About Chiropractic
Chiropractic originally started in 1895 in Davenport, Iowa and has been a success story to this day (bar the natural evolutionary teething problems of a non medical system). From its history focussing on nerve root impingement from misaligned vertebra and how nerve function is affected, to its more modern arm of being involved in the management of low back pain and damage, evidence is slowly moving towards placing chiropractic in its rightful place in the treatment of low back pain, headache and neck pain. Evidence for other conditions we treat is pending but as this is a relatively new profession compared with medicine, research has only been emphasised with the onset of budgeting in health care over the past 20 years. This is undoubtedly a good thing for patient management. For that reason chiropractors see a lot of other conditions which show clinical benefit but due to recent litigation we are limited to making claims without high level evidence. Never the less it is reasonable to say that chiropractors often see people with: sciatica; hip problems; sports injuries; jaw problems; arthritis; colicky babies; headache; migraine; and many more…
There are many variations on the theme of chiropractic, similar to differences you would see if you saw 6 different dentists. We are all chiropractors but there are differences that are worth noting. Some chiropractors practice in a standard way, performing excellent spinal assessment, using x-rays to help determine injury, use manipulation and have a quick turnover of patients per hour. Some chiropractors have trained in non-manipulative McTimoney chiropractic styles which are less in number in the UK and an offshoot of the original body of chiropractic. Other chiropractors have evolved so far beyond their training that they don't offer anything like a traditional clinic and are mixing alternative medicine with their chiropractic knowledge in order to make the body correct it's misalignment without being pushed back into place. I like all of the above but I wish it was all in one place! That's what we are trying to do - a clinic where traditional techniques are never forgotten (because we always need a push back into place sometimes), but enhancing the body's natural ability to recover by using other styles of chiropractic or alternative therapies. That to me is where the MAGIC is.
Many physical therapies out there focus on treating the area of pain alone. We are different at our clinic because, as mentioned above, although we treat your pain we are equally interested in what CAUSES your pain if it is recurrent. Treating symptoms NEVER CURES YOU. It makes an unresolved patient who keeps coming back to pay for care, exactly the point we are trying to get you beyond. Treating the cause goes a lot deeper. Chiropractic does this by getting to the mechanics of the problems (as opposed to taking a pain killer), but rather than applying the same remedy each treatment (some high turnover chiropractors act this way), our mix of extra techniques we study enhance the treatments we give you. If you are interested, this may occasionally involve other therapies at our clinic, (yes, sometimes two heads are better than one!). Consequently achieving your maximum recovery is cheaper in the end when compared to symptom care. We then suggest maintaining the recovery with visits similar to a dentist (every 3 or 6 months) so that your condition does not recur, or more frequently if you feel chiropractic as a 'health system' improved your life in other areas and you wish to take advantage of this.
Going back to original Chiropractic, this worked on the principle that 'structure (bones) affects function (nerves)', i.e. the spine can affect the organs via the nervous system when bones are misaligned, and vice versa. Original chiropractic was therefore more than a 'quick fix' for back and neck pain and was seen as a 'system of care' for our health. This is why patients often report improvements in areas of their health which seem unrelated to the back or neck pain they came in with, e.g. improved energy levels, general sense of wellbeing, improved period pains in women and ease of IBS symptoms. Again the science for this is missing but clinically these are the reports.
Going for maximum recovery of all the historical traumas and changes in your body including today's pain, is a must for today's health conscious generation. You can then start from a 'clean slate' and be as new as you can! Fulfilling the treatment plan we give you, to the end, is the healthiest goal for you.
The nicest thing about being a Chiropractor is the percentage of people who recover from pain and so called 'permanent' injury. So often we see big recoveries from people who have suffered pain for years. Seeing the recovery the body is capable of is immensely rewarding. For example, we are trained not just to diagnose osteo-arthritis but to make the best improvement in the joint regardless of severity. This can be pre-op., post op., or to try and avoid an operation altogether. An analogy I like that fits this is: 'You can't unboil a hardboiled egg (arthritis), but you can make an egg salad!'.
There is always room for improvement no matter what the injury or the age! That's the difference between treating symptoms by taking pain killers, and treating the cause of the pain with physical treatments. One covers the problem up, the other deals with it! Not dealing with it is like driving with your hand over a red light on your dashboard indicating you should stop driving but you carry on regardless.
Consider: chiropractors study the spine and skeleton for 5 years fulltime during their training. This gives us a lot of speciality to return your spine to health! Compare us to pain killers or treating the symptom area only and you'll be pleasantly surprised at your comfort levels once recovered. Considering low back pain is the number one cause of sick days off work, keeping our backs and parts healthy keeps us at our daily jobs and keeps those rewards coming in. And best of all, chiropractic and osteopathy have been proven through international government authorised studies in more than three different countries to be the most effective and cost effective care for back pain (published in BMJ 1990 & 2004). We have also just been nominated by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE 2009) who advise GP's that chiropractic should be referred to if low back pain continues for more than six weeks.
The primary point I would like to emphasise is, however damaged you are now, however many past injuries you have and whatever degree of joint pain or simple morning stiffness you have, accumulating these permanent progressive strains in your body will need you to choose now or later how you are going to take care of yourself. Damage becomes harder to fix the longer you have it, which makes long term prevention ever more logical. As a Chiropractor I have a physical job and therefore enjoy simply having one treatment to my back and neck every 3 months (this is a treatment schedule my job dictates) to keep it healthy. I like my spine to be as young as my mind! Mechanical physical treatment alone doesn't solve my pains and other holistic techniques like massage or SOT and CST (see below) seem to perform that final release needed. CST and SOT are Chiropractic techniques designed to promote organic/health effects as earlier mentioned. These extra techniques I believe help us look for a deeper cause of pain or adaptation in the body. Thus, the 'health system' of chiropractic integrates with finding the cause. It's amazing what we can do with our health prior to the need for drugs and surgery! This is why I like the idea of having all of these techniques under one roof as I often have to visit different clinics for different approaches I like to receive to make my care holistic. I sincerely hope you enjoyed this and that you plan to benefit from chiropractic care with us.
