Chiropractic Questions

Fact vs Myth

April 25, 2022 Brant Hulsebus DC LCP CCWP FICA Season 4 Episode 15
Chiropractic Questions
Fact vs Myth
Show Notes Transcript

Ask the Chiropractor-  Today we are looking at the most common questions we all get asked all the time as chiropractors.  Here are a few myths vs facts regarding the Chiropractor. #healthy815

www.rockforddc.com

- Good morning and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. I'm Brant Hulsebus, chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I have been serving this community for nearly 20 years. I started this segment because I noticed a lot of people had questions about chiropractic but they didn't know who to ask. And often they would go to their family doctor to ask them questions. And I would tell you that the family doctors are uneducated on what chiropractors do, working with the family doctors I do work with. So I wanted to have a spot where you could ask a question about chiropractic and a chiropractor can answer your questions. So today's question comes to us, we had a whole bunch of short ones so I decided to put 'em all together, and title it Fact Versus Myth. Some things that people ask us quite often. So I wanted to go through these here. They're, they're, I've talked about each one of these topics on different times, so I'll kinda keep it short and sweet. But let's talk about the first one. The first one is, "Once I start, do I have to go forever?" And a lot of people say, "I wanna go to chiropractor, but I don't wanna start,'cause I heard once you start, you have to go forever." Well, the same is true about your dentist. The same is true about your family doctor. The same is true about the gym you belong to. Once you start, do you have to go to it forever? Well, the answer's no, you don't have to go forever. Most people elect to continue to come in from time to time. Most people like, they like the way they feel, they like the way their body performs under chiropractic care. So most people select to continue to come in as a wellness-based regime. But that's up to you. And that's, how often you need to come in for that, how often do you need to be seen for a wellness-based regime? Well, that's between you and your chiropractor. Everybody is unique. Everybody has unique stresses in their life and unique situations. So you and your chiropractor can sit down and figure out the answers. Do you have to come forever? The answer is no. Do most elect to? Absolutely. But that is totally up to you and your chiropractor. Some people just come in when they have an ache and pain and we don't see 'em again until they have another one. That's just, that's up to you. It's a personal choice. Next, "Chiropractic care can be dangerous. The doctor once told me chiropractic care can cause a stroke." Well, the whole, the whole thing about the chiropractors causing a stroke has never been proven, never been demonstrated to actually happen. What happens is that an artery in your neck, the artery in your neck is hemorrhaging, and you're losing a majority of blood going to your brain and you turn your head. You can occlude the other artery, the artery that's trying to make a difference, and cause yourself a stroke. Can that happen at a chiropractic clinic? Well, chiropractors are trained to look for this and identify this and see whether or not this is a thing happening to you or not. So you're fairly safe at a chiropractic clinic because we're trained to look for it. Now, could this happen when you're backing your car outta your driveway? Absolutely. Could this happen when you're getting your hair done or hair wash at a beauty salon? Absolutely. Could this happen at the dentist office when they go back and do your teeth? Absolutely. So is this something that chiropractors cause, or is this something that happens when you're at a chiropractic clinic? This isn't, they've never been able to demonstrate that chiropractic adjustments cause, tear the hemorrhage of the artery. It was probably about six years ago, the American Heart Association tried to claim this again, but we had PubMed index written that were able to prove that the, it was very biased that was written, and it's not true at all, that chiropractors are not causing strokes. They just noticed that some people had gone to the chiropractor that day and then later had a stroke. But one of the effects of having this blood vessel hemorrhage, is severe neck pain. Where do you go when you have severe neck pain? Do you go to the optometrist and have your contacts looked at? No, you go with a chiropractor'cause you have neck pain. And actually, the incidences of this happening were dramatically higher than those who went to the family physician compared to the chiropractor because this is, the family physician looks at everything. We tend to only look at the spine. So therefore we're a little better at identifying this. So he was able to actually to prove, the Cassidy was actually able to prove that you were safer with us than anywhere else. Next is, "Do chiropractors actually have a real education? What, what is, what is chiropractic college? Is chiropractic school a real thing?" Well, I will definitely attest that chiropractic school is a real thing. We do. We get our bachelors of science first. Usually I, I know I may majored in premed. Some in biology, others in exercise therapy and stuff like that. So you have your, your hours of school first and then you go to chiropractic college. And then chiropractic college, it's 10 trimesters, meaning that it's 30 some hours per trimester, all wedged together to get you out of there. So they're kind of condensing like six years of school into three. Uh, so we get plenty of education, we take national board examinations. We have to take continued education hours after we're done. To give you a comparison, a massage therapists degree, an associate's degree. We have a bachelor's followed by a doctorate. So, we have six times the education that they do. Um, so it, it is, yes, we are licensed and we have a doctorate of chiropractic. That's like a medical doctorate, that's a doctorate of medicine or education, a teacher has a doctorate of education. So the chiropractors call themselves doctors. Yes. Why do we call ourselves doctors? Well, because we have a doctorate. That's why we call ourselves doctors. So are we real doctors?

