FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

  • Spinal Adjustment is a gentle, controlled movement of the spinal joint to correct a stress point or misalignment, which is also called a subluxation or a fixation. Many people say it feels like massage pressure. The goal of correcting a Subluxation is to remove stress from the joint, decompress nerves that are being restricted, balance the muscles, restore circulation, and remove pain that is all caused by a spinal misalignment. The adjustment is designed to restore flexibility to the individual joint spaces and allow the nerves that cross between these areas to send nerve impulses without stress. In the process of restoring range of motion to the individual joints a balance is achieved that allows your posture to become normal and promote healthy muscles and disc spaces.

    Chiropractic adjustments are applied to the joints of the body including the neck, midback, lowback, pelvis, and arm and leg joints. The adjustment techniques will vary between doctors and patients. For example, the low pressure techniques using instruments like an activator tool are used on infants and osteoporotic patients may not work on a large athletic football player, he may need an adjustment that is more physical with heavy massage-like pressure. There are even adjustments designed for horses, cows, and dogs! So as you can see adjustment techniques will be applied based on the patients specific spinal shape or condition. Also during a treatment program a technique may be changed to allow a better, more effective spinal correction.

  • Chiropractic is, like any field of medicine, a specialty. Chiropractors focus on the spine like dentists focus on your teeth and Internists focus on internal organs. The Internist has an M.D. after his name; the Dentist has a D.D.S.; and Chiropractors have a D.C. after theirs. In the end, they are each trained medical professionals skilled in their field and each are considered by law and practice to be doctors.

  • Because Traditional Medicine and Chiropractic care are somewhat different in their training, approach to healing, and personal experience recommendations will be different. Many medical schools do not teach alternative medicine training as part of their basic medical education. So in other words your medical doctor may not have had a specific training in identifying spinal stress, nerve compression, and or muscle balance; therefore, they may not make a referral to a chiropractor when the patient really needs a second opinion. Most traditional doctors do recognize Chiropractic and understand that as they have a field of specialty, so do Chiropractors. Our office has working relationships with traditional medical doctors, OBGYNs, midwives, and we often refer patients to their offices, as they refer patients to us.

  • Most care plans are covered by insurance companies and medicare; they understand the importance of Chiropractic care and have seen statistically that getting care has both short and long term health benefits. Our services are also covered by Workers Compensation Insurance, for those injured while on the job. Following auto accidents, insurance companies typically pay 100 percent of the costs of Chiropractic care with no out of pocket expense for the patient. This will vary depending on the individual insurance plan.

  • Under normal circumstances, Chiropractic treatments do not hurt. There are several chiropractic techniques available; some methods resemble stretching, some are done with an instrument, adjustments used on infants and osteoporotic patients all the way to heavy pressured adjustments used on horses. If discomfort arises during a treatment, it is typically discomfort, not pain, and lasts for only a second or two as a vertebrae is moved into proper alignment. Typically after the first adjustment it is not uncomfortable at all.

    For example, when you haven’t worked out in a while and go to the gym you are moving muscles and joints that haven’t been moved or used in awhile and it is a good soreness that results. This is sometimes the case in adjusting the spinal joints – we are restoring movement into the spinal joints. We are in the business of alleviating pain, not causing it.

  • Spinal adjustments are extremely safe. Studies show the risk factor to be less than one injury per one million treatments. It is much safer, in fact, than many traditional medical procedures. In addition, Chiropractic does not use medication, which removes an additional layer of risk.

    Research by The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, found that replacing a visit to a doctor with a visit to a Chiropractor for back pain, could save Medicare $83.5 million every year.

    A study that looked into prescribed medications vs spinal manipulation found that 56% of patients who saw a doctor saw a 30% reduction in low back pain after 4 weeks. But 94% of patients who underwent Chiropractic treatment saw a 30% reduction in low back pain after 4 weeks.

    In fact, another study found that 4 out of 10 Americans, will approach a Chiropractor before a doctor when suffering from lower back pain!

  • The sound you sometimes hear during a Spinal Adjustment is the sound of nitrogen gas rushing out of the joints of the spine as they are moved into proper alignment and flexibility. The movement of this gas is painless and normal. It is like opening a coke can and hearing the “pop” as gas pressure leaves the can or like pulling a suction cup off the wall.

  • Yes. Doctors of Chiropractic treat many conditions including Sciatica, Osteoarthritis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, headaches, rotator cuff issues, plantar fasciitis, and others. In addition to pain relief, Chiropractic care has been linked to changes in conditions that include immune dysfunctions such as ear infections, allergies and Asthma. Remember that Chiropractic’s focus is the spine, and the spine is the core of all communication within the brain-body highway. Correcting spinal problems, therefore, often impacts many conditions other than pain.

    In addition to spinal care, our office focuses intently on health maintenance. Diet, exercise and guiding our patients toward healthy choices are part of our consultations.

  • Chiropractors do not rely on medication, but on personal care and attention. Using an analogy that is common, consider your visit to a traditional doctor who gives you a prescription to take home and use twice a day for a week. That equates to two treatments each day for seven days, or fourteen treatments. Add the first and second doctor’s visits and you just had sixteen treatments. Doctors of Chiropractic don’t hand out medication, which too often masks symptoms without curing the cause of the symptoms. Instead, Chiropractors perform hands-on physical treatment to correct a physical problem. Most patients are not accustomed to that much attention from a doctor, but in Chiropractic care personal treatment and attention is the core of our practice.

    Another helpful analogy is how a dentist uses braces to correct misaligned teeth. The patient goes in periodically to have their braces adjusted to correct the problem, as they improve visit frequency changes. Unfortunately, we cannot put a brace inside your spine to support the proper spinal alignment and flexibility given during an adjustment; therefore, we must retrain your bones and muscles to work together to maintain the correction and flexibility it takes to stay healthy.

  • Because pain is a symptom and not the cause of a medical condition, relief of pain should not always be considered the end of a series of treatments. We’ve all had a cold before. We wanted to get out and about again and out of the sick bed. So as soon as we felt better, we hustled out the door to resume our life only to find ourselves sick again the next day because our bodies weren’t fully recovered yet. So it is with Chiropractic treatments for pain. The pain can be relieved more quickly than the actual cause of the pain, and so stopping treatments before the cause is remedied can often lead to relapses and, worse, to the development of a chronic condition. Your spinal scans, range of motion, nerve tests and progress check ups are done on a regular basis and will provide us with the right time to reduce your frequency of care with no guess work.