Why does the Chiropractor take your X-rays

Ask the Chiropractor-
Why does the chiropractor take x-rays of the spine prior to starting care? #healhty815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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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, hello. Welcome to another episode. I always remind everybody if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, only a chiropractor is qualified to answer. So here in my community, there's been a couple of advertisements and some new clinics that have popped up and they're chiropractic clinics. And one thing that they advertise is that don't worry, We don't x ray. We're not going to take your x ray. We're not going to bill you for x rays. And somebody asked me, Well, why do you take x rays? These other places are saying they don't. Why do you take them? Why is it so important for you to have x rays of the spine? Because the majority of new patients that come here, we x ray your spine to know what we're working with. Well, there's several reasons why we always take x rays. And probably the most important reason, bar none, is your safety. You see, when you have a patient comes in and they're having lower back issues, there's a condition called spondylolisthesis. Uh, and I won't make you spell that. Hopefully the captions gets it right. But the spondylolisthesis is when the vertebrae slips forward and this creates lower back pain and sciatica. Well, as chiropractors, we lay you face down and we put pressure on your back and we push straight down. Well, if the vertebrae has slid forward, And we go straight down on that, we could really injure you. And that's why we have x rays. There's no orthopedic test that would tell us that's your issue, that's your problem. The only way we'd find out is after we hurt you. And this is why we take films. And there's another condition called ankylosing spondylosis. And what happens there is an autoimmune issue. And the vertebraes are there, and what happens is in between each vertebrae there's a disc and there's ligaments that go up and down along that line. And for some reason to some people, unbeknownst to us to why, this ligament actually starts to calcify. And it forms little bony bridges from bone to bone to bone. And if we were to go in there and we were to thrust into that, right, we were to get in there and really get in there and push on that, we could break that. And that would be like feeling like somebody broke your rib. It would be really sharp, acute pain. And so we take x rays to make sure you don't have that. Because there's no way, there's no test or way we can bend and twist you to verify whether or not you have that or maybe you're just really stiff and tight. So we have to x ray to make sure you don't have that. And there's other reasons we x ray you too, besides like maybe you have a condition or something I just described. Maybe you grew funny, maybe your bones matured differently, right? Because what happens is when you're a little kid, your tailbone's six separate bones, your sacrum. But as you go through puberty, they fuse together. And there's about 20 25 percent of the population have abnormalities down here. Because maybe they grew up riding horses or ATVs. Maybe your older brothers are jerk and they used to knock you down a lot. But what happens is sometimes the fifth lumbar will join the tailbone or the top bone of the tailbone will break free and you'll be told, Hey, did you know you have six bones in your lower back and not five? What we're seeing here is we're seeing that bone is separated, come loose, and it's doing its own thing. So therefore, we have to give care a little different. We have to be careful what we do. Other people all throughout the spine randomly will have two bones that never had a disc and they grew together solid and they'll make one bone where there should be two. It'll have nerves coming out, it'll all be the same as any other bone, but they'll be growing together and they'll be stuck. Now if I'm a chiropractor and I don't take x rays, I just go in there and feel around, I'm gonna feel that and it's gonna feel like it's fixated, like it needs a chiropractic adjustment. And if I go in there and try to adjust that, and the two bones are fused, all you're going to do is tell me, man, that was no good, that, that hurt a lot. And there's no way I'm going to be able to adjust it because it's fused together. We've actually had athletes come in here, tell us they don't like chiropractic because every time someone does their neck, there are lots of pain. And these athletes have never had an x ray before, and we take an x ray of their neck and we show them, well, this is why it always hurts. These two bones have been grown together, they're fused. There's no way to make it move, but I bet the chiropractor felt it, tried to make it move, he couldn't, and he ended up making it feel not as good as it did before. I don't want to say injured, but I just say it felt worse than before they started. So it's really cool for us to take the x rays for that. Another reason we take x rays, besides safety and growth abnormalities, is just so we know what we're doing. Right? And like, I suspect you have an L1 L2 problem. I did a whole bunch of tests. Everything's telling me it's L1 L2. Let's take a look at your x ray. Oh, lo and behold, it is your L1 L2. And it rotated this way or that way. Now I know better which torque to use, which line of drive to use, how to give you a better adjustment to excel your recovery time and to excel the odds that you're gonna get maximum relief as you possibly can because of the care that we're giving you. So that's a huge reason to take x rays, too. There's many techniques that depend on x rays, like, okay, I'm going to use this technique or this technique. We go through Palmer College of Chiropractic. We learn all different kinds of ways to adjust your neck or your cervical spine. And maybe on your x rays you show me different things that make me want to use this technique over that technique to do a better job for you. So taking your x rays definitely helps us be better chiropractors and lets us see your spine and know more of what we're doing and why we're doing it. And so we've been able to do all kinds of better chiropractic care because of the x rays. Another reason we take your x rays is because we see stuff that's not supposed to be there. We've seen prostates that are inflamed that we have to the proper medical care. We've seen kidney stones, had to get