The Wellness Advantage of Regular Chiropractic Check-Ups

The Wellness Advantage of Regular Chiropractic Check-Ups

Why do people keep going to the chiropractor even when they feel good? In this episode, Dr. Brant Hulsebus from Hulsebus Rockford Chiropractic breaks down the real reason patients choose ongoing chiropractic care—and why it pays off in the long run.

Dr. Hulsebus explains:

• Why maintenance care matters
• How lifestyle stress continues to affect your spine
• What wellness chiropractic really focuses on
• How spinal alignment supports the nervous system
• The difference between getting well and staying well
• Why prevention beats crisis care every time

If you’ve ever wondered whether chiropractic care is only for pain—or if wellness care makes a real impact—this episode gives you a clear, honest breakdown.

🎧 Listen in and learn why regular chiropractic check-ups are one of the smartest health habits you can build.

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. Hi there. Welcome to the episode of Ask the Chiropractor. So one question that happens a lot that people get, especially when they start chiropractic care. Or maybe after they've been going to a chiropractor for a while, it's usually from a friend or family member that says, I don't understand why you keep going if you feel good, shouldn't the chiropractor have already fixed this by now? It to me is, I always find that a comical response because, why do people keep going when they're already feeling good? Why do you keep going back? My typical answer is what doctor don't you go back to? Why do you keep going to your dentist? If you already cleaned your teeth? Why do you keep going to gym if you've already exercised today? And why? Why go back and exercise again tomorrow? Why do you go every year and get blood work done? Did the doctor already do blood work on you? Should they already know what's wrong with you forever? I just find these are comical questions because, with the exception of let's say an orthopedic doctor, like when I tore the muscles down on my bicep, I had to have my bicep reattached to my arm. I don't go back and visit the orthopedic doctor every year for that.'cause it's done, it's healed, it's moved on. That was an injury. But if I did an activity that required me to constantly keep tearing my bicep outta my arm, I probably had to constantly keep going back and seeing my orthopedic doctor. You see the things that cause your back to go out. The things that injured you that made you go to the chiropractor in the first place. You're still doing and because you're still doing those things and because you still have that lifestyle, a lot of us have to keep going back to the chiropractor. Now most chiropractor will instruct you with maybe some of the things that you're doing that are creating some of these issues, how to avoid them, how to do 'em better, or special considerations or the things to keep in mind and maybe to get you out of going there more frequently. But unless you've had a major dramatic lifestyle change, the things that you normally do will cause you to go back. Often when someone's a patient of mine and after 20 years they retire from their career and they get a new career, often we see major changes in the way we adjust them. Because those stresses have changed. But see, the main reason why people keep going back to the chiropractor is because they learn the benefits of being healthy. They learn the benefits of keeping your health. They realize that it's easier to stay well than it is to get well. The other day my wife's car was making a funny noise. So we took it to the mechanic, we dropped it off to get fixed, and then, we had to do the whole car shuffle thing. Like the kids had their car, my wife has her car, I have my car, and we had to figure out how to make it work. Now, luckily for me, I work all day on Mondays from seven in the morning till about seven at night. So I don't really need a car. I just need someone to drop me off and pick me up. So we were able to make that work. It, but you really don't appreciate your car until it doesn't work. Then once your car doesn't work and you don't have it, boy, do you feel the difference then? Another example of something you don't really appreciate until it doesn't work. That same Monday, I came in and I went into my two adjusting rooms, and it was only my two adjusting rooms, but the computers couldn't talk to the server, so I couldn't pull up my chart notes. I couldn't pull up the internet, I couldn't look at x-rays. I was able to grab an iPad and adapt.'cause in chiropractic we always say adapt or die, but I was able to do that. But you see your computers or something else that you'd never really take into account until they don't work. The moment my computer stopped working, I realized I was having a problem and all of a sudden it should be a nice, quiet, easy day. Became a day of panic. It became a day of excitement. It became a day of we gotta get this working. So between the car and the computer, we quickly learned about two things that you don't really think about until they don't work well. The same is true for your health. A lot of people go to the chiropractor regularly. They don't quit going to the chiropractor 'cause they really value having their health. Whenever you meet somebody who's near the end of their life or very sick or ill they always have the same message, right? You meet somebody, especially if they're older, they always say the same thing. Oh, take care of yourself. You only have this health. Oh, what I would do to go back and, and done this and different to keep my health. And with your chiropractor, you have somebody that can help you. Achieve those goals and go down those paths. See, as chiropractors we back and neck pain is usually how we meet you. But keeping you well and focus on your wellness is how we. Keep keep people going. That's really what we do. That's really our passion. Yeah, you might have a little lower back pain. You start with a chiropractor. You