Ask the Chiropractor-
Why you should ask the chiropractor. Dr Hulsebus explains the origins of this podcast and its mission. Asking someone other than a chiropractor is almost always the wrong idea. Dr Hulsebus helps us find what to look for in a quality chiropractor. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
Ask the Chiropractor-
Why you should ask the chiropractor. Dr Hulsebus explains the origins of this podcast and its mission. Asking someone other than a chiropractor is almost always the wrong idea. Dr Hulsebus helps us find what to look for in a quality chiropractor. #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud
www.rockforddc.com
- Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here. And welcome to another edition of "Ask the Chiropractor.""Ask the Chiropractor" is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic. And I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Well, hi. And welcome to another episode of "Ask the Chiropractor." Today, I want to kind of go back to how this whole thing started, me doing this podcast. This podcast started because all too often, someone's been suffering for a really long time, not getting the chiropractic care they need because they were given advice by somebody uneducated in chiropractic or knowledgeable in chiropractic, who came off as an expert in chiropractic, or an authority, I should say, in chiropractic. What do I mean by that? It's basically they asked their physical therapist, they asked their family doctor, they asked their orthopedic doctor, they asked a nurse, they asked somebody in the medical healthcare system, whether or not chiropractic could help them. And they were given the wrong information because they asked somebody, this person they asked has no background knowledge or education in chiropractic. Rather, they have an education in, like I said, physical therapy or something else. But yet they gave an answer and that answer was incorrect. And that allowed this patient to continue to suffer longer than they needed to, or they should have, had they just been given the correct advice in the first time, which should be simply,"You should ask a chiropractor that question. Here's a couple of chiropractors I recommend. Here are chiropractors that I've heard good things about for my patients." That would be the correct answer. That's the answer when you ask me for name of an ear, nose, throat, doctor, when you ask me a question about your teeth. That's the way we answer it here. We don't try to say,"Oh, well I'm a chiropractor, let me tell you about gingivitis." That's not what we do. We would tell you,"This is a couple dentists that we know that we trust and this is who I would ask." That's the more appropriate way to go about it. Now, for some reason, in our field, everyone thinks they should answer for you, rather than refer you to a chiropractor they know and reputable. First, let's talk about how do you find a reputable chiropractor? Well, one, your doctor should know a few. Just like I know a whole bunch of internists, I know a whole bunch of ear, nose, throat doctors. I know a whole bunch of orthopedic surgeons. I know a whole bunch of a lot of things. And I know who to refer you to, who I work well with. Now, if your medical doctor has no idea any of the chiropractors in your area, you're still struggling to find a chiropractor that you can know and trust, I would then go to the state associations. Like here in Illinois, we have the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association. Usually members of that organization, they're not in that organization because they're questionable ethics. Because they wouldn't be allowed to be in the organization. Normally they're in those organization because they're people that we want to have in the organization. So with that being said, if I had a question about chiropractic, I would then go to the state association. Otherwise you can look for a reputable school. Like myself, I'm a Palmer graduate, you go to their site and you can find alumni that they work with in their area and the school. If they find that these alumni are good, like for myself, we have student interns here. We call them preceptors. If we have preceptors here, then the school knows that I'm good enough to be trusted with their students to help their education. I surely must be good enough to take care of you. Reputable to take care of you. And lastly, our national association. I'm in the International Chiropractic Association. I'm the state rep of the association. I'm on different boards and committees, those things too. And another good way to do it too, we're the team chiropractor for the pro team here in Rockford, the Rockford IceHogs. And we went through a vetting process with them to make sure that we were good chiropractors. Otherwise they wouldn't have us around their million dollar players, taking care of them, if we didn't know what we were doing. So those are ways to find reputable chiropractors in your area. But let's talk about why you shouldn't go with the medical doctors says. It's really simple. They don't have any education on what we do. Now in the IceHogs locker room, we have an internist, we have emergency doctors, we have general surgeons, we have orthopedic doctors, and we have a dentist. And it's interesting because the way we ask each other questions, because none of us do things in those healthcare fields. So we ask a lot of questions of each other there. It's really weird to me that a lot of them then will tell you not to see a chiropractor even though they made abundantly clear to me that they really don't know what I do by the questions they asked me and they said,"Hey, we had a patient said they went to the chiropractor and this and this happened. Can you explain that to me?" And I'm always happy to do that just like I am with you. But still what I asked them not to try to answer questions. Actually two or three of them won't answer your question about chiropractic because they know I do this podcast, it's referring to me, which is awesome, right? That's the way it's supposed to be. Why isn't it like that more? Well, you have to go back in history. You have to look at what Chester Wilk discovered. Chester Wilk was a chiropractor in the Chicagoland area who discovered the AMA was trying to contain and eliminate chiropractic. Literally that was the name of the program."How to Contain and Eliminate Chiropractic." They called it "The division of Quackery." And they had a whole program set up and everything designed just to try to destroy chiropractic. Dr. Wilk found out about this and he actually sued the AMA in the United States Supreme Court. I would challenge you to hit pause right now. Grab your phone and Google search Chester Wilk, W-I-L-K, versus the AMA and see how that went down. It did not end well for the AMA. Turned out the AMA was putting all kinds of lies and nasty stuff about us. So again, same like with the American Heart Association a couple years ago, through the whole study about how chiropractic adjustments can cause strokes. Well if you go to PubMed, right, number one place to do the research, Cassidy totally debunked this entire propaganda that they