them out to where they need to be, or gall stones, get them out where they need to be. We've, uh, yesterday, I, we took an x ray yesterday morning and I noticed they were grabbing the, the, the pole to take a side raised view of their thoracic spine, where your ribs are. And we got a little bit of the, the top of the arm in there. I could see the, the, the arm in there. And the bone on the arm looked funny. And so we're friends with a lot of orthopedic doctors because we take care of the, uh, hockey team. So we sent the image over to one of our orthopedic guys and he was able to look at it, and then we were able to get her over to him to take care of the arm, even though there was no issues with the arm. And we just happened to randomly see that. So sometimes we see something that's not supposed to be there, right? We've seen tumors, we've seen, um, other issues like that. Another one that we'll see is a compression fracture. Let's say you fell real hard and you hurt your lower back. And you say to me, I'm in a lot of pain. I'll say, well, I'm going to take a new x ray of you. All too often the patient says, no, you've x rayed me before. I don't want a new x ray. And we find out later there was a compression fracture. When you fell really hard, the vertebrae, which is like a nice block, gets squished, like when you step on a tin can, it gets squished down. That's what happens to the vertebrae, and there's no way for us to know that. By an examination, we just think you have a lot of inflammation swelling and muscle guarding like you would if there wasn't a compression fracture and you simply had an inflamed joint. So there's no way for us to know it's there until we take an x ray. So yeah, you can go to a chiropractor and does an x ray. But you can see right here all the different reasons why we take x rays. You know, one, we want to make sure that it's safe to take care of you. We want to make sure that you grew the right way. There's no underlying pathologies or issues. Two, we want to give the best chiropractic care we can. We want to get in there and use the best technique for what you have going on. And even though our exams help us, the x rays help us so much more. And again, you know, we want to rule out things that maybe aren't supposed to be there. We want to make sure there's not a fracture. We want to make sure there's not a tumor. We want to make sure there's nothing weird going on. Um, a good friend of mine took his wife out to a chiropractor in Virginia, and the patient said, No, I've been adjusted lots of times. I don't want x rays. And the chiropractor insisted on it. And because of his assistance, when they took the x rays, they found out her pain was not coming from the spine being misaligned, but there was cancer growing throughout the spine. And because the chiropractor called us so early, they were able to get the patient when they needed to be, and they were able to take the cancer care, and I'm happy to say this is many, many, many, many years ago, but the person is doing fantastic today. So if it wasn't for the chiropractor demanding on x rays, we don't know where this person would be today. And I've had stories go the other way, where people refuse and bad things have happened. So x rays are just a huge valuable tool for the chiropractor to do a great job. Now, when do chiropractors do MRIs? A lot of patients have actually, in different research papers, have vocalized that they were upset the chiropractor didn't immediately take an MRI. Well, we order MRIs and we do MRIs. But again, we will wait to see how you respond a little bit. If we have the x rays, we have our exams. 90 percent of the time we're pretty good. But if we do care on you for, you know, a few, you know, let's say we do six or eight adjustments on you and you're not recovering, we know the laws of chiropractic always work. It's the application that doesn't always work. So maybe there is something more going on. So usually then we order an MRI. And because the way insurance companies work and Medicare and stuff like that works, a lot of times at this point we will get a medical doctor on the team with us. Because we know it's more likely to be paid and covered if they help us. And so a lot of times we'll call them up and say, I've done this and this and this in this patient. We're not getting the results we wanted. We've tried doing this and this. I think at this time we've warranted the need for an MRI. Would you assist us in ordering the MRI? Then we order the MRI, and in some rare cases we find out some things that we didn't know. But I would say the number one tool we use is definitely x ray. MRIs are cool, but MRIs don't really help us with like, knowing how to adjust the patient. Because, you see, when we take our x rays, you're standing up, so we can see your posture and how you carry yourself. And MRI, you're in that big old tube, and we don't know any of that stuff on the MRI. You can bend and twist a certain way. But an MRI basically rules out things that maybe the x ray don't show us, the exams don't show us if you're not progressing with care. If you're progressing with care, then we don't need the MRI. But if you're not progressing with care, then we want to do a deeper dive. And chiropractors by law can order MRIs in my state, Illinois. I can't speak for every state. I'm, I'm the Illinois guy, so I know those answers. But we can order it, but a lot of times your insurance company likes other people ordering it, not us. So, yeah, we will use MRIs. We will do a deeper dive if we need to. So there you have it. Why does a chiropractor take x rays? I hope I answered that for you. I would never personally go to a chiropractor who doesn't x ray me. That's just my personal choice. Other people can and I don't know how certain things get caught and seen if you don't take an x ray, but that's your choice. It's your situation. I just want to tell you why we all take x rays here. I'm the majority of our patients. Not every patient. If you're eight months pregnant, we're not going to x ray you, uh, but we use different techniques at that point because we don't have an x ray of you. Alright, remember, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, you always ask a chiropractor. They're the ones that know. So go ahead and um, leave a message, comment below, go to my website rockforddc. com, that's r o c k f o r d d c. com and you'll see it there. Go ahead and leave a message and we'll get back to you and maybe next time you'll be the question of the week. Thanks everybody.. You