Why do you get adjusted? If you’re like most people it’s because you hurt. You have back pain or neck pain, etc. This is an understandable reason to seek help. And frankly, if you are going to seek this kind of help you could do much worse than chiropractic. In fact, it might be the best choice you could make in dealing with these kind of conditions. That being said, what happens when chiropractic doesn’t make it perfect. Or what about, if you’ve tried everything: medicine, physical therapy, massage, chiropractic and anything else you can think of, yet you’re still symptomatic. I don’t mean to be a Debbie-downer, but I want to take a minute to be realistic.
Take this hypothetical situation: you’re 38 years old, you played high school sports, have been in multiple car accidents, have suffered multiple slips and falls and now have developed back pain. You go visit a chiropractor, and begin to get adjusted. After, a few weeks/months, you begin to feel better, but not perfect. Maybe some pain remains, or perhaps certain activities are uncomfortable. So did chiropractic fail? I’m going to say absolutely not. Have you ever heard the phrase, “it’s better to break your ankle, then sprain it”? This is said because bones heal up nice and strong, but ligaments once stretched a certain way don’t return completely back to their original form. Thus, you’d have a propensity or a vulnerability to more ankle sprains. Now, imagine this is your spine and you have decades or wear and tear and injuries and spinal mechanics. We can fix a lot. But there are some will remain some ligaments and muscle memory, even, that will still be vulnerable to injury or simply returning back to old symptoms. Basically, you can’t undo decades in a few months or a few visits, or ever in some cases.
Now, this can be frustrating, obviously. But I want to encourage you. Remember, any improvement is improvement. Basically, if you are stagnant and not actively trying to get better, then you are passively moving backwards. So, even if you have spinal issues that leave some residual symptoms, if you are actively working on them you are protecting yourself from getting worse. This is never a bad goal. Remember, today’s low back issues left untouched could be serious loss of function in the future. Thus, you have to keep plugging on towards improvement, whatever that happens to mean for your case.
A few more thoughts on this topic:
1) I hope this topic helps you understand that its never too soon to get a spinal check up. If you get your kid’s spines checked, even if they don’t have pain, you help them to avoid much of the aforementioned issues.
2) We recommend wellness care and maintenance care for many people, so that you can stay ahead of tissue damage that may cause unfixable issues or if issues already exist, they can be controlled and their damage limited.
3) Remember, truly, getting adjusted is NOT about pain management, but rather removing subluxations from your spine, so your nerve system works effectively. Allowing your brain to communicate with your body and thus keeping you as healthy as possible.
Don’t ever give in or give up on yourself. Always seek the best version of yourself. It’s never too late or too early to improve yourself.
In health, Dr. Graham
