Ask the Chiropractor - What to expect when you start care with the chiropractor. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
Ask the Chiropractor - What to expect when you start care with the chiropractor. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
- Hello, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus and welcome to our podcast here,"Ask the Chiropractor"."Ask the Chiropractor" is our podcast where people have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care. I encourage them to ask a chiropractor, nobody else. You see, if you had a question about your teeth you would ask your dentist, not your family doctor. If you had a question about your feet you'd ask your podiatrist, not your dentist. And if you had a question about a medical procedure or something like that, you'd ask your a medical doctor and not your dentist. So when you have a question about chiropractic it's always important to ask the chiropractor. As many people will check with their family doctor before coming to a chiropractor. Most, almost all, family doctors have very little education on what chiropractors do. So it's always the best to ask the chiropractor. So today I was asked the question. I've been asked several times and I've talked about this one before, but because it gets asked so often I felt it was time to maybe visit it again. So the question I was asked is,"I've been thinking about going to a chiropractor. What should I expect the first time I come?" Well, the first time you go to a chiropractor I'm gonna talk mostly about my office. Beause that's the area I'm the expert in my own office. So what should I expect when I go to the chiropractor? Well, the first thing is, let's say you've had a something lingering for a long, long time. You're not getting results. Or you've tried other healthcare providers for relief and you've not gotten it and you got to the point where you're frustrated and you want to try something new. This is a time normal when we see somebody. So the first time you go to the chiropractor, what you'll do is you fill out a regular history like you would for any other healthcare provider. Our history is on our website that's right there. You can go online and look at it and fill it all out. Other chiropractors will have it done differently. That's how we do it. You fill your complete medical history. From there, you'll go meet with the chiropractor come into the office, make an appointment like you would anywhere else. On your first appointment in my office we'll obtain the information. We'll go through the history. We'll review anything that needs to be reviewed before we start and discuss anything, how we may or may not be able to play a role in that part of your healthcare history. From there we will do, usually we do an x-ray exam. We do an x-ray exam for several different reasons. The first reason is basically for your safety. We want to make sure that it's safe to take your x-rays. The x-rays will show us that there's any kind of growth abnormalities. Let's say one of your bones like grow right. Let's say one of your bones is congenitally fused. Let's say one of your bones. Let's say you have condition underneath that we don't know about. Conditions like we call ankylosing spondylosis. That's where the vertebrates are growing together there's no way for us to know it's there unless we're take an x-ray. Other conditions called the spondylolisthesis. A spondylolisthesis is when the vertebrae slips forward or anterior. And for this in your spine we cannot adjust it a certain way. We have to alter the way we take care of you. It is very, very important that we know it's there. This is why your chiropractor takes x-rays. Primary reason number one, your safety. There is no exam or only way for us to know some of these things exist without taking x-rays first. Second reason we take x-rays. That gives us a huge clue what's going on in your overall health of your spine. Is there arthritis, is there degeneration? Is there bad disc? Is there good disc? What's the posture like? How much the vertebrae twisted? How much are they not twisted? Basically, what are we working with? How do I become a better chiropractor is by seeing your x-rays. When you asked me that question,"How long does it take to get better"? It's so much easier for us to be able to answer that when we can see your x-rays. Seeing is knowing, right? So those are the two reasons we take your x-rays. One, is it safe to take care of you? Do I need to alter my way I take care of you? Do I need to change my technique in order because your spine is different or unique? And also what's the overall health of your spine? What does your spine look like to us? What's the technique works best for what the curvature you have going on? I want to do an adjustment. Do I do a clockwise or counterclockwise torque? What's the best way for me to take care of this for your comfort and the speed of recovery and to get the best results possible? X-rays help tremendously with that. So I would never go to a chiropractor who does not x-ray nor do I take care of patients who I don't x-ray first. Now, there are exceptions. There's always exceptions to every rule but they're basically, most of the people that come in here, they get x-rays. From there, we're laying it down. We'll do what we call a chiropractic exam. Why a chiropractic exam? Well, we're chiropractors. We wouldn't do a dental exam. We would do a chiropractic exam. What does that look like? Well, we'll probably have you turn your head to the left, to the right. We'll see how your posture when we lay you down versus where you're standing up we'd measure your feet to see what's going on with your feet. We might have you turn your head this way, that way, bend your knees. Let's see what goes on on your feet length when we bend your knees versus when you're straight. We might push on your tailbone have you lift the leg and see what happens. We're doing all these things to see how your spine moves functionally all as a one units.'Cause if part of your spine's locked up we'll get different results on things that we do. Again, this helps us, gives us clues of what's going on. It helps us give us clues, the severity of what's going on to answer that vital question that you all have."How many times do I have to come"? These exams give us that information. Now, some chiropractors at this point will tell you to come back the next day. At my office, we go ahead and we proceed and we start chiropractic care that day. For most cases. Again, everything's gonna be most cases. Now, how do we know whether we should proceed right away? How we should not proceed right away? It's gonna be on what you present and the chiropractor too might need more time to analyze, try to come up with a way they're gonna take care of you before you start. So some chiropractors take care of you the first day. Some chiropractors wait to take care of you the second day we do it the first day. We just feel like you came in for a reason that you wanted relief. So we'll go ahead and give you the chiropractic adjustment that day. Majority of the cases. There's always gonna be a few that we're gonna wanna spend some more