8 Surprising Reasons Why It May Be Time To Call Our Office Right Now.

Today we’ll be primarily talking about Chiropractic manipulation (also called the Chiropractic adjustment) even though Chiropractic is much more than this one single type of treatment.

Chiropractors use many other types of non-drug, non-surgical treatments and recommendations to help you live a healthier, more active pain-free life including many types of rehabilitation, various types of therapies, lifestyle and ergonomic advice.

‘Back’ To The Adjustment For Today Though!

A study talked about below discusses several reasons why it’s probably time for you to call our office even if you’re feeling pretty good at the moment because there very well may be some problems going on that we can address more easily and save you from higher risks of injury and much worse problems later.

When most people think about needing healthcare, they think of suddenly coming down with something or developing a symptom. This means we should go to our family doctor, ER, or Urgent Care and get a medicine for that particular symptom.

Sometimes this is definitely the right route and sometimes it’s the first step that requires additional care to get better.

There are a few big concerns with using this approach for everything though…

The first major concern is that it leads us to believe that if we don’t have any major symptoms that we’re healthy.

This is clearly not the case for millions of people developing so many very, very serious problems without symptoms including heart disease, cancer, dementia, other neuro-degenerative problems, autoimmune diseases, and MUCH more.

In general, all these very serious diseases take years if not decades to develop. While these devastating problems are worsening, people have no idea because they have not yet crossed the symptom threshold.

This same thing occurs with musculoskeletal problems with pain, arthritis, disc problems, and more as you’ll see when we talk about the study below.

The second major concern with adopting the symptomatic approach to health is that we can often take a medication for a particular symptom and the symptom goes away.

Yet the problem that is causing that symptom doesn’t change. There very well may be something that we could do to change the problem and not just the symptom with a medication… even if the medication is necessary (hopefully just temporarily).

Instead of thinking the the problem is solved because we don’t feel it as long as we take a medication.

This can be a dangerous idea and problems tend to worsen over time. This can lead to many serious problems over time.

Putting this into the context of a musculoskeletal problem… a pain reliever/anti-inflammatory, muscle relaxer, steroid, a nerve pain drug, or an opiate all may help symptoms.

They all come with risks. Each medication, even over the counter medications, have the very real potential to not just help, but to harm.

Generally taking medications at higher doses or for longer periods of time increases our risks, even if we need the medication.

It’s important to take care of problems causing the pain as much as possible. Usually there is a way to help the musculoskeletal or ‘nerve’ pain regardless of what you’ve been told by you well intentioned doctor who gave you an opinion.

How We Develop Many Spinal Problems That Lead To Chronic Pain, Losses Of Your Ability To Perform Well, and Enjoy Your Life.

Why it’s probably time to call our Texarkana Chiropractic Office…

8 Big Ideas From The Study.

1. In animal studies, locking/ preventing movement of spinal facet joints for just 4 to 8 weeks causes degenerative changes and bone spur formation of the joint surfaces with spinal facet joint degeneration beginning in less than 1 week. These types of changes are what people commonly refer to as arthritis.
2. Spinal joint fixation causes fibrotic scar tissue adhesions that “progressed to mild adhesions within 4 weeks, moderate adhesions in 8 weeks, and severe adhesions after only 12 weeks. This is important because this process of scar tissue formation with loss of motion is progressing very quickly.
3. In humans, there is generally a period where the scar tissue adhesions are forming without any symptoms. This does support the idea for seeing a chiropractor more frequently for many people even if they are feeling pretty well. If a person is symptomatic with stiffness, pain, soreness, and tightness then it would definitely make sense to get the care necessary to improve the problems causing those symptoms.
4. You don’t just damage the joint and develop arthritis with losses of motion. 4 weeks of joint immobilization causes a loss of neurons that receive the information from that joint. These losses become progressively worse over time. Losses of these neurons has consequences that include losses of ability to control that joint putting you at greater risk of injury as well as other potentially serious problems depending upon so many different factors.
5. Joint immobilization has also been shown to cause muscle weakness, losses of muscle mass, and fat deposits into the muscle. This is important because muscle has very important protective effects helping you avoid injury, improve performance, and drive our brain’s activity.
6. The spinal adjustment opens up the spinal facet joints which may break up scar tissue adhesions, preventing the arthrits, and degenerative processes to continue to worsen.
7. There might be a chance to reverse the losses of neuronal degeneration and muscular weakness through adjustments and re-mobilization of the joint.
8. Due to neurological changes and biomechanical effects of the chiropractic adjustment (as well as other treatments we can do like rehabilitation), it appears that monthly spinal adjustments when necessary could prevent the progression of scar tissue formation, joint degeneration (‘arthritis’), neuronal/brain changes, changes in muscle strength and control.

Chiropractic care is an important part of healthcare.

Even though millions have seen a Chiropractor, Chiropractic is unfortunately under-utilized to help people not just recover from injuries and painful conditions but also to help improve general health and wellness without medications or surgeries.

In fact, there is good evidence that increasing Chiropractic utilization will save a lot of healthcare money while reducing unnecessary surgeries, reducing pain reliever and opiate use, and importantly just helping people better perform their day to day activities.

The research talked about above suggests that regular Chiropractic care with treatment as necessary improves function, reduces injury potential, and prevents future problems that can be more difficult to help.

Need to see Dr. Hagebusch at our Texarkana Chiropractic Clinic?

Give us a call. We’re here to help you like Dr. Hagebusch has helped thousands of other Texarkana area residents.

Reference:

Journal of Chiropractic Humanities. 2011 Dec; 18(1): 74–85.