So you finally take the plunge and make an appointment to see a chiropractor. What should you expect during your visit? Gregg Rubinstein, who practices at 57th Street Chiropractic in New York City, explains what it is like to go to his office.
Why do people visit your office?
People come to us for a myriad of reasons. Pain is usually a motivating factor. Unfortunately, many people we see actually have a significant amount of pain or discomfort before they never got their spine checked. Many people come to my office as a last ditch effort when they’ve been everywhere else like physical therapy, if they’ve tried many different drugs or they are faced with a surgical procedure. Many times they have back pain, neck pain, sciatica, numbness or tingling in the arms or legs, headaches. These are the situations that usually drive people to our office. Chiropractric offers a safe and natural drug-free approach to regaining and maintaining your health.
What happens during a first visit?
When you visit us, you’ll know right away from our family health and history form that we are a little bit different than medical practitioners and even some other chiropractors. We want to know about your birth process, accidents, if you fell as a kid. We ask about your general health. That’s really because your nervous system controls and coordinates all of your daily bodily functions. You don’t wake up one day, eat breakfast and say, “Oh, I need to break down the proteins and send them to the muscles and get the carbohydrates into the bloodstream for energy