Why Some Chiropractors Adjust and Others Don't

Navigating chiropractic care can be confusing with so many different approaches out there. As part of "Ask the Chiropractor," I share insights into why chiropractors choose to focus on adjustments, therapies, or a mix of both. Join me, Dr. Brant Hulsebus, to better understand your options and make informed health decisions. Listen now to demystify the chiropractic profession! #healthy815 #palmerproud #icachiropractic

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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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. And this question came to us over the internet this time. Somebody made a comment. I went to a chiropractor and that chiropractor never did a chiropractic adjustment. Is this really a chiropractor? What's the story behind this? How do I see someone who doesn't actually perform adjustments? For this I'm going to talk a little bit about a little bit of our history. A little bit why there are maybe different kinds of chiropractors out there that some who do adjustments, some who don't, some who do therapy, and some who do both therapy and adjustments. So let me review a little bit about how this started, how this came to be. Chiropractors were trying to be, were approached by the AMA way back in the day. And the AMA said that you chiropractors need to get under our umbrella. You can't be separate and distinct. You have to get under our umbrella if you want to become a physician. This happened to doctors of osteopath too. Matter of fact, they were both found at about the same time. And a doctor of osteopath and a chiropractor in the early days were very hard to tell the difference from. Now today, a doctor of osteopath and an MD are very hard to tell the difference from. You might even be in the emergency room, and you might find out you have a DO and not an MD. You wouldn't even know the difference. Because they fell under the umbrella. But chiropractic wanted to be a separate distinct, and they also wanted to be separate distinct. A primary health care provider, meaning that this group over here called AMA tried to absorb us and they said if you don't allow us to absorb you, we're going to destroy you, which is a whole different story for a different day. The chiropractor said no, we want to be separate and distinct and we want to be our own selves and we don't want to have to rely on you having to get a referral from an MD to come see us because they've already said they want to destroy us, so why would we want to work with them? So chiropractors fought in every state in the country to become primary health care providers. That means as a primary health care provider, you don't need a doctor's note to come see me. You can just walk in my door and I can be your primary health care provider. My grandfather always argued this is called freedom of health care choice. Meaning that if you have sciatica, you have the right to maybe seek a chiropractor, not a medical doctor, should you want to go a non pharmaceutical route to have your lower back pain addressed. So back in those days, they fought really hard to get that. And they were very successful. So in Illinois, I'm a licensed chiropractic physician. Licensed physician, so that means you can come in and see me, you don't need a note to come see me. You just walk in, I'm your doctor. This gave chiropractors a lot of clout, it gave us a lot of, we don't need all this other stuff, you can just come see us. Back then a lot of chiropractors were either what they called straight chiropractors or mixers. What's a straight chiropractor and what's a mixer? A straight chiropractor would just do adjustments and adjustments only. You go in, you get your x rays, you get your exam, you get adjusted. A mixer was somebody who would incorporate other stuff into their office. Now, this definition is so vague. Some chiropractors call a mixer somebody who uses an ice pack when you're acute. Some chiropractors call a mixer somebody who has nice candles in their waiting room so you can enjoy the aroma before you get adjusted. So this is a very loose term. The most extreme would be somebody who It does a majority of modalities and therapies and very little adjusting. So you had a straight or mixture chiropractor. So back in my grandpa's day, it was either you're straight or you're a mixer. As time evolves and class work changes and policies change, I was one of the last few chiropractors to be able to complete chiropractic school without having to take physical therapy. For me, physical therapy was an elective, so I took it as an elective class. Not everybody in my class took it. It was an elective for me. And in my elective, what I was able to do is I was able to learn a lot about physical therapy, but by no means can I consider myself a physical therapist. Basically, we had about six days of physical therapy, active and passive, and that got us enough to take the PT test. Now a lot of our education overlaps so maybe you don't need a thousand hours in it because I'm already learning a bunch of this stuff. But I always said I learned just enough PT to be able to talk PT, not perform PT. I have more respect for that science than I think I can learn in 10 days. But some chiropractic schools aren't like my chiropractic school. I went to Palmer College of Chiropractic and back then like I said it was just an elective. Many schools they focus on it. My school of chiropractic, we have a when I went to school, we had a toggle class, which is an adjustment for your C1, C2, the top two bones in your neck. We had a cervical class. We had a thoracic class. We had a lumbopelvic class. We had a tech review class. We went over all over it again. So we have multiple classes learning how to adjust. Other schools have one course, one semester, they teach it all. But they spend more time doing more therapies and modalities. Now physical therapy is now part of our standard curriculum. Like I said, that changed as I was finishing school. So today, a chiropractor does graduate with more depth in physical therapy than we did previously. Some of us took it as elective, other people didn't take it at all. Now it's a required course. So it's much more in depth