FAQ’s

Have you ever had braces on your teeth, or known someone who has? How long did it take to achieve a corrected, straight set of teeth? 2 years? 3 years? Maybe 4? The Good news is, the time it takes to achieve a correction in your spine is a “drop in the bucket” compared to the orthodontist–in most cases taking only 30-40 visits. With teeth, constant, steady pressure over time is what initially corrects them back to normal. The same holds true for the spine. You must remember that the body WANTS to be healthy and subluxation-free. However, it is much like a tug of war between how your muscles, ligaments and tendons of your spine have been improperly trained and the way they should be.

The adjustment pushes the bone in the right direction to help the body back to normal, and if reinforcement occurs on a regular basis (to prevent slippage or “tugging” of the vertebra back to its original position) the spine achieves a state of correction, and your body is able to restore its health. A subluxation (a vertebra out of normal alignment interfering with nerves) is like any other injury. It involves pulled, stretched or torn muscles and ligaments, and, in severe cases such as automobile injury, even ruptured joints. This takes time to heal. Studies show that damage to the nerves themselves takes even longer. Problem is, many times, this healing process is complicated or prolonged by old injuries, arthritis, age, improper nutrition, less than adequate exercise–and the real “biggie”- STRESS. These cause minor “reinjuries”, complicating, and slowing down healing.

Also, remember your spinal muscles has an actual physical memory, which has become used to a certain position of the spine. To re-train this memory takes time and effort. But, consider this, since your LIFE-LINE (nerve system) is ultimately affected by your spinal condition, do you think it’s worth the effort?

Ever hear of someone who never had a sick day in his or her life drop dead from a heart attack, stroke or some other sudden illness? Unfortunately, many folks today are walking “time bombs”… they are on the verge of collapse. Yet, at present they feel “just fine.” Many automobiles that “ran just great” yesterday sit in the engine overhaul shop today due to an overlooked maintenance item. It’s wonderful when you are feeling better. Please share that with us!!

We perform both subjective and objective testing that will ensure you are not just ‘feeling great’ but are actually ‘doing great’

Just don’t make the mistake of letting the symptoms be your guide, ask us for a re-assessment.

Many sudden health crises today could have been prevented yesterday.

Basically, your body exhibits certain signs which alert me that your spine is stabilised and healing is finished. Practical experience (from previous cases such as yours and others), plus routine clinical examinations, re-examinations and x-rays all signal me as to your progress. I will be constantly keeping you informed as to how you’re doing.

A LITTLE SECRET: Don’t let symptoms, or the absence of them, be your guide as to how you are doing. Paper cuts can be excruciating, yet some cancer patients never have a symptom until the first tumor is detected. By then, for many, it is already too late.

Firstly, you can do what you want with your health. Do you shower regularly? Do you eat and exercise regularly? Do you consider having regular dental checkups or simply brushing your teeth? Would you consider yourself an “addict”? “Hooked”? 

How often do do things don make them a good thing or a bad thing?

The big question is… Why do we do these things? BECAUSE WE LIKE THE BENEFITS!!

Interestingly about anything positive to health: exercise, good nutrition, daily intake of vitamins, minerals and herbs, proper rest, showering, etc.; the more you keep regular with it, the better you feel, the better they are for you and the less sick you become. We term these habits health maintenance. You can stop anytime you choose. What tends to happen though, is that most people like the benefits of regular chiropractic care so they choose not to quit. Spinal maintenance, through chiropractic care, helps keep a body stay well no different to maintaining a car or having periodic dental checks. So it stands less of a chance of getting going backwards.

At the end of the day… the choice up to you. It’s whether you treat your health proactively or reactively…. Crisis or Maintenance. Not an addiction.

Change is seldom comfortable. When you begin an exercise program after years of non-activity, how are you going to feel a few days after your first workout? Probably Sore! The body responds this way to healing change as well. Correcting subluxations changes the structure of the spine and also opens up nerve pathways that may have been obstructed for years. Known in natural health-care as “healing crisis”, headache, dizziness, lightheadedness, soreness, etc. are prime indicators that your body is, in fact, making a change for the better. This usually lasts no more than 1-2 weeks, maybe 3-4 weeks in severe cases . We will, however, monitor your progress and if we have a concern other than this we will certainly let you know. In the mean time be patient: You are moving in the “right direction.”

