Unlocking Recovery: The Role of Chiropractic Care in Post-Stroke Rehabilitation

This week we were asked about care following a stroke and how chiropractic care can help.  Many people have benefited from chiropractic care after a stroke. There are several things your chiropractor might do different though #healthy815 #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. Hello, Dr. Hulsebus. Thanks for joining us. So this week somebody left a comment on last week's podcast with their question. And that's perfect. That's exactly what we want you to do. Cause if you have a question about chiropractic, only a chiropractor can really answer. So here's the question. Can I go to the chiropractor or should I seek chiropractic care after I've had a stroke. That's a great question. And that's a really interesting topic because so many lies have been told about chiropractors cause stroke. Chiropractors cause arteries to hemorrhage and give you a stroke. And if you go back, listen to any of my previous podcasts, I presented nothing but the PubMed research information. showing the opposite. That's never been proven and that's just a vicious old lie that was told about us. So if you were to ask a medical provider, I've had a stroke, should I go see a chiropractor? And so many of them are under this false premise that we cause strokes. They would probably tell you without a hesitant of a second, no, you shouldn't go. In reality, lots and lots of people have gotten great success getting chiropractic care after a stroke. But this is not like you just come in every other patient would ever come in. There's many things we have to consider and many things that we have to investigate before we start. So the answer is yes, you can come in, but we need to do some work before you start. A lot of times we have to alter our technique. A lot of times we have to change the way we adjust this, adjust that. A lot of times, no, we don't have to alter anything. We can go in and just take care of you. So the first thing we always want to know is you can't just tell us like, yeah, I had a stroke. Where was it? What was involved? How long ago did it happen? What was included in the stroke, what was the damage, what have you lost motor function wise, what have you recouped, where have you been, what kind of PT have you done. So be prepared to bring all your records and be prepared to share all that information with the chiropractor before you start. I think this is very important for us to understand things. I had a patient one time who actually had the vertebral artery in his neck and he had be occluded, which means that no, you can't turn and twist your head. He's been told the dentist's office that they gotta be careful how they work on his mouth because they can't twist them. They have to be careful when he gets his hair washed, when he gets his hair done that they can't bend and twist them. So he has a whole list of stuff he can't do. And one of those would also include the way we adjust his neck. However, We know lots of ways to adjust your neck and take care of you. So we were able to alter the way we take care of him and he got great success. He was having a lot of problems with his hands going numb and going tingling and having a lot of things going up and down his arms after the stroke. Again, he saw us after the stroke. He didn't see us before. He saw us after the stroke. And we were able to change the way we adjust him and eliminated that one variable and he got great success and he was nothing but happy. We've had many other patients that lose some motor function, meaning like maybe you see their arm frozen. Maybe you'll see their gait be altered, like they can't walk normal. And we're able to give them chiropractic care and we're able to help change that gait and get them walking again. Now, Are they able to hold the adjustment as long as everybody else? Sometimes no, sometimes yes. Often the answer though is no, it's because they've lost muscular tone their muscles, their ability to hold the adjustment because of the stroke. But they've come in, a lot of times they come in and say, Hey, I've been walking funny again. I know it's time for my adjustment. And after we do the adjustment, are they perfect? No, not all not always. But are they greatly improved? Absolutely. And that's really what they're looking for. They're looking for improvement from what they were, knowing that they might not ever be 100 percent again, but they could definitely want to be a lot better. And so I know I take care of several patients that have had strokes before meeting me, right? I think it's crazy I have to clarify that, but I'll clarify that. They had it before they met me and now I take care of them. And they've noticed a big change in their functions. Now, some of them haven't noticed a change at all in their functions, parts of their body still aren't working as good as they used to, but they've noticed is that they're slowing down the aches and pains they used to have. Think about this with me for a second. The spine gets subluxated, two or three bones or whatever get fixated under stress, they'd stop moving, the body locks them up to protect them, that creates a stress response at that level that affects the nerves coming and going out of that area. So we adjust those, we call those subluxations, chiropractors adjust those. Everybody we come across, that's what we do every day long. But now let's add the fact that you've had a stroke and you've lost or altered some of your muscular abilities to do things. Would this add or decrease the amount of stress going to your spine? It would increase it. So the likelihood of you getting these fixations or sub fixations, when they go up or down, when they would go up because of the lack of proper motor function, because of the stroke. Now you have extra stressor hitting you, which makes you more