ran on us and told us how false it was and how the narrative was construed, constructed to make it look bad. So don't even trust what American Heart Association says about chiropractors. Don't trust what the AMA says about chiropractors. Trust what the chiropractors and the chiropractic groups say about chiropractors. Again, we just constantly push out new research all the time, debunking these things. It's actually quite frustrating and tiresome. Because I just had a patient that's been bedridden for over a year taking opiates and pain meds for lower back pain. And she didn't come back here. She'd been here 10 years ago, but she didn't come back. She had moved away and she came back to the area and she was told by her doctor that she's beyond what a chiropractor can do. And I got to tell you, after one adjustment, this patient already started getting the benefits of getting relief after a year of being bedridden, failed physical therapy and just tons and tons and tons of harmful medications. So get them to the chiropractor. Go ask the chiropractor these questions. Don't ask the family physician. They just don't know, what do we share? I mean obviously, I told you we work together in IceHogs locker rooms. It's not a constant fighting relationship. We definitely have some things in common. Well, the testing that they do on you, that's the same test that we use. We had a couple more chiropractic tests, but the testing that they do at the check for disc and stuff like that, we use the exact same test. We study the exact same textbooks in our school. We all have the same Guyton's physiology, we all have the same Gray's anatomy books. Those are all the same. So we do the same testing that they do, plus a couple extra chiropractic tests. X-rays, MRIs, we use their images. Now the X-rays, most of the time you can use them. I say most of the time, because we want to see you standing up. We don't want to see you laying down. We want to see your posture, we want to see how you carry yourself. We want to see your alignment, right? That's chiropractors looking at your spinal alignment. It's really good for you to be standing up so we can see your alignment. But if you have x-rays, bring them in with you your first visit. Don't assume the chiropractor can access them. For the most part, they still don't let us access their databases. Like we can't log into their system like you can to see your information. Most people don't allow chiropractors to do that. I don't know why. I have applied for the orthopedic group in Rockford and I applied with the three major healthcare systems in Rockford, and they all told me they don't want to do that with me. Okay, whatever. So now I don't want to do it with them. No, I'm just teasing. Because we have the same type of software in our office and everything's the same. President Obama made sure everything was the same and they talked to each other. That was part of the Affordable Care Act. But we don't have the access to those records. So make sure you bring them with you. When you come in and say,"No, I had X-rays taken at the hospital. I just want to use those.""Great. Do you have them with you?""No. But they said you can log in and see them." No we can't. They don't let us do that. So make sure you bring 'em with you. So we do share that. Now we might have to retake the X-rays if you were laying down. But for the most part, a view of your spine is a view of your spine. So we can most of the time use those, depending how old they are. So we do work together. I don't want this to come off as medicine and chiropractors don't work together. I have the attitudes,"I would never see a medical doctor who wouldn't tell me to go see my chiropractor or say bad things about a chiropractor." I would also never see a chiropractor who says bad things about medical doctors. Because they all serve their purpose. Medicine's excellent when it comes to crisis care. If you're having a heart attack, if your bicep muscle in your arm tears, medicine does amazing things. But chiropractic, just like physical therapy, just like strength conditioning, just like mental health. We're more about long-term maintaining and keeping you going. Medicine's not as good at those areas. And my medical friends agree with me. They don't like doing that kind of stuff. They like treating the crisis. They don't like having to do the long-term stuff. They just, it's not their thing. It's not. It's a square peg, round hole. So always ask a chiropractor. That's the bottom line. Regardless of what your medical doctor says. And I had a medical after day tell me they shouldn't be getting chiropractic care. I said, "Well, which chiropractor school did you go to?" And they said, "We don't know. But we can't do those things that we see on the internet on your hip." And I go,"Dude, we know tons of different ways to adjust the hip." You saw the most aggressive way that gets people the most excited on TikTok and YouTube to share videos. Doesn't mean that's the only way I know. I learned 14 different ways how to adjust the one bone in the top of your neck. You come in to see me, we change things, we rearrange things, we make things work for you. If you had a medical procedure and the doctor says,"Now you can't get any more chiropractic care because of this procedure," make sure you double check that with a chiropractor. Because nine out of 10 times, you still can. And even if you did have that done and we can't do chiropractic care there. There's still a lot more vertebrae up and down, that we can still influence and help you change things. So again, the whole reason I made this podcast, I've been going at this now for almost two years of doing these podcasts. When people have a question,"Ask the Chiropractor." This is the main reason. And every once in a while I have to come back and rehash the main reason the podcast exists. So trying to stay positive here at the new year. Try to hopefully increase more communication. I love the fact that some of my medical friends in my city will email me questions about patients. They will say,"Hey, the patient asked me about this and this. This is what they have. Do you think you might be able to help them?" That's what it's supposed to be. And I do the same thing. I send people to places and I say,"Hey, they have a neck issue. Their shoulder's been bothering them a long time. I know the nerves in the neck go into the shoulder. I've been adjusting the neck now for about a month and we're not getting any improvement in the shoulder. Can you verify we're not, nothing we're missing in their shoulder?" They'll look at their shoulder and they'll tell me their shoulder has this and this. And I say,"Great, talk to the physical therapist, or talk to the surgeon. We'll research the chiropractor care around all that." And the patient wins. That's the bottom line. The patient wins. That's what we're striving for. So there you have it. Always ask the chiropractor questions about chiropractic. If you have a question for me, go to my website, RockfordDC.com. That's R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C.com. Gimme your question and maybe next time, I'll be answering your question. Stay healthy, everybody.