Chiropractic Questions

Barriers to Chiropractic

May 16, 2023 Brant Hulsebus DC LCP CCWP FICA Season 7 Episode 3
Chiropractic Questions
Barriers to Chiropractic
Show Notes Transcript

Recent PUBMED article on barriers to Chiropractic care.  Dr Hulsebus breaks down each one. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

- Hello and welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor". My name's Dr. Brant Hulsebus and I'm a chiropractor. This is my podcast I do about people have questions about chiropractic. They're not sure who to ask or who to discuss it with. And a lot of times they'll ask somebody who's not a good source of questions they ask about chiropractic, say, your family doctor. I'm not saying family doctors are bad people. I'm just saying they don't know. They know very little about chiropractic care. So if you have questions about chiropractic care, you should always ask a chiropractor because we're the ones that know about chiropractic, just like if you had a question about teeth, you'd ask your dentist, not your podiatrist. So I'm a chiropractor here in northern Illinois. I'm the team chiropractor for the AHL Rockford IceHogs, a Chicago Blackhawks affiliate. And I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. I'm the Illinois delegate of the International Chiropractic Association and I also sit on the board of the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association. And today we're gonna talk about a research paper that was on PubMed. Now, many of you have heard me talk before about PubMed. PubMed is a very, very great source to search the internet when you're looking for healthcare. So, if you have a question about healthcare, PubMed is a very trusted source. A lot of people want to go on the internet and search for a topic to research it more and they don't know what to trust and not to trust. Now, in order to get PubMed indexed, you have to go through the most scrutiny. So if you were looking at something up and you wanted to find the best information, say here's a topic for you, is chiropractic care safe? Type that in and afterwards type in one word: P-U-B-M-E-D, PubMed. And then you go to PubMed and you'll see all the research papers about whether or not chiropractic's safe and you know, it is very safe, obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up, correct? So we went to PubMed and PubMed had an interesting article come out April of 2023, so this is pretty recent. And I'm talking to you right now in May of 2023. And it was about why older adults hesitate to seek chiropractic care. What is it about older adults and wanting to go to chiropractic care first that they don't want to go? So I want to kind of address the four big ones. The number one reason is that older adults don't go to a chiropractors is because they just feel like they're getting older and they're supposed to have aches and complaints and pains. That's just par for the course. Hey, I'm getting older, my back hurts more and that's just because I'm getting older. Well, I always challenge that because I always say,"Does your whole back hurt?"Is it just one two spots?"And if it's only one or two spots,"are those spots older than the rest of the spots?"Are the other ones newer or are they all the same age?" A lot of times I'll take someone's x-ray and they'll have arthritis or degeneration or one spot their spine and they said,"Yeah, I was told that's because of my age."& I say, "What about the rest of them? "Are those new ones?"How come those don't have the same arthritis?" It has to do with the stress on your spine and regardless of your age, a lot of times a chiropractor can help reduce some of that stress on your spine. Now, sometimes the bones have changed and the bones will not, your spine will never be straight again. It's a thing called Wolff's Law. Wolff was the one that described the vertebraes adapting to constant stress over years and actually restructuring themselves to deal with the change. So if your spine's undergoing some changes by Wolff's Law will your spine ever be straight up and down again? Probably not, but can we adjust it and free it up and make it move and twist and move better? Absolutely. So can your quality of life be improved under chiropractic care? Almost pretty much without exception. Sure, chiropractors train job to take a look at your x-rays and tell you whether or not there's still things that we can change and improve on. Like maybe your disc heights. Those definitely come back. And so, if you have an irritated nerve because you've lost some of your disc height and the hole of the nerve comes out is affected by that disc height, if you restore that disc height, then a lot of times people's discomfort tends to go away and they feel better. Not only that, but you make the nerve better. If you make the nerve better, you make you better, okay? Another one they have to do is financial things. You know, "Hey, financially I don't go to the chiropractor."I don't know if my insurance covers it."Does my chiropractor take my insurance?"How does Medicare work with chiropractic?" I'm gonna tell you that Medicare