A body can malfunction for half a lifetime in some people before a symptom shows up, signalling them to have something done. Arthritis is a great example. If that first symptom is serious, like a heart attack, stroke or major cancer growth, it may be too late to help the patient. 

This is especially common in cases where spinal pain is present. Once the spinal adjustment is made, the joint pressure is removed, nerves work better and the pain quits. The nerves, ligaments and muscles, however, do not change that quickly and in some cases your adjustments might take days, weeks, or months to ‘learn’ their new habit because it may have taken years to get where they have.

To “patch up” the problem and not correct the underlying cause will normally result in a reoccurrence of the condition soon after. Please, don’t ever make the mistake of letting your symptoms, or the absence of them, dictate how healthy you are. We will be monitoring you for the indications of stabilising and not needing to be adjusted (or checked) as often. You can know that you are getting healthier when your progress exams improve and you can do more in life with less consequences. 

From your very first visit there are tests, measurements, x-rays and observations which are constantly compared and updated as you progress. This way there is no guess-work. We know , and so do you. We are always looking for you to be clear of subluxations and not needing to be adjusted.

In essence, what differs is my objective, or purpose. Conventional medicine today has as its goal the relief of symptoms. This is done using drugs, surgery and any other method which effectively accomplishes this goal. Chiropractic is different. My goal is to allow your body to function at its maximum potential by getting to the cause of your problem. At the core of chiropractic is the removal of interference to your nervous system, through spinal adjustments, because nerves control, power, and heal every part of your body. An example: You have a lawn which is dying and turning brown. Treat the symptom by painting the grass green (medicine). It seems ok, for awhile. But the dying grass will soon disappear, leaving holes in your lawn. Treat the CAUSE by turning on the water supply to the grass. Result? Healthy grass, which becomes green.

Your nerve system controls and powers every single part of your body. Not some, ALL. (Would you say it’s kind of important?) The main “cable” running from the brain (the “master control organ”) is the spinal cord, and travels through the core of your spine. Nerve roots (“wires”) branch off from the spinal cord and feed into every organ and cell of your body. A spinal bone (vertebra) which has lost its proper alignment relative to the rest of the spine can interfere with the proper flow of nerve signals to the body by irritating these nerves or the spinal cord itself. This causes malfunction, and ultimately, disease. These misaligned vertebrae are termed subluxations, and adjusting them is your chiropractor’s job. By the way, sometimes subluxations can cause pain in the back (most do not).

You go to a heart specialist and he tells you that you need a triple bypass operation right away. You promptly inform him that your insurance will only pay for a single bypass. He replies, “Okay. We’ll just do a single bypass, then.” What would you think? How would you feel? Would you agree to the procedure? In this office, we believe you are entitled to the care you need; not what your insurance policy pays for. Many policies are created with “crisis” care in mind, that is, as with the medical model, once the symptom is gone, you’re done. As we’ve explained, there’s a lot more to getting you well than just treating your symptoms. Unfortunately, most insurance today isn’t set up to accommodate this kind of health care. It is much more disease-care oriented.

Have you ever met 2 medical doctors or dentists who thought alike? How many people in general deal with problems in the same way? Each of us approaches problems from our own unique perspective. There are dozens of chiropractic techniques: each designed to effectively treat different patients as the individual doctor sees fit. And, in the hands of a highly trained doctor, they all work. I, as your doctor would not be as competent utilizing the method of another chiropractor as I am practicing the technique that I have chosen to use. I am the best at what I do, and will recommend accordingly. If you are not responding to my care I will definitely refer you to another chiropractor with a different approach. I know that chiropracTIC works but sometimes the chiropracTOR can fail.

It all boils down to the kind of policy you have purchased. Some cover more extensively for chiropractic care than others. Also remember: insurance companies have been associated with medicine and its procedures dealing in crisis care and medication for much longer than with chiropractic. They don’t want to pay for “maintenance care” if there are no symptoms. They see the body as the medical field does: NO SYMPTOMS = NO PROBLEM Always ask about specific coverage when buying any insurance.