might have a headache or neck pain. You start with a chiropractor, but it's, our goal is to teach you how there's more benefits of coming in other than just when you're in pain and maybe you wanna wait till you come in when you're in pain, and that's okay. We don't kick those people out, but there's a bigger product that we have, and that product is being able to keep you, keep you. Under care keep you healthy. So a lot of times people come in and they start off with like maybe they've got really good insurance that covers for their injury, and then we switch 'em over to a wellness plan when they start coming in periodically just to get their spines checked before they have a problem. Anyone that's been down with a health problem, whether it's muscular skeletal, whether it's an organ, whether it's a. Kidney stones, whatever the health problem might be. You know it is easy to forget how good you felt when you were good, when you were that bad. And so it's a struggle to keep you from ever going back to that bad state again. And that's what chiropractic really focuses on. We look at your spine and we make sure your spine's in alignment. If your spine's in alignment, then we know your brain can talk to all the body parts the way it's supposed to, whether it's fight and fight or homeostasis. There's two different modes of brain goes when it regulates your autonomic functions. Auto autonom means that things that are happening without you thinking about like your respiratory rate, your heart, your spleen, your kidney, they're all doing their jobs and you're not putting a lot of effort into it. They're just happening until they're not. And so chiropractic adjustments are meant to keep the spine open and keep the nervous system flowing the way it's supposed to be to keep you in the proper state of anomic tone that you're supposed to have. And we do this by looking at your spine. Now, most chiropractors, including myself, always wanna start off with an x-ray of your spine so we know what we're looking at. From there, we can see what the misalignments are and are not, and therefore we can come up with care plans for you. Now if you're coming in for wellness care, it's really easy for us to find your weak spots and have a plan of attacks that you come in not feeling well, but also have a plan of attack on how to teach you to get these weak spots to be stronger. Whether it's stabilization exercises I've talked about in the past, whether it's maybe some supplements, but whether it's some stretches that regain your posture and working some posture stuff, or whether it's just simply, these are the areas that we have to adjust from time to time because these parts of your spine don't line up properly. There's a whole different gambit of things that we work on in order to try to keep you well. And so I would say that I spend quite a bit of my day taking care of people that come in. What's going on today? Do you have any health problems or how's your health doing today? And then the one answer is, I think everything's going good. Would you please check me to make sure it's going good? And we'll give those chiropractic adjustments. Now, if we start to see a pattern or a trend or something going on, then we'll intervene. Another thing that we do a lot of and we do over wellness care, is people will come to us to ask us other questions. Meaning I've had this going on for a while. I feel this. Should I go see a doctor for this? What do you think I should do about this? Or, I went to my doctor and this is what they think and they want us to help coach them in order to avoid lots of pharmaceuticals and medical intervention. Not that we don't like medical intervention. Medical intervention is fantastic for crisis care. But we try to avoid it for long-term care. So we have lots of patients that come to ask us for help for getting out of long-term medical care. And a lot of times we work with your family doctor with this. Let's say you get a prescription for high blood pressure. Maybe we know what adjusting the C one to hit the vagus nerve can help dec increase the parasympathetic tone. Other words tell the. The heart that there's dangers no more. It's time to relax and decrease that tone as we adjust the C one. You've seen a lot of work on this with different chiropractors over the years, especially doing upper cervical work to help reduce blood pressure. Then maybe we'll talk to you about your diet. Maybe we will recommend a couple of things. Maybe we will add a couple supplements in there as well, rather than just give you a pill to take the rest of your life. And usually what we'll do is we're working with your doctor and say, Hey, listen, we started getting your Atlas adjusted. We started an exercise program, maybe just walking every day, and we gave rid, got rid of a bunch of bad foods that can create high blood pressure. And overall, we're increasing our wellness. We believe this patient can get off this medication and because we didn't prescribe it we'll, talk to the doctor and have a doctor get off of it, help you get off of it. So we just, we, chiropractic really focused on trying to keep you well and get you well. And again, we're not anti-medicine. We're just Pro-Health. We're the doctors of health, and so we're trying to make you better Medicine's, a doctor of sickness. There's a time and place for both, but luckily we can help you transition from the doctor of sickness to the doctor of health and get you better, feeling better all the time. So that's why people go to their chiropractor when they're feeling well. They just wanna stay well. So I hope this helped answer a couple questions. And remember, if you have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, there's only one person qualified to answer that and that would be a chiropractor. So if you have a question, feel free to leave a comment wherever you watch listening to this or wherever you're listening to this, and we will try to maybe make you the question the week next time. Thanks everybody.