While I wish I could say that we can fix every patient that walks through our door, that’s simply not the case. Don’t get me wrong, chiropractic has more far reaching abilities than just low back pain. However, most patients considering a visit to any doctor have a symptom they want fixed and they’re not always interested in hearing about “improving health.” So which are conditions Chiropractic can help?
As a chiropractor, some of the most fascinating cases we’ve seen are when a patient is suffering with two conditions, but they don’t feel I need to know about one of them (since they don’t think it’s a chiropractic problem).
For example, a patient deals with frequent heartburn, but comes into our office for neck and upper back tension that is making it difficult for them to get through their day.
In our office, we don’t just adjust the area of complaint, since we feel the entire spine is a unit and should be treated like one. (As opposed to the neck being disconnected and unrelated to anything happening further down the spine.)
Suddenly, they are able to lower their heartburn medication, then get off of it all together. That’s when I have a conversation that starts with, “Um, can chiropractic help with heartburn?” That’s when we’re able to have a strong conversation about how chiropractic care can improve your overall health.
So what do chiropractors actually improve?
We really only “fix” one thing – that’s a vertebra out of place that’s putting pressure on a nerve. We call that a subluxation. Subluxations can cause a lot of problems, but not all problems are caused by subluxations.
For example, a common reason why someone visits our office is headaches. Headaches are very often helped under chiropractic in our office, but not always. It’s possible that the patients headaches are related to their diet, their high stress levels, or something even more serious. Headaches are regularly caused by spinal misalignment, though. We check for those. We only want to accept “headache patients” for treatment that are likely experiencing headaches due to spinal misalignment.
How will you know if your condition is a “chiropractic problem”? You’ll just need to schedule a time to do a consultation in our office. We do those at no charge. If we feel we can help, we’ll let you know right away and we’ll continue with an examination and x-rays if needed. If we don’t think we can help, we’ll be sure to point you in the right direction or make any referrals.
For more information on other conditions helped by chiropractic care, visit Chiro.org.