As I eluded to in Part 1, there are several factors that contribute to the following common misconception: "Once You Start Going You Always Have to Go". Let's get started on Part 2 of this discussion.
Chiropractors a hundred years ago had many miraculous healing responses happen to their patients after they delivered the chiropractic adjustment. To review, the adjustment realigns the spinal joints, removes nerve interference and results in that patient's innate intelligence taking over to do the healing work. That is the way it is suppose to work and miraculous things do happen when the body is allowed to heal itself. Remember we all have that intelligence within us that knows how to heal and regulate our bodies.
Chiropractors today still get great results, but they have much more working against them than the chiropractors did a hundred years ago. Namely, our lifestyle choices that are vastly different than they were then, and vastly different than what our genetics require to be healthy. Our genetic makeup has changed very, very little since the time of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. If you study the cultures still in existence today that still adopt the lifestyle of our ancestors you will find that they have none of the chronic diseases our society has today.
The reason I am writing about this is that we live in stress overload a good portion of our days and our bodies just can't keep up. What we eat and its nutritional value (even in our healthy foods) is not what it was then. Our level of mental and emotional stress is elevated and our sedentary lifestyle and lack of physical exercise all stimulate the stress centers of our brains. If that wasn't enough, the level of toxins we endure in our food, water and air supply and the level of electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) that bombard our bodies are a constant threats we can't even see. Simply put, our bodies are not designed to deal with the level of stress we put ourselves under on a daily basis.
The result of all this from a chiropractic point of view is that a practice member will become subluxated (have spinal misalignments) much more often than they would have had several years ago. This translates into the need to see our practice members more often if they want to keep their spines and nervous system healthy. Whenever I have a patient who is not responding to care as quickly as they should, I will ask them what stressful things are going on in their life at that moment. That is almost always the answer. Getting adjusted helps reset the body and dissipate these stresses.
Is seeing my practice members more often what I want? No, my goal is always to make them more self-sufficient. Even though I enjoy interacting with them, I would rather teach my practice members about lifestyle changes they can implement to reduce the stress in their lives in order to maintain their health and well-being. But, until people start making those choices and changes one of two things happen, they either need to come see me more often or they choose not to and start on a downward spiral away from optimal health. As you can see, this is not the chiropractic profession's fault, but rather the direction that our "advanced society" has led us over a long period of time (don't get me started on that subject).
Well, that is enough information to chew on for right now. As I said before, it is an involved answer to a common misconception, and there is more to come. I should be able to complete this discussion in Part 3. As usual, I welcome any comments or questions you might have. Thanks for reading.
Dr. Dan
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Chiropractic Misconceptions: Once You Start Going You Always Have to Go (Part 1)
Besides the basic misunderstanding about what chiropractic is (and isn't), I feel that the title of this post is the next biggest and most common misconception about chiropractic care. There are so many contributing factors that feed into this perception that I won't be able to fit it all in one post. My explanation will be addressing each of these factors.
The first factor is one that I touched on very briefly before. People equate feeling good to being healthy. It is normal to think that unless you have had exposure to information that doesn't support that belief. Think of this example. How many of you know someone who made an appointment with their doctor mainly because they were feeling a little run down. The doctor decided to do some tests, the tests caused them concern, they then decided to perform exploratory surgery and on the operating table found the person so full of cancer that they closed the person back up because the cancer was so advanced that there was nothing they could do. This poor person had been feeling good just three weeks prior. Unfortunately we hear this scenario too often, but it is a prime example of what I am talking about.
Let me describe the scenario that plays out everyday in chiropractic offices. A person calls up on the phone because they injured themselves over the weekend (playing basketball, hours of gardening, lifting something heavy, and my favorite "I just bent over to tie my shoes and all of a sudden I had this excruciating pain in my low back and couldn't straighten up"). They come into the office, experience one or maybe a few adjustments, get the pain relief they are looking for and don't return even though the chiropractor advised them differently.
Hopefully it is obvious to you that the person that just bent over to tie their shoes might have a little more going on under the surface that contributed to this painful flare up with their back. You don't "throw out" your back by just tying your shoes. It happens often. They were asymptomatic (without pain) the day before, even the hour before.
