you book can also make the choice easier.
Read more: What to Expect Before and After Your First Chiropractic Adjustment
See a chiropractor if your neck pain hasn’t eased after a few days, keeps coming back, limits your ability to turn your head or comes with headaches that start in the neck.
Read more: Neck Pain
Stress can contribute to back pain by tightening muscles, disrupting sleep and making your nervous system more sensitive to pain. It often works alongside physical factors such as sitting for long periods and moving less, so looking after both body and mind can help.
Occasionally clicking your own neck or back is usually harmless, and research hasn’t linked it to arthritis. Needing to do it many times a day may suggest that something isn’t moving well, and self-cracking won’t address the underlying cause. A proper chiropractic assessment can help identify what may be contributing to it and what can be done about it.
Read more: Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Crack Your Own Back
A postural hunch can often improve with chiropractic adjustments, upper-back strengthening, chest stretches, regular movement and a better desk setup. If you already notice yourself hunching, it’s worth addressing sooner rather than later, as these postural patterns can become more established over time.
Read more: The Effects of Rounded Shoulders and How to Improve Posture
Webster Technique is a specific chiropractic assessment and adjustment technique used to balance the sacrum, pelvis and surrounding soft tissues. It is most often used during pregnancy to help with pregnancy-related pain and pelvic alignment. Contrary to a common misconception, its purpose is not to “flip breech babies”; it is intended to help create space in the maternal pelvis and ease tension in the surrounding soft tissue.
Read more: What We Do at Roots Chiropractic
Yes. Many mums see us for pelvic pain, sciatica, low back sensitivity, mobility issues and round ligament tension. Although postgraduate pregnancy training has historically been fairly limited in South Africa, there are chiropractors here who have completed Webster Technique and other postgraduate pregnancy courses through the ICPA.
Read more: The Benefits of Chiropractic Care During Pregnancy
No. We also don’t simply push your alignment from “out” to “in”. That is a very simplified way of explaining chiropractic and doesn’t reflect what is actually happening. We help spinal joints move better and improve the brain’s awareness of alignment and posture through the adjustments we do, both of which can help with the perception of pain and support overall health and longevity.
Read more: Joint Mobility vs Muscle Flexibility
Traditionally, chiropractic focuses on the alignment of the spine and how the brain receives and sends information from the body through the nervous system. Physiotherapy focuses more on muscle tension, ligament injury and rehabilitation of the soft tissues. In South Africa, there is quite a bit of overlap between the two, which is why people often ask us, “I’m not sure if I should see a physio or a chiro?” At Roots Chiropractic, we keep it simple by focusing predominantly on adjustments of the spine and how that affects the nervous system. We prefer to refer true soft-tissue issues to physiotherapists or chiropractors who are particularly proficient with needling and other soft-tissue modalities.
Absolutely. Because of the volume of training and wear and tear on the body, especially around the shoulders and lower back, we believe it’s important for people doing CrossFit or HYROX to be assessed and consider some form of regular chiropractic care. Dr Josh has been doing CrossFit for over 10 years, along with periods of trail running and kickboxing, so he is well versed in many of the issues athletes can face. He describes himself as “non-elite but recreationally competitive”, which gives him a good understanding of both the training demands and the everyday athlete’s perspective.
Read more: How Chiropractic Could Boost Your Athletic Performance
