Find me a Chiropractor

Ask the Chiropractor- Often people will ask me, and their own chiropractors, to find them a Chiropractor some where out of town.  Here are some tips #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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- Hello and welcome to another episode of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask the Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do for when people have questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care. I am a chiropractor. That makes me a better expert on giving advice on chiropractic care than any other type of healthcare provider. Now, maybe there's better chiropractors than me to give advice about chiropractic care, but I am much better at giving advice on chiropractic care than an orthopedic surgeon, a dentist, a family doctor, a physical therapist for the simple fact I actually went to chiropractic college. I actually passed my national boards and I am a state licensed chiropractor here in the state of Illinois. I am also the team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs, the Chicago Blackhawk affiliates and the AHL. I am a proud, proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic and I am a member of the International Chiropractic Association. I am the Illinois delegate for the International Association and I am also on the board of directors of the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association or state association. So I have this podcast for people to come on. They have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care. We try to answer your questions here for you. And my first question is a question we get asked in Northern Illinois. I am sure my friends in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, all these good northern states get asked the exact same question this time of year. Hey, I am going to go down south for the winter or I am going to go to Arizona for the winter. I need you to help me find a chiropractor. How do I find a chiropractor when I am not around my chiropractor? Well this is a great question because even in my city of Rockford, we have many chiropractors here and I don't even know what half the chiropractors do. I had a patient come and talk to me from a different chiropractic clinic about weight loss pills. They said we got these weight loss pills and I have a question about how they work and I see that you are a chiropractor here in town and many people have mentioned your name. I want to know if you can talk to me about these weight loss pills. I said you know what, I am sorry, but weight loss has nothing to do with chiropractic. Chiropractic is about adjusting the spine to get to the nervous system and improve the nervous system through the spine and improve your daily functions, how your back moves, bends and twists by using my hands to adjust your spine. None of that sounds like weight loss pills. I am sorry you went to a chiropractor that is doing that, but you will have to find someone like them in order to answer those questions for you. And that is the question we have. How do I find a chiropractor that I am looking for? Regardless of even if you are looking for one, say you move from one town to another town, how do I find a chiropractor like my old chiropractor that I had great results with? So one thing you can always ask the chiropractor that you are seeing, if he came to me and said hey I am going to go to Carmel, Indiana, I need to get a chiropractic adjustment, who do I see? I said oh well that is easy. I have a great friend from chiropractic school, Dr. Hoeft, he is in Carmel, Indiana, he will take great care of you. I said Dr. Hoeft, you should take care of me, so I know Dr. Hoeft, how he adjusts. But most, I don't, that is not every city, I don't know everyone everywhere. So how do you do it? Well, first of all, ask your chiropractor what college they went to, because not all the schools are the same. There are actually like two big factions of chiropractic schools and you will see which one of the factions your chiropractic school falls under. My chiropractic school, Palmer, besides being the best school, it is also the oldest school, and that is where chiropractic started. So for us, adjusting the spine is like the key. We have more adjusting classes, some of these schools have one adjusting class, we have multiple adjusting classes, so that is the thing that we really want to be good at. Most Palmer graduates put the chiropractic adjustment before everything else, some chiropractors don't even do chiropractic adjustments. I don't know what they're doing, I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying I don't know what they're doing because that's not the way I was taught, the way I practice chiropractic. So I figured out what school they were. Palmer graduate here, if you told me I'm looking for someone, they went to Life or Life West, they went to Cleveland or they went to Sherman, I'd say, oh, those are probably on the right page, they're very philosophically similar to my school. If it was a different school, I don't want to talk about the things I know of, I'd probably say, you know what, I would probably keep looking if you want to find someone like me. So that's for starters. The next thing you can do is see what affiliations you're in. We have the ICA, which I'm the Illinois delegate of, so if you were looking for a chiropractor like me, I would want to find someone who's involved in the ICA because they have various same principles as I have, the way they practice in order to be part of that organization. I'm also part of the Pro Hockey Player Chiropractic Society, so if you were a hockey player and you wanted to move, we'd want to find you someone in the Pro Hockey Player Chiropractic Society. But I'm also involved in other things, I'm certified in wellness, so we'd want to find someone who's certified in wellness, again, that's through the ICA. So that's usually how we look for things, we try to find people. Now usually when I have somebody moving away, I let them do a little bit of the homework, I usually tell them, find me five chiropractors where you're moving, and I'll look at the five of them and see how much they gel like me. So that's usually a simple way of doing it. When you're trying to find a chiropractor out of town, it's like you... Now myself, you can ask your chiropractor for a little kit to take with you. I always give all my patients a copy of their x-rays on a disc, and I also have my telephone number on that disc so that chiropractor can call me and ask me what techniques and styles I use to see if they can mimic that. I also give them my business cards in there, I also a lot of times write specific notes on the disc itself, I'll say, hey, this patient, Gonstead, for the lower back was really good. And you probably have no idea what I just said, but the chiropractor should know what I said. And if the chiropractor doesn't know what I said, then you need to keep looking for a different chiropractor. That's