might be a national program, but state by state they have different carriers, so the rules a little different everywhere around the country. The best thing to do is just call your chiropractor to explain to them the insurance coverage you have. A lot of times we can look it up before you come in. Then you meet the chiropractor. The chiropractor will go over what he finds with you, usually gives you a care plan discussion of how many visits you're gonna need and what it takes to get you better. And they should break you down a financial obligation that you have too. Matter of fact, it's actually the law now we have to do that. But chiropractors have been doing that for years. So if your chiropractor doesn't wanna break it down for you, explain to you what you're financially responsible for, then I would get the phone book out and keep looking for a different chiropractor,'cause chiropractors should be able to do that for you, just like before you go in to have a wisdom tooth pulled, you ask the dentist,"What's this gonna cost me?" the dentist can usually give you a choice. And there's all kinds of financing and things like that also available from different healthcare providers. So, if your chiropractor's not telling you what it's gonna cost or break it down for you, then find somebody else. Also, you can't just call the chiropractor and say,"Hey, I got a headache."What's it gonna cost to fix that?" There's no way to answer that until we actually break it on down, look at your x-rays, look at your exam finding, see how you respond. But the chiropractor should be able to answer that when the first couple of visits and kind of give you a ballpark idea. Next one's expectations, you know? What do you expect to see in the chiropractor? A lot of people say, "Hey, I tried physical therapy"or I went somewhere else and I tried this and that."So I don't think the chiropractor could help me." Or "I went to a different chiropractor, I got no relief." Well chiropractic, there's lots of different techniques, lots of different approaches. One way, there's a guy down the street from me here, he only adjusts the top two bones in the neck, upper cervical care. I adjust the whole spine. You have to imagine that you go to two different kind of chiropractors like that, you're gonna do two different kind of results. So just because you might have went to a chiropractor before you didn't get a lot of help doesn't mean the next chiropractor won't help you. Just give a different chiropractor options. And for us, a lot of times patients come in and they like to give adjustment by a little thing called the activator that goes on your spine and does a little vibration to adjust you. Now, I don't personally use those. I'm not saying they're bad. I'm just saying I don't personally use it. I drive a Ford truck. I'm not saying I don't like Dodges. I'm just saying I drive a Ford truck. I just, that's what I like. So if somebody came in, they said,"Hey Dr. Hulsebus, I'd really like to find somebody"who uses that activator adjustment."Could you help me find somebody?" Here in our office, we'll help you find somebody who uses that. We just want you to be happy, even if it's not with us. So if there's a technique that you've had success with or it's a different one you wanna try, talk to your chiropractor about it. And if your chiropractor doesn't wanna talk to you about it, a lot of times you can call the state association and they'll know chiropractors that use different techniques you can try out and talk to them. So, expectations is a problem. So your chiropractor should actually set realistic goals, too, when you come in. When you come in here, we talk a lot of times we're gonna see X number of times for a week, then we're gonna do some exercises and stretches. Then we're gonna see how those treat you. So if you come in and we do those and they're not working, then maybe it's time for us to pursue different avenues or see different answers from different physicians or different healthcare providers. I've done that more than once. Patient comes to see me for, let's just say headaches or vertigo. We give them a few adjustments, we don't see improvement. Well, I'm able to refer them to another healthcare provider that can do a more in-depth look to see whether or not that chiropractic is what they need or maybe they need something else. Again, I don't answer the questions for neurologists. I let the neurologist answer those questions. I ask the questions about chiropractic because I'm a chiropractor. The next one a lot of times has to do with geographic location of the chiropractor. Where's the chiropractor clinic located? Now, it's gonna be a little tricky because if you listen to my podcast and you live in Florida, you want to come see me, that's gonna be a struggle because I'm a northern Illinois. But usually you can find a good chiropractor by calling the state association of their national association and see who they work with. That's a great avenue to pursue. So that's also calling the local colleges. Like, here in northern Illinois we have Palmer College of Chiropractic. You can find