time with. Get some more information from this and that. Speaking of more information, if you've been to other healthcare providers before coming to the chiropractor, and let's say you've had MRI done. Let's say you've had x-rays somewhere else we want to obtain those stuff too. Before your first visit. We'd like to get as much knowledge on you as we possibly can. Again, all this knowledge on you and all this information on you only helped us do a better job taking care of you and answering those questions you have about when am I gonna to get better? How long does this take? How many times do I have to come? All that information we can gather from other doctors before you come in is great. Now in Illinois we are licensed healthcare providers. So we have no problem you filling a piece of paper we can send it over. We get those records sent to us. It helps us come up with our, what we call care plan. Could you see after your first visit, either your second or your third visit right away with a chiropractor you should sit down and go over what they call a care plan. A care plan's gonna be like, we need to see you this many times. Along the way, we're gonna introduce this exercise, this stretch, or have you start doing this activity or introduce this or that. It's all gonna vary on who you are and what you came in with. There's no cookie cutter here. It's gonna depend on the individual. But this is what we'd like to see you do. This is how often we like to see you and we always go over the financial responsibilities too just so there's no surprises later on to the best of our knowledge. So we go over all that with you within the first week of starting care. Try it that way you understand everything. Now, sometimes do people get better faster? Yeah, absolutely. You're allowed to get better faster. Sometimes does it take longer? Yeah but we don't encourage that, we try to encourage to be faster. Now we'll be working with other doctors as far as your care plan's concerned? We'll be send you to other places and maybe have other people work with you? Absolutely. And if you have other doctors and physicians that you work with you should let us know because if you want to send let's say this physical therapy because maybe you've had lower back issues way too long and those way too long lower back issues are causing bigger underlying problems. We want to get you with a physical therapist that can compliment what we do. And for myself, we use a lot of our friends on the street here to help you exercise better get better that way. Maybe you have a lack of biomechanics which is causing you problems. So we have coaches that work with you to help you with your running gait and stuff like that. That's part of the issue. We also work with the health food store that's down the street with different nutritional things. Maybe you're just really inflamed because you're very toxic. We need to get some supplements going, stuff like that. So we have a lot of different people that we co-care with. We also work with some massage therapists. A lot of times you guys so full of so many knots that our adjustments out gonna take longer. So we'll incorporate that too. So we work with a lot of other doctors and healthcare providers to complement what we're doing so we can all work together as a team and gel it all together and make it all work. We prefer providers we work with'cause they work with us basically. And so we come up with a whole team of that if it's needed. Again, that's not always needed, but when it is needed it's nice to have those connections. That's one of the things that we get by being the team chiropractors for the Rockford Ice Hogs. And we've made all those friendships, those relationships, it makes it really, really easy. So that's kinda what you'd expect. You come in the first day, you're gonna bring your records with you. If you went to a different healthcare provider before, bring those records with you we'd love to see your previous x-rays and MRIs. And sometimes if your x-rays are good enough and recent enough, we can just use those. We don't have to take new ones. So we just need something to look at before we start to make sure you're safe. We don't wanna take anybody else's word for it. We want to see them ourself. And not only that, but medical doctors and chiropractors look at x-rays a lot alike. Like we look to see pathologies and illnesses and stuff like that. But medical doctors do not get trained to analyze x-rays like a chiropractor does. BeCause we look at chiropractic stuff in x-rays, right? And they're not chiropractors. They don't know what we look at. They don't know how to analyze the things that we see. So we can't just take a report. We actually usually like to see the films. MRIs, we like to see those reports, correlate those with your films and put it all together. So bring your previous stuff with you or that call the chiropractor first tell them you've had stuff done somewhere else that you'd like them to obtain for you to have it in that first visit. Makes it so much better. So then we will take new x-rays if needed. We will do our chiropractic exam and we give you care and then we kind of go over stuff the second or third visit in more detail of the requirements of what we think it's gonna take to make you better. And that would include your visits, your things that we're gonna do here in the office whether it's exercise stretches and stuff like that. The third thing would be financial responsibilities. And then after that, what we'll do is we'd also talk about any other healthcare providers that we want to work with together to get you the best care you need. So what to expect. My first visit, my first starting care. That's kind of the answer right there in a nutshell. Again, it's gonna be different. You might be somebody different. We might have to do something different for you but that's the majority of people who come here. That's what they go through. So I hope that answers the question"What to expect when I first start care"? I hope you understand what our goals are and why we do the things we do. And if you don't, always stop and ask the chiropractor. They're always happy to tell you why they're doing what they're doing and why. And the logic and the rationale behind it. If you go to a chiropractor and they don't wanna explain things to you, I wouldn't go to a medical doctor that wouldn't answer my questions. I wouldn't go to a dentist that wouldn't answer my questions I'd move on. Your chiropractor might do things a little different than the way we do it. We've just been doing that way since 1949 and it seems to work pretty good for us as a third generation practice. We're all with the net school right there, Palmer College of Chiropractic, Palmer Day here, celebrate Palmer. So any questions or concerns, let us know. If you have any more in depth questions go ahead and ask below. Maybe next week you'll be asked the chiropractors question of the week. Otherwise, go to Rockford DC. R O C K F O R D D C rockforddc.com. Check out our website, leave a message below there too if you wanna get back to us. Stay healthy, stay strong. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks.