The 3 Phases of Chiropractic Care

Why do all patients walk into a chiropractic office? Obviously, they are in pain and they want the doctor to get them out of pain. A lot of the time, patients want to feel immediate relief and expect to feel better in 1 or 2 visits. All chiropractors know that this is not the case and that we need to sit down and explain to the patient what is going on with their body and why they feel the way they do. In today’s blog, we are going to discuss the 3 phases of chiropractic care.
1. Pain Relief
As already stated above, patients come to see us to get them out of pain. Believe it or not, even though pain may have started 2 days ago, the issue started a long time before the pain actually started because your body has compensated and can no longer compensate beyond threshold. The question is, “How long will it take before I’m out of pain?” That is the problem. Every patient is different. Some patients may feel relief in 1 visit. Others may take 10. Some may take even more. It is all dependent on the state that the patient initially presented to you on the first day and even their pain tolerance. Once the patient is out of pain, they are said to be out of this stage and move on to the next stage.
2. Stabilization
The 2nd phase of our 3 phases of chiropractic care is perhaps the most crucial to patient care because even though your out of pain doesn’t mean your spine is stabilized yet. Any wrong lift or turn can put you back in the pain when we first started. It is now our job to correct the spine back into the position that it was designed to be in. There is no exact time frame to know when your fully stabilized, but by taking a post x-ray, we can see the biomechanical difference compared to your first x-ray to determine your stabilization.
3. Wellness
Wellness care is the golden ticket to staying healthy and out of pain. You’re never going to stop things that you enjoy doing in your life, and we don’t expect you too. Wellness care is like getting an oil change. Your car needs a tune up about every 5,000 miles. Just like a car, your nervous system needs a tune up for maximal function and to prevent pain from returning. Most chiropractors have patients come in about once a month for wellness care, but every doctor is different.
Our Office
Once we set a treatment plan designed for you, are goal is to get you out of pain as quickly as possible. We provide high quality adjustments and any therapeutic modalities that will help supplement treatment. We continue to adjust until the patient is out of pain and we found no clinical findings warranted for the adjustments. You will continue to follow the treatment plan even after we stop adjusting to assure you are in a stabilized position that we want. This will assure the doctors that we have got you to a stabilized position. Once the treatment plan is completed, we present to you a wellness plan that is valid for one year entitling you to come in as much as needed to maintain maximal health.