susceptible to having these issues. So if you were to go to a chiropractor and they were to adjust you and free those up, would you see an increase or decrease in your health? What you'd probably see an increase if you didn't go, would you see a steady decrease overall in health and function? That's what the chiropractors notice. And so when people come in to see us and we get them adjusted, we restore that motion, we remove the stress, we make the nerve supply happier and better. So sometimes we're making improvements that we don't really see, but we're preventing stuff that might be happening way down the road. Again, there's no way to necessarily prove that because we can't, we'd have to have an identical person with the identical stroke and injuries in history and give one of them care, one of them no care, and see how it works if you want to do a double blind control study. But if you wanted do outcome assessments of research where we say this is what they have, this is what those nerves do, this is what the biomechanics do, we perform the adjustment, this is what we expect to see, and that's what happens, and then we get that kind of research, then we get great results. By the way, this is the same type of research they do for cardiac patients. When they did the first, valve replacement, you think they gave somebody a fake valve and somebody a real valve and said, let's see how it works. Of course not. They said this valve is going to do this, we're going to put in the patient, we're going to monitor the patient, this is what we expect to see, this is what happened, we prove this works. So the fact that chiropractors don't want to use double blind random control studies makes complete sense. Because the only time you use double blind random control studies is for pharmaceuticals. And chiropractors are one thing, we are not pharmaceuticals. So those of you who are looking for double blind random control studies on stroke victims are not going to find it because nobody wants to subject themselves to that. Okay, so acute chiropractor help with stroke victims. We have a lot of stroke victims that come in. They receive chiropractic care and they do better. We know that for a fact. We've seen improved muscular function afterwards in some, we've seen improved reflexes in some, so we've seen a lot get better. We've seen some that stay the same, but we know those who are staying the same. We know the odds are that they're gonna improve in other areas, or at least not degrade in other areas like they might have because of the stroke. Dr. Chris Kent is a famous chiropractor, and his story is well known amongst the chiropractors. that he himself had a stroke and had lost a lot of motor function. And he went to the chiropractor and the chiropractor is the one that turned his life around. When he was warned over and over again, don't go to that chiropractor, you've had a stroke. The chiropractor turned him around so much he became a chiropractor. And he's one of our top leading researchers now in the chiropractic field. I've studied Dr. Kent's work since I first graduated chiropractic school back in early 2002. I listened to his, back then we only, we didn't have podcasts back then, we had CDs. I used to get his CD every month, we'd go over the latest research and break it down for us. He's a great guy. Chiropractor is one of my mentors, one of the people I've always looked up to. He created a great story and he's living proof that chiropractors can definitely help after a stroke. Again, when you go to the chiropractor after a stroke, make sure you bring all your medical records so the chiropractor can really look at to see if he needs to alter an adjustment or change something. Also, make sure that you know the dates and everything like that. Again, that helps the chiropractor establish it. If the stroke was five years ago and you've had no incidents since, that kind of changes things. Summarize. Can a chiropractor help after a stroke? Yes. Will a chiropractor take care of everything? No. But will a chiropractor make things a lot better after a stroke? Yes. We've seen improvements here, we've seen improvements there. Some other people, we don't see full improvements, but we definitely see benefits. So there's definitely a benefit of visiting a chiropractor after a stroke. Will most doctors tell you to go see a chiropractor after a stroke? No. And it's because they've been taught through the, to the AMA back in the day that they should say that whenever somebody asks without any research or knowledge just to say it. Again, you can go back, look at Chester Wilk versus the AMA and you can learn what I'm talking about the biases and that the AMA used to push on about chiropractors. I'm not making this up. There was a United States Supreme Court about it. Met Dr. Chester Wilk several times and now they've even been to his house it's a very true story. Look it up. W I L K, Chester Wilk. There you have it. Can chiropractors stop after a stroke? Absolutely. Now, if you have any questions about chiropractic or chiropractic care, or if you know someone talking about chiropractors or chiropractic care, always make sure they're a source key from a chiropractor. We're the only ones that study and know this stuff. And if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, go ahead and ask. That's what had this video came to be. Somebody made a comment after a previous one. They asked the question here. I am answering it. So go ahead and leave your question below and we'll see that or go ahead and go to my website, rockforddc. com. That's R O C K F O R D D C. com. Hit message and we'll get the message right there. And maybe next time we're talking, you'll be the topic of the week. All right, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. And we'll see you again next week with another ask the chiropractor question. Thank you.