In this manner, articular friction with its accompanying trauma and pain will be reduced and taut tissues, contributing to the fixation, will be stretched. Instruction in adding intersegmental traction to all adjustive procedures was a fundamental principle in pioneer chiropractic, and it's still valid. Timing the Thrust Somewhere at some time somebody taught another DC that the best time to deliver the thrust is at the end of patient exhalation. This erroneous idea has spread throughout the country like an epidemic to infect hundreds of DCs to the detriment of their patients. Patients soon learn the doctor's tricks and consciously apply muscle splinting mechanisms just before the thrust is delivered.
Nobody likes their lungs to be shockingly overdeflated.
At the end of relaxed exhalation, respiratory muscles prepare to contract by increasing their tone. Thus, the best time to deliver the thrust is immediately after the beginning of exhalation. The effect on the patient's lungs, then, is only to increase the rate of normal passive exhalation. If the thrust is made at the end of exhalation, forced exhalation results and the effect is a sharp, automatic, protective contraction of the diaphragm, thoracic muscles, and perispinal musculature. The latter is likely to return the segment immediately to its abnormal but habitual position.