Topic of the Week: How Much Chiropractic Care Do You Need?

You have come for your first chiropractic assessment, and the doctor tells you that you have some misalignments/restrictions in your spine called subluxations. What’s next? How much chiropractic care are you going to need?


Based on information from your medical history, the physical assessment, and your current symptom patterns, your chiropractic physician is going to create a treatment plan based on three key factors:


1. Your personal health goals - short-term symptom resolution or long-term health & wellness?


2. The cause of your symptoms - the diagnosis – including the length of time you have had symptoms.


3. Your willingness to participate - following recommendations for stretches, exercises, etc.


Your Personal Health Goals
Is it your goal to use chiropractic for pain-management or is it your intention to use chiropractic to help you be healthier? If you simply want to have less pain today, often a single chiropractic treatment will do the trick. By correcting vertebral subluxations, pressure is taken off the joints, nerves and other pain sensitive soft tissues. The result – you feel better. This kind of treatment is similar to taking a pill. You feel good only until the effects of the medicine wear off.


In order to be healthier, and to feel good long term, you need to create structural correction that will last. This requires repetitive treatments, aimed at re-establishing your natural spinal curves and alignment.


Just as working out in a gym to change your body’s shape takes time and effort, re-establishing normal spinal curvatures takes time too. After symptoms are under control, long-term correction and maintenance of your spine is a life-long affair. Monthly check-ups are often enough to keep you healthy, but it depends on your activity levels and life-stress.


The Cause of Your Symptoms
Many of us have had the uncomfortable experience of hurting our back from physical trauma – like a fall, a twist, or lifting something too heavy or awkward. These situations can lead to bouts of acute pain caused by vertebral subluxations, plus muscle spasms and inflammation associated with that kind of injury. Fortunately, a few well-placed chiropractic adjustments, scheduled soon after an injury, can often help ease the pain caused by misalignment. This can also help prevent the long-term negative effects of vertebral subluxations by taking the pressure off immediately.


However, what if there was no physical trauma preceding your back pain? What if the pain is more chronic, or comes on without any obvious trauma?


Your chiropractor knows that for these painful symptoms to occur there must have been a musculoskeletal system imbalance beforehand – perhaps several low-grade, minor subluxations that were not bad enough to be painful. And, the longer the imbalance has been there, the more challenging it is to change that physical pattern. Typically, your chiropractor may ask you to come for treatments daily, or every other day, until your adjustments start to hold on their own. The longer you have had symptoms, usually the longer this will take. After this stage, you and your chiropractor work together to determine what works best long term.


Your Participation
Your chiropractic physician is highly skilled at determining what is wrong, and knows precisely where to apply the chiropractic adjustments so you will feel better. However, to stabilize your musculoskeletal system, there are definitely things you can do to help - both in the short term and well into the future. Immediately following an acute injury, your chiropractor may recommend icing the symptomatic areas to reduce inflammation and will probably suggest that you modify your activities for a certain period of time. This allows the proper healing process to occur.


Then, when you are in either the corrective and/or maintenance phase of your treatment plan, you may be asked to do certain exercises and stretches to facilitate long-term stabilization of proper spinal alignment.


If you comply with your chiropractor’s recommendations, you will realize the full benefit of chiropractic care, and prolong the durability and health of your spine. If you do not follow the recommendations, you are more prone to a relapse.


Be sure to share with your chiropractic physician your full medical history and also mention your personal health goals. Your chiropractor will use this information to create a treatment plan that is right for you.


Disclaimer: Information contained in this Wellness Express™ newsletter is for educational and general purposes only and is designed to assist you in making informed decisions about your health. Any information contained herein is not intended to substitute advice from your physician or other healthcare professional. Copyright © Wellness Express™