The body does a very good job of adapting to all the bad things we do to it over the years, ... to a point. At some point the body doesn't or can't adapt anymore and that is when it sends us pain signals to do something about it. The only issue is that problems are often brewing for years before they become symptomatic. Unfortunately, contrary to the opinion of many, chiropractors are not miracle workers. A problem that has taken a long time to manifest does take time to resolve. The chiropractor realizes this fact and that is why we take detailed histories of our patients and ask a lot of questions to determine how many injurious things have happened in your past and how long your body has had to try and adapt to those events and traumas. It is possible however, to help a patient over the pain/non-pain threshold in a very short period of time. This is what many experience when they come to the chiropractor and that is why we have become known as pain relief doctors.
How does this play out if the doctor doesn't have enough of a chance to educate the patient on how all the events of their past are contributing to their problems today and what is necessary to correct the problem for long term spinal and nervous system health. Well, repeated episodes of pain complaints (usually in the same area), just enough visits to get out of pain and repeated times that the patient dismisses themselves from care because they don't have enough information to make an educated decision about their health and well-being. Combine this with the belief that being pain free equals health. Does any of this mean that chiropractic isn't working? No, It just means that there was not enough time and effort spent on correcting the deeper problem in the first place.
Another thing to consider is there are other factors that inhibit forward progress when we work to unwind the problems found in the spine. But, that is for part two in this discussion. That is it for now, thanks for reading.
Dr. Dan
The first factor is one that I touched on very briefly before. People equate feeling good to being healthy. It is normal to think that unless you have had exposure to information that doesn't support that belief. Think of this example. How many of you know someone who made an appointment with their doctor mainly because they were feeling a little run down. The doctor decided to do some tests, the tests caused them concern, they then decided to perform exploratory surgery and on the operating table found the person so full of cancer that they closed the person back up because the cancer was so advanced that there was nothing they could do. This poor person had been feeling good just three weeks prior. Unfortunately we hear this scenario too often, but it is a prime example of what I am talking about.
Let me describe the scenario that plays out everyday in chiropractic offices. A person calls up on the phone because they injured themselves over the weekend (playing basketball, hours of gardening, lifting something heavy, and my favorite "I just bent over to tie my shoes and all of a sudden I had this excruciating pain in my low back and couldn't straighten up"). They come into the office, experience one or maybe a few adjustments, get the pain relief they are looking for and don't return even though the chiropractor advised them differently.
Hopefully it is obvious to you that the person that just bent over to tie their shoes might have a little more going on under the surface that contributed to this painful flare up with their back. You don't "throw out" your back by just tying your shoes. It happens often. They were asymptomatic (without pain) the day before, even the hour before.
The body does a very good job of adapting to all the bad things we do to it over the years, ... to a point. At some point the body doesn't or can't adapt anymore and that is when it sends us pain signals to do something about it. The only issue is that problems are often brewing for years before they become symptomatic. Unfortunately, contrary to the opinion of many, chiropractors are not miracle workers. A problem that has taken a long time to manifest does take time to resolve. The chiropractor realizes this fact and that is why we take detailed histories of our patients and ask a lot of questions to determine how many injurious things have happened in your past and how long your body has had to try and adapt to those events and traumas. It is possible however, to help a patient over the pain/non-pain threshold in a very short period of time. This is what many experience when they come to the chiropractor and that is why we have become known as pain relief doctors.
How does this play out if the doctor doesn't have enough of a chance to educate the patient on how all the events of their past are contributing to their problems today and what is necessary to correct the problem for long term spinal and nervous system health. Well, repeated episodes of pain complaints (usually in the same area), just enough visits to get out of pain and repeated times that the patient dismisses themselves from care because they don't have enough information to make an educated decision about their health and well-being. Combine this with the belief that being pain free equals health. Does any of this mean that chiropractic isn't working? No, It just means that there was not enough time and effort spent on correcting the deeper problem in the first place.
Another thing to consider is there are other factors that inhibit forward progress when we work to unwind the problems found in the spine. But, that is for part two in this discussion. That is it for now, thanks for reading.
Dr. Dan
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