chiropractors on their website that practice within the area. So you can find a doctor that went to a good school like Palmer and they're able to take care of you that way. Lastly is the image of the chiropractor. And that's kind of why I made this podcast, to be honest with you. Not this episode, but this podcast as a whole, the image of the chiropractor. A lot of times people don't think chiropractors are real physicians. People don't think chiropractors are real doctors and chiropractors don't really know what they're doing. Chiropractors can't be trusted. And I don't know where all this started or where this all came from. I know a little bit where it came from. Dr. Chester Wilk was a doctor here in Illinois and he discovered that medical doctors in the AMA were getting information. They were being very slanderous and saying really bad things about chiropractors, even making up lies. And so Dr. Wilk sued the AMA in the Wilk versus the AMA lawsuit, famous lawsuit. And Chester Wilk was able to prove that and he won the lawsuit. And one of the things they made the AMA do was write a a editorial thing in the Journal of the AMA about, hey, we've been giving chiropractors a wrong rap. We've been wrong all along. And that was part of the findings. You could find that in the January 1st, 1998 JAMA,"Journal of the AMA." You can actually see that article from the editorial board. So, I'm just throwing that out there. I just happened to meet Chester Wilk's family recently. He passed away a little while back ago, maybe a little bit a year ago. And his family had called me to come get all this stuff. So right now in my position, I have all Dr. Wilk's, I have his degrees, I have the court cases and everything like that, all his history stuff that we're gonna preserve in our profession for the famous chiropractor he was. So, a lot of the image of that chiropractor was found on lies and deception by the AMA, and that's not blasphemous. I have the courted cases literally in my possession. A lot of the chiropractors have seen it. I literally have them here in my hands from the Wilk family. So that definitely happened and they definitely came after us and spread a lot of lies about us. So, the image of the chiropractor is not very well perceived from all the decades of lying about us. But usually what happens is you find a chiropractor that went to a good school. Now, which school do I think is good? Well, I'm very biased because I'm a Palmer graduate like my dad and my grandpa were, but you can find out good chiropractic schools by talking to alumni of different schools and get to know them. You can find out where they went to school. You can see what they do for continuing education. Now, as chiropractors in Illinois, we do 60 hours every three years. Myself, I've earned three or four different post-graduate certifications, because I take my education very serious. That's also why I was able to work with the IceHogs is because they understand that I'm a professional chiropractor and I take my job very serious, very professionally, so they invited me to work with them. So you'll find chiropractors like that in your area too that are very professional. So the image of the chiropractor, like I don't think chiropractors are real, I don't think chiropractic is this and that, I get exhausted because every time I come outta here I share with you more research about chiropractic that's medical research justifying chiropractic and there's chiropractic research of course, too. So the image, that's just some people I have to get over. I know, I was teaching yesterday at the elementary school and the kids said, "What do you do"when someone says chiropractors aren't real doctors?" I tell them, "I just go over and give them a pitch"so they know I'm real when I pinch them." So, I don't really do that. I'd like to do that. But that's the image of the chiropractor, that's it comes down to. So you hear a lot of people, uneducated people have comments about chiropractic, which is why we started this podcast,"Ask the Chiropractor." So I hope those help break down some of the barriers of why people don't seek chiropractic care. I thought that was a cool article. I've shared here in the podcast, the visual podcast, a few times. If you wanna see a copy of it, just go onto YouTube or our website, www.rockforddc.com. That's R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com. And you can read more about it, see the videos and see the references across the video. Look at our blog section. We have a YouTube and the Facebook page and every other page that everybody else has, too. So take a look at us there if you're listening to us. The video has all the information on it, too. All right, so I hope that answered your question. Now, next week if you have a question about chiropractic care or the chiropractic itself, or chiropractic education or whether or not chiropractors are real, feel free to send us a message. Leave us a comment below. Go to our website, get ahold of us there and maybe next week you'll be the question of the weekend,"Ask the Chiropractor." Thanks everybody for listening. Bye-bye.