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#42 What Is He Doing Back There?

3/19/2014

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            I can imaging from a lay perspective you must wonder what I am doing on each adjustment.  I run my hands/ fingers over your spine and make a bunch of stuff pop.  Two weeks ago in my weekly article #40 What’s the Adjustment Really Doing I reviewed what is going on neurologically with each adjustment.  Today I want to clarify what I am physically doing during each visit.  But before that I must tell you a story. 

            Recently, I met a chiropractor who offered to adjust me here at my office.  Well rarely will I turn down an adjustment so I let her proceed.  Keep in mind that I have been doing this a very long time, but despite that I really had no idea what she was adjusting.  Her work was so non-specific and seemingly random that I know that not only did I not know what she was adjusting, neither did she.  And there are too many chiropractors out there that operate just like that.  So if you ever see a chiropractor besides me you must look carefully at what they do.  Specificity is the key.

            So when you sit in the chair I will use my palpation (feeling) skills developed over decades to feel for loss of motion, muscle spasm, and inflammation, but motion is the most important factor.  Once I determine which bones in the neck are not moving properly I will compare my findings with the examination and the x-ray findings and make a determination what I need to work on today.  Since I can only adjust 2 bones in the neck per visit I choose the most important 2 for that day and adjust them.  During the adjustment I contact the specific bone that needs adjusting and move it in the proper direction to restore motion.  Depending upon the level of the adjustment, you will typically hear 2 or 3 pops or audibles.  Sometimes there will be more as extra bones have moved along with the one I wanted and sometimes there will be fewer due to a variety of factors including muscle spasm, scar tissue, and joint degeneration.

            On the reddish hi-lo table while you are lying face down I will do the same type of motion palpation to your mid and low back areas, again comparing my findings to the exam and x-ray findings.  Once I find the bone that is not moving as well as its neighbors I will adjust it and move on to the next.  Most of the mid and low back vertebrae can be adjusted on this table, but the bottom 2 or 3 and the pelvis (sacro-iliac joints) are usually adjusted on the bench.

            When I put you on the bench on your side I have already decided which bone is to be adjusted and what direction.  So while the side-posture adjustments may all seem the same to you there are more than 2 dozen different adjustments in this position.  Each one is subtly or tremendously different. 

            At the end of the visit some of the retraining that we spoke about in #40 has been done.  It will have an effect for a limited period of time which is why the next adjustment must be done within a certain time-frame.  And the process continues until the spine working a whole lot better than it used to.  It’s just too bad that most of us couldn’t start care when we were kids to be able to prevent much of the damage we have as adults.  Lesson learned.

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    Dr. Rick

    After writing an article per week for a year, I just kept going.  These are most of my collection.  They are written with my existing patients in mind, so some stuff may seem odd or unusual, but would make perfect sense to those who know chiropractic and who know me.  Enjoy and share!  For my personal blog visit: 

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Yolanda wrote:
     
     I used to suffer severe headaches and migraines on a daily basis, usually all day.  I managed to work in an office because I had to.  When I went home at the end of the day I would often close the shades and go to bed.  I could not plan weekend events because I simply never knew how I was going to feel tomorrow.  If there were a special event such as a birthday or wedding, I would begin to medicate myself two weeks in advance to give myself the best chance of making the event.
     Friends and fellow church-goers had been trying to get me to see Dr. Rick for some time before I finally gave in.  Looking back, I don’t know why I waited.  Within a month, I was headache free.  I couldn’t remember what it was like to not feel pain.  I could do whatever I wanted and not live in fear of the headache.  This was a miracle for me, but the story does not end here.
     An opportunity came up for us to adopt a newborn baby girl not long after I began chiropractic care.  This baby was particularly important to me and my husband because her mother is a relative.  Tragically, her mother was also a drug user and did drugs during her pregnancy.  If we could not adopt the baby she would have been put into the foster system since the biological mother was incapable of raising her.
     To keep a long story short, we did adopt her and she is doing fantastically.  There is no sign of any effect of the drugs on her as of yet, and with God’s help, there never will be.  We think that is because of the vast amounts of love and attention she gets from us, her real mommy and daddy.
     What does this have to do with chiropractic?  The reality is that without chiropractic, I would still be nearly an invalid with headaches.  I COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN CARE OF AN INFANT OR RAISED A YOUNG CHILD.  THEREFORE, SHE WOULD NOT HAVE ANY OF THE OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE THAT MY HUSBAND AND I WILL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE FOR HER.  MY DAUGHTER’S LIFE IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE SOMEBODY MADE ME GO TO A CHIROPRACTOR. 
     You need to tell everyone you know what you know about chiropractic.  Who knows who’s life you will change too.
Andrew's mother, Barbara, wrote:

     Hello, My name is Andrew and I am a happy, healthy one year old.  But I wasn’t so happy or healthy when I first met Dr. Rick a few months ago.  I had been having problems with my ears for four months, I couldn’t sleep at night and I was miserable.  We’d been to the doctor lots of times but nothing was helping.  In fact, all the medicines the doctor had tried seemed to make me worse instead of better!  Both the regular doctor and the Ear-Nose and Throat doctor said that if the antibiotics didn’t work, then they’d just have to put tubes in.  Now my Mom and dad weren’t about to let them do surgery on me, especially since they had been reading and learned that tubes can cause more problems than they solve.  My mom and dad did a lot of praying.  Then my mom heard that sometimes babies who have a traumatic birth like mine have ear trouble.  You see when I was born they used a vacuum extractor and forceps to pull me out.  I guess all that yanking on my head, hurt my neck.  She also heard that chiropractic care can be the answer.  Now she was skeptical because she couldn’t imagine a chiropractor helping ear infections!?!  But at that point she was willing to try anything!!  Happily, a few weeks of adjustments and my ears were all cleared up.  In addition, I no longer had a stiff neck or shoulders and my whole personality was happier.  I have to tell all babies who have ear troubles, don’t let them give you tubes until you at least try chiropractic care first.  After all, it can’t hurt and if you’re like me, you could be perfectly well with no drugs and no surgery.  In my family, we thank God for Dr. Rick, because I feel better, my mom and dad are happier and sometimes, I even sleep through the night.