Lack of understanding concerning chiropractic, what it is and how it works, is the basis of this concern. Certainly, this thinking is rooted in fear. Fear of the unknown and anything new has held people back for generations; probably as long as people have existed on this earth. As difficult as it may be to believe by today’s standards, doctors in the last century were not required to scrub their hands between doing an autopsy and examining a living patient. As a result, many patients contracted infections and died. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, at the time a young physician, suggested that washing of the hands might help keep so many of the patients from infection and death. For this he was not only “misunderstood”, but ridiculed as well, and finally dismissed from his position. Only after germs and bacteria were actually proven to exist did they realize how right the good doctor was. The hand washing recommendation was made policy, and many lives were saved. There are many people today with multitudes of health problems that seem to have no solution, yet can be helped through chiropractic care; probably people in your family or circle of friends. The only thing keeping them from getting the care that they need is lack of knowledge; nobody ever told them what chiropractic is and what is could do for them. The knowledge you now possess about chiropractic can be lifesaving to someone. Please, don’t keep it a secret. Use the rubber band analogy to educate them on what we do.

I am a chiropractor. Chiropractors detect dysfunction as the result of biomechanical problems that arise from the spine. I have a keen interest in correction of spinal dysfunction/subluxations for the restoration of health. I use various tests to see that the spine and your Nervous System is functioning at its best. I use exams, orthopaedic tests, posture photos and X-Rays, CT/MRI scans (past and/or present) do diagnose musculo-skeletal problems that will affect your health. Chiropractors are well trained in conditions that relate to the spine. If you have low back pain, neck pain, mid back (thorscic) pain, rib pain, headaches, migraines, shoulder problems.. We could be able to help you.

Today in medicine we’ve divided up the body into separate systems and assigned them to various professions so we can be better at one thing, rather than being a ‘jack of all trades’. When the body becomes sick, sometimes it can be because many parts of it have ceased to work well together, causing a loss of harmony. Each part of the body will affect other part and before long a loss of health is evident. With Chiropractic, we work to restore proper function and harmony throughout your body by improving the ability if the Nervous System to work better, this can not just aid the musculo-skeletal system but also the nervous system, thus benefiting all the body. Remember the nervous system (especially the brain and spinal cord) sends messages to everything. An analogy i have heard is, if your home fuse-box broke down causing 15 different household appliances to go “on the fritz”, would you call 15 different appliance “specialists”, or just ONE electrical expert to repair the fuse-box?

More and more medical doctors today are beginning to understand the importance of chiropractic spinal care, but sadly, many are still of the mind set that the body is best treated by drugs and surgery and not conservatively like chiropractic or physiotherapy or massage. Sad, but true. This is becoming lesser and lesser these days and the side effects of long term pain medication are being documented as a bad thing. (example.. Vioxx Pulled Off the Market Because of Increased Risk of Heart Attack and Stroke. The large drug manufacturer Merck &. Co., Inc. announced on September 30, 2004 that it would withdraw VIOXX (rofecoxib), its arthritis and acute pain medication, from the market world-wide)

Another reason for a negative attitude exhibited by a physician is that many doctors have never had anyone explain chiropractic to them.

Try this: If a physician tells you anything disparaging about chiropractic, just ask him or her: “Exactly what is chiropractic, and what does a chiropractor do?” Why is my condition NOT a chiropractic condition? The answer to that question will tell you plenty. Your doctor in most cases is sincere and has your well-being in mind. Many times, though, he/she may have been misinformed regarding chiropractic.

You may not know that in Europe many doctors are referring to chiropractors and doing research into chiropractic. One article published in “Manual Medicine” recommended that all children be checked for subluxations by a chiropractor after birth!!! Pretty amazing for a medical doctor!

As a patient relatively new to this office, and possibly to chiropractic in general, this is understandable. Many people see a chiropractic office as a place to go to find relief from “strain, pain, low back pain and an occasional migraine”.  Most people growing up in this country are trained to go to the medical doctor when they have a symptom or health problem. However, once our patients realise what chiropractic is all about getting, and keeping well, we find people consulting us before going in for medical treatment. Do you realise that in some parts of the world doctors are only paid for the service of keeping their patients healthy? If you get sick under this health plan, then, it indicates that something went wrong with the program, and the patient is treated until well again, at NO CHARGE. Just an example of how there are different levels of thinking….