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