pretty basic chiropractic stuff if you come from the background I come from, and that's what you're looking for is someone like the chiropractor you're seeing. So that's kind of how you find a chiropractor in a different area, different state. And like I said, ask your chiropractor for some information on you before you travel. It's so much easier when I have people from out of town that walk in here and they have their x-ray disc with them, or they have these little cards that the chiropractors will make their notes on, like I adjust C5 for a P-L-I-dash, you know, and then I know what that is. If they have an A-S-R-P, I know what that means. If they have a P-L-I-L-5-I-dash-M, I know what that means. If they have a, you get what I'm saying, an S-A-L-sacrum, I know how to adjust that. Those are huge. So ask your chiropractor for some information before you travel, maybe have that information with you. So if you ever go out of town and you need to see someone, and if you hand it to a chiropractor and look at that card and they have no idea what that means, then you want to go to the next chiropractor because I tell you, I get them in here all the time, I love it, it makes my job easy, but you just don't even bother the other chiropractor because I have my information right there. Another thing I learned too, kind of a hard way, when I was a teenager, my mother moved us out to Massachusetts for a couple of years. When I was in Massachusetts, I had to go see a chiropractor for the first time in my life that wasn't Dr. Hulsebus, whether it was an uncle, my grandfather, and of course my dad. It was somebody new and my dad did these things and he found me a chiropractor to go see. And when I adjust people, I adjust their cervical spine, I lay them on their back or on their side depending on which of the two techniques we're using. This chiropractor adjusted me in a chair, he came up behind me and he adjusted me from behind. I looked at him and I said, dude, do you have any idea what you're doing? This isn't right, this isn't the way my dad or grandpa does it or my uncles do it, this can't be right. And that chiropractor of course, he called my father, he told my father the technique he was using, that was actually the Gonstead we talked about before, and my dad called me back and said, listen, that's a great adjustment, that's just fine. So if you go to another chiropractor and they use a different technique than the one you're used to, most of us chiropractors, the technique we use is the one that we're really good at. So if you come to see me and you go to a different chiropractor, they use a different adjusting style. Like I said, I lay on your back the majority of the time when I adjust your neck, some people in a chair, they're both amazing adjustments, they both work equally as good and done by somebody who's really good at each one. So I'm really good at adjusting you on your back, he's really good at adjusting me on my, you know, sitting in a chair. I'm not as good in the chair as he is, he's not as good laying on your back as I am, so I would want the best adjustment that a chiropractor can give. And you can ask the chiropractor about that, people come up to me and say, usually my chiropractor will adjust my neck when I'm in a chair, come up from behind me, you're doing it on my back, what's the difference? And I can give you a quick answer, one, that's the way I'm good at it, and two, it's the same thing, we're just laying you in a different position, it stimulates different nerve receptors depending on how you're adjusted. So that's all it is, two different ways of skinning a cat, they used to say, right? So if you go to a different chiropractor and does things a little bit different, it doesn't mean it's wrong or not as good, it just means that's the way they're good at it. And again, I always want the best, whatever they're good at, I want to do them the best way. So let's recap here real quick, you go see a chiropractor from a different state, you're going to move somewhere, get the information from your chiropractor before you travel. For me, I give them the copy of the x-rays, it takes like 15 minutes to burn, here's a copy of your x-rays, take these with you, this will help the chiropractor tremendously. And I'll also make some notes on how I adjust. If you don't get the x-rays, get what we used to call a travel card, it'll have your information on how to adjust you on there. Then when you walk into another chiropractor clinic, you have a huge advantage. Second, you're looking for that chiropractor, ask your chiropractor some schools that they like, that's the first thing to look at. Then ask about the state associations and the national associations that you match up with the ones that are the same as your current chiropractor. And they might be the opposite of mine, but I might not be the chiropractor you want, you might want the guy across town for me, he does things totally different than me. You need to go what works for you. So get that information, so get the x-rays, or at least how to adjust your information from your chiropractor, ask for a couple different schools, ask for a couple different associations to look for, you know, pediatric, I was involved in different pediatric groups, you may want to see if there's chiropractors in those pediatric classes, for example. And lastly, be prepared that the chiropractic adjustment itself and the other chiropractor might be different than the one you've had, but it doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means it's different. And different always doesn't mean wrong. So just talk to them about this is the way the chiropractor usually adjusts me, and then that chiropractor has a chance to tell you why their adjustment is equally as good, it's just different because of the way they do it. So I hope that answers that question, hey, I'm going to travel or move somewhere, I need to find a new chiropractor, how do I go about doing that? I hope that helps. I know dentistry, like you can move from city to city, dentist to dentist, dentistry is pretty standardized, how they do things, orthopedic stuff, they come up with guidelines, this is what you do for this, this, and this. Chiropractic is a little too tricky, too confusing, because we have so many different ways to do the same thing, it's hard to put standard regulation on chiropractic care. So I hope that answers your question, I hope you helped find somebody new, and if you're coming to my city and you need me, just stop in, and if I'm not the right chiropractor for you, I'll find you the right one. All right, thanks everybody, stay healthy, stay strong, and remember, if you have a question about chiropractor or chiropractic care, ask a chiropractor. Matter of fact, you could ask me, just go to my website, rockforddc.com, r-o-c-k-f-o-r-d-d-c.com, rockforddc.com, and you can leave me a message there, you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and all the other ones I'm not remembering right now. Thanks everybody, talk to you next time.