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Don't You Think You Deserve Better?

When you have a headache, your back is killing you, you have an aching sore neck or you’re just in pain for no particular reason and you get up Monday morning feeling like a truck hit you during the night...Do you run to the medicine cabinet and pop a few Advils?

Does that make you better or just feel better?

I know that in many cases it probably does make you feel better. In many situations it’s likely that that is all it will take to feel "normal" again. Am I right?

Do you think that maybe the pain you’re feeling has an underlying reason or cause to it and it’s not a lack of Advil.

Do you think the Advil is making the underlying condition or problem go away?

Another thought - if you were supposed to have Advil in your blood stream don’t you think your body might make its own?

When you take an Advil or similar pain remedy, besides stopping your pain you’re doing a few other things to your body that if you knew...you might not want to do it.

The way Advil works is it breaks a chain of neuro-chemical events that would otherwise permit you to feel the pain. When the pill wears off it allows the chain of events to continue again - but very often worse than originally.

The pain pill also shuts off the "alarms" that should be interpreted as "something is wrong"

Pain is a "check engine light"

Defeat that check engine light before you fix the reason it’s lit and bigger problems may very likely be on their way.

It’s kinda like taking the battery out of your smoke alarm because it keeps beeping... but never investigating why it’s beeping.

So, knowing that - are you happy with the short term relief from the pain pill, knowing that there’s a bigger problem lying just beneath the surface?

Don’t you think you deserve a little bit better than that and to find out what that problem may be?

Do I Have To Get My Neck "Cracked"?

 Isn't there another way?

      Having been in practice for just about 25 years, I can honestly say that the vast majority of the people I have seen have actually really liked the way they felt from getting adjusted. There have been a few who didn’t want their neck manually adjusted or "cracked" as some say but they still wanted to get adjusted and really appreciated the way the way they felt as a result. Having a manual type of an adjustment is just one of the many techniques used in chiropractic care. There are some methods or techniques that we use that involve minimal hand contact and are done with an adjusting instrument called an Activator. The activator provides a very specific, defined adjustment such that the patient only feels a slight impulse or tap on one specific spot. Other methods involve no pushing, thrusting force at all. One such technique, called Flexion / Distraction involves a slight stretching and flexing (forward bending of the spine) to mobilize one vertebra in relation to the one above or below it as well as to create a decrease in the internal pressure within the disc between them and thus decompress the disc. There is no thrust or impulse in this technique at all. Another technique utilizes two wedge-shaped blocks which are strategically placed beneath the hips so that the hips are, in a sense, turned / molded by body weight into normal alignment. This techniques utilizes no pressure, impulse or thrust other than gravity either. Most chiropractors are proficient and adept at a number of techniques and will pick the technique most suitable for the patient and her specific problem.

Which is better? It’s hard to say - Some conditions / situations call for one technique over another. Personally, I prefer to be adjusted manually. Yes, I have had manual adjustments I did not appreciate at the time because they hurt but they still solved my problem. Some chiropractors I have known were a bit over-zealous in their technique and this is unnecessary, but - it happens. No harm done but, again, it’s not necessary to leave a chiropractors office feeling more pain than you went in with. Have you ever gone to the dentist and felt pain from he is doing to your tooth? - Of course. It happens

Sometimes we go to a doctor with certain preconceived notions of what’s going to happen and our mind-set can amplify what really happens, If someone warns you "Don’t go to a chiropractor - he’ll break your neck..." If you buy into that and you go at all... Are you really going to go in there in a relaxed state of mind? Face it - anything at all that he does is going to hurt when he does it, right?

Still, one should always consider the benefits of getting an adjustment over the effects of not getting an adjustment at all....If the vertebra is subluxated /stuck, such that it cannot move freely it will cause irritation, inflamation and eventually set in motion abnormal nerve impulse sequences which will in time lead to dis-ease within your system and illnesses as well as arthritis-like degeneration of the involved bones and joint(s). Getting an adjustment frees up the subluxated or stuck vertebra and prevents this process from beginning or continuing.

So No, you don’t have to get your neck "cracked" but I can’t think of very many people in the past 25 years who did not see or realize at least some small benefit from getting regular chiropractic care. As I stated above most really appreciated what they got from coming in for care.

Is Every Adjustment Really That Important?

In a Word - Yes!

As a patient begins to see improvement in his or her condition it’s not unusual for him or her to start missing appointments. First it’s one here and there, randomly, then before long a pattern develops and she will be missing one or two per week.

The thinking must be something like "I’m feeling better so why worry about missing an appointment here and there...Oh, I can miss this one...". It’s interesting how fast we forget the pain and misery of an aching back, - and how it got that way.

Typically, what happens next is:

1- His back problem slowly starts to come back again.

2- He gets discouraged / ticked off - "I’m spending all this money and Look - my back still bothers me".

3- He quits care saying chiropractic doesn’t work - It’s ineffective - "I have to find out what’s wrong with me and finally fix it. I am going to go see a "Specialist".

If your MD directs you to take your medication 3 times per day and you take it one time per day...you’re actually missing 2/3 of your care. What kind of results can you expect?

This is what I have learned from being a chiropractor for 25 years and adjusting people with a variety of back and health problems:

Each appointment / Each adjustment is important to achieving the outcome you’re seeking -

Something else I’ve learned is that people who repeatedly miss and make excuses for missing their appointments, and only come in for their adjustments

*  When they’re in pain,

*  If it’s not raining, maybe going to rain, snowing, it’s cold or hot outside, dark    

    outside, etc.

*   Or when they’re in the mood

*   Or - if the insurance is paying for it...

These people rarely get the same great results from chiropractic care

that others who do follow doctor’s recommendations get.

I see the best results when a patient gives the 30^th or even 50^th appointment the same priority she gave to the 1^st - when she was in agonizing pain.