today. So a chiropractor graduates, they basically can do anything a physical therapist can do. Now, why do some chiropractors not adjust? Some chiropractors just want to be physical therapists, basically. And the thing that makes a chiropractor different than a physical therapist is in most states, you have to have a doctor's note to see a physical therapist. A physical therapist is not a primary health care provider. Chiropractors are. So chiropractors are allowed to do all the therapies and modalities they want to do like a physical therapist does. But typically, in most insurance companies in most states, the physical therapist has to write up what they think you need, have the doctor sign off on it. and then they can perform the physical therapy. A straight chiropractor just wants to do adjustments and you have chiropractors that don't do any adjustments at all. They just do straight physical therapy. So today you have these chiropractors that are doing adjustments and you have other chiropractors that are doing physical therapy. I believe it's very confusing for the patient because you're going to a chiropractor assuming you're getting chiropractic care. But physical therapy, is it chiropractic care or is it physical therapy? I tend to think it's more physical therapy, less chiropractic. And today there is a happy medium. There are chiropractors who do the adjustment and then follow it up with therapy. Here in my office, we have friends down the street that are physical therapists. So we do the chiropractic care, then we're care here than we refer to them for the physical therapy. We just feel like they're really good at physical therapy and we're really good at chiropractic adjustments. So let them do what they're really good at and let us do what we're really good at. Kind of stay in your lane attitude. That's the way my practice behaves. Now, does it mean that I'm right, they're wrong? I'm just laying it out how different people do things. I personally would not go to a chiropractor if they didn't do chiropractic adjustments. But I would go to a chiropractor that does physical therapy. I just, as a patient, I would just want to make sure I got my adjustment first. I've had a lot of patients that have gone through physical therapy elsewhere, that they tried physical therapy, didn't work very good. And I said, that's because your back's misaligned. I said, if my dad was here, he would tell you that if you have a garden bed, And you have a hose that feeds that garden bed water. And somebody put a rock on top of that garden hose. It wouldn't matter how much fertilizer, how much sunshine, how much quality of your seeds, how much you till the dirt. As long as that rock is in the garden hose, that garden is never going to grow right. So you push the rock off the garden hose and that garden will grow right. When we do a chiropractic adjustment, we make that nerve happy again and that makes the water, or the nerve energy, flow through so the garden can regrow. So physical therapy is good, but it's better when the rock's off the garden hose and the garden hose can actually flow to the garden and do its job. So I like to get adjusted into physical therapy. Even when I had my arm injuries and I had my shoulder surgery and my elbow surgery, I would get adjusted and go to physical therapy knowing that physical therapy will work better. So if I go to a chiropractor who doesn't do adjustments and then only does physical therapy, I feel like we're missing out on the possible benefits of how great it could be. But if you're going to a chiropractor who doesn't do chiropractic adjustments and they're doing therapy on you and you're getting good results, I'm very happy for you. If you're going to a chiropractor who only adjusts and you're getting good results, I'm very happy for you. But I feel like if you're dealing with an injury, the best of the best would be to see a chiropractor and then maybe follow up with a strength coach, a physical therapist, or somebody in those areas that can continue to help you grow and develop after the interference has been removed, what we call the rock on the garden hose has been removed. Then you get the best of both worlds, in my opinion. Especially if you're an athlete, athletic people, because as I work with the hockey team, that's what we see a lot of. So there you have it. Why do some chiropractors adjust and some chiropractors don't adjust? It's just whether or not they really wanted to become a chiropractor who works on the spine to adjust people, or if they just really wanted to have that direct patient access in order to do different, different therapies and things like that they can do as a licensed chiropractor. So it's interesting, sometimes I often, I've written a paper before, a thesis paper about how they should have two different titles, right? A chiropractic doctor or maybe a chiropractic physical therapist, I don't know the right words, but I've also thought they should deserve two different titles, not because I don't want people to think this and that, it's for the public's sake. The public goes in looking for one type of chiropractor or another. Yes, there's a link between the schools you go to, the way you practice. It's not black and white. It's not this person went to this school so they must do like this. No, it's the same national requirements across the board for us to get licensed, but the schools can usually be an indicator. I usually start with the colleges they go to then I look at their websites and try to find the fit for the patient when they're going somewhere else. Whichever one they want. So there you have it. Why do some chiropractors adjust and some chiropractors don't adjust? I hope I explained the best I could. And remember, just like this person on the internet did, they left me a message. If you have a message, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, you should only ever ask a chiropractor. We're the only ones that actually know the answer. Go ahead and leave a message where you're seeing this or listening to this and I'll see that message, I promise. And maybe next time you'll be the question of the week. Alright everybody, thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. We'll talk to you next time.