20 Jun Why does the chiropractor want me to keep coming back?
Ever wonder why chiropractors keep you coming back again and again? It seems this has been a common question in my office lately. While everyone knows there is no magic off button for pain relief, everyone wishes that there was one. Most people “just got this neck pain” or “back just started hurting yesterday”. While this may be true, most people have simply not been aware of how stiff and immobile they have gotten over the years. While the pain wasn’t present, the stiffness and lack of flexibility were starting to creep in and the process that led to the pain was probably building for years. You may have thought, “I really should stretch more” or “maybe someday I will get back in shape or take up yoga”. It may have occurred to you that countless hours on a laptop, iPad or behind the wheel of a car weren’t the best thing but a necessary evil. While you might not have felt pain, slowly your spine lost its ability to move correctly and your muscles shortened and lost their flexibility. It may have happened so slowly you didn’t even notice or maybe you did notice and chose to ignore it instead. Overtime when your body develops muscle imbalances and the mobility of your spine changes. What most don’t realize is that the shape of the spine actually starts to change and small problems with your posture become more set in and difficult to change without help. Sooner or later, you end up with pain and need to see a chiropractor.
Chiropractic takes time to work. Lots of it. Short term pain relief of an hour or two or even a couple of days comes quickly. Changing your posture, changing your spine’s ability to move, changing your muscle health and structure take time. Months in fact. All muscles have memory and your body wants to go back to its old patterns instead of creating new healthy ones. That is why adjustments need to be repeated again and again. Your body is learning new patterns of mobility and until the new ones can take over for the old ones, the changes from adjustments will be short-lived.
What can you do to help yourself? Keep your appointments. If we can’t touch you, we can’t affect any change. Unfortunately, we can’t give you an adjustment in a pill form for you to take home. I need to see you in my office to change anything. Your adjustment schedule, while inconvenient at times, is really important to keep. If you miss one out of three appointments each week, you are only getting 65% of the treatment I recommend. If it doesn’t work–that’s the number one reason.
Secondly-Be active. Your body wasn’t made to sit all day. Too many people spend most of their day at work sitting. What do they do when they get home? Sit more. Get out and move. Families lives are focused on kids sports and activities. If sports are so important for them, why aren’t they for you as an adult? Everyone needs to have some sort of exercise they do on a regular basis to stay healthy.
Third–Stretch. If I haven’t given you stretches in my office, ask me for a couple. Or better yet, check out amazing sources like Google and YouTube for all sorts of stretching tips, pictures or videos. Or, best yet, take up yoga. How can you go wrong with a full hour of stretching? I recommend hot yoga or ashtanga yoga or gentle yoga versus vinyasa/power yoga. It will be gentler on your body and more geared toward stretching and lengthening your muscles, not building your athleticism. But the main take-home here is we need to be more active and exercise often.
If you have been doing all these things and not getting the results you want, talk to your doctor. We may be missing something or there may be a simple addition to your treatment plan or a slightly different adjustment technique that will give you better results. Once the problem has been stabilized and you are feeling good, why would you want to stop? Everything that is good for you takes continued use and consistency. If you go to the dentist and receive a great check-up, the work is not done. You have to continue to brush and floss every day. If you worked hard for 6 months and lost 40 pounds, you have to keep up your new and improved healthy lifestyle. If you revert back to the habits that got you to that point, you’ll tend to regress back to where you started. You get my point right? Our bodies are in a constant state of change and repair. We must choose to make good decisions on a daily basis and that includes consistent chiropractic care. If you neglect the health of your spine and continue with the stress that brought on your issues, you will be right back where you started in due time. When that happens, Dr. Ring will be waiting with open arms and while he wants to say it, you will never hear him say “I told you so.”
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about how we can help you, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 918-940-4630 or check us out online at www.mytulsachiro.com. We can get you scheduled for your first visit and learn about you. Chiropractic boasts a 92% success rate for most conditions so you will be glad you made the call. Thank you for allowing us to be your chiropractor.