Here's the next question:

Are chiropractors real doctors? Well, what's a real doctor? You tell me. Is a real doctor only someone that can prescribe and do medicine? If that's your definition of a real doctor, then no, we're not real doctors. Neither is doctors of philosophy, neither are doctors of theology, neither are doctors of education. So what's a real doctor? Well, we have a doctorate. So, why do we call ourselves doctors? Well, because we've earned the degree and the title of doctor through the accredited colleges. Yes. Chiropractic schools are accredited through the United States education, same ones that accredit any other college, any other educative program also do chiropractic. So, we're as real as any other type of physician or any other type of diploma out there, ours is exact same measuring standards, exact same governing bodies. So our education is as real as anybody else's education. So, hopefully we put that myth to rest. Next is, "Do I have to go to the chiropractor if I'm not having pain?" A lot of times I meet people like,"I've never had neck pain, I've never had lower back pain. I've never had a reason to see a chiropractor." You know, as a chiropractor, we hear that and we think to ourselves, you know,"I've never had a toothache, so I've never had a reason to go to the dentist." No, a lot of people go to the dentist'cause they don't wanna have tooth aches and tooth pain. So, a lot of people come to the chiropractor because they elect not to have back pain, not to have their spine start to age and decay, get degenerative arthritis. We don't, we don't get cavities like in our teeth. What we do do is we lose our disc height. We lose the health of our spine and we get arthritis in our spine. That, to chiropractors, is like cavities in your teeth. So a lot of people will come in and see us even though nothing's wrong. They wanna come in and just have their spine checked to see what's going on because it's easy for us to stay ahead of it. Just like it's easy for your dentist to teach you how to floss and brush to make sure you don't get cavities. It's easy for us to get ahead of things as far as looking at your spine. Not only that, but we also look at your posture pretty heavily. So if your posture's getting really, really poor, we can teach you how to change that before you walk around decades with that bad posture. So, that's another reason why we see people maybe before they have an ache or a pain. And then, you know, why do people say, you know,"So I don't wanna start 'til I have an ache or a pain, but maybe they say, you know, I don't feel like coming back in until I have an ache and pain, and that's fine. Like I said earlier, some people only call us when have they issues, but some people like not to have the issues. Some people say, you know, "I don't like living that way. I like being better, healthier and stronger. So I just go to the chiropractor regularly for quick tune-ups." Now some of the benefits of going in regularly is that, unfortunately, in life, you know, we all still have falls, we all still have slips and we all can still get hurt. So a lot of people will still come in from time to time because they know when those things happen, they know they'll recovered faster if they were already under regular care. It's often frustrating to chiropractors and kind of rewarding when a patient of ours who comes in maybe once a month or once every two months, you know, for regular chiropractic care, then they, you know, they have a headache or they get a little lower back issue from doing some yard work, and they'll get an adjustment and go on their way. And then they tell somebody new like,"Hey, you know, every time I have a little ache, I run there and get a quick adjustment and I'm all set." Um, it's always a little confusing for the new patients that have never been here before. We tell them, we might have to see you, you know, like up to 10 times at first in order to get your care jump started.'Cause they heard from their friend,"Well, I just went in to get one quick adjustment and I'm all set." But that's the difference is they're under regular care. When you're under regular care and you have those little hiccups that life hits you, it's really easy to get those tuned up and fixed and move on, so. So there we have it, some facts versus myths. If you have another fact or myth or something you're curious about chiropractic care and you like to see us give as an answer and kinda break it down, just go ahead and leave a comment below. Or if you want a link to some of those research papers I talked about or anything like that, just leave a comment below, send us a message, direct message us. Otherwise, if you're listening to this on the podcast, it's rockforddc.com, R O C K F O R D D C.com. Go ahead and send us a message there and we'll get back to you. And maybe next time when we do this on Ask the Chiropractor, we answer your question. Other than that, stay healthy, stay strong, and if you need anything, let us know. Talk you later.