Often in the clinic or even out in the general public, I will have people ask me one of “THE” questions.
Today someone asked me, “I heard once you start going to a Chiropractor you have to continue forever-Is that true?”
I always respond with, “That depends on what your goals are for going to a Chiropractor!”
Treatment plans are broken up into different phases, with the first one always being relief. This means that the first part of your treatment is centered around getting relief from a particular symptom. This part MUST occur or no patient would continue-I wouldn’t either! The next part of care is correction, or rehabilitation. This one is pretty understandable for most patients. They understand that they have had a problem for a few weeks to even several months. Most people understand a problem that has been around that length of time cannot be resolved in one or two spins around the clinic! The last part is more of a stabilization period, and this is where it gets foggy for most people-when they need to come back after the pain has been greatly reduced.
Let’s put this in another arena. Most folks do not think anything about going to see their dentist for a checkup every 6 months. There are a certainly a lot of coffees consumed, caramel, chocolate and gum eaten within a six month period, and as you would expect, your teeth would need a good cleaning. Let’s also look at your beauty salon visit. Let’s say on average, in 6 weeks your hair starts getting shaggy, roots start showing and in general you don’t look as sharp as you would like, so armed with this information you schedule with the salon on your way out the door! This list is extensive, oil changes for the cars, retainers for the kids after dental braces, cleaning the dryer lint trap. All of these things perform a service and enhance your life in some way and taking care of those things is just part of the program.
On an everyday basis our spines can be taxed; we look down at our phones very frequently, look down at our computers for hours, sit for long periods, and we may have long periods of intense work after long periods of inactivity and then we want our body to perform instantly and on demand! Also there are times and seasons for different patients with different lifestyles. Baseball players, football players, County Fair participants, and even bodybuilders have seasons where they may need extra TLC in our office to either enhance their performance or to fix something they “tweaked” during their event. So when we add these everyday events to the events that can be seasonal, it’s easy to see how much we put our spine through, and since it houses THE most important system in our existence (the NERVOUS SYSTEM), we should be sure to take extra special care of it!
I like for my patients to be educated enough about their spine and how it impacts every aspect of their life that they can make their own decision on how they would like to integrate Chiropractic care in to their life. I don’t want people to return for the heck of it, I want them to be able to notice how their bodies functioned before chiropractic care and be able to tell the difference while under care to the degree that it just becomes a natural part of their routine. Imagine if the first time you went to the hairdresser, the dentist or the oil change after never taking care of the respective items-it would be a mess!
At Health By Logic in Beavercreek, Ohio, we are committed to educating and empowering our patients with knowledge of the nervous system and how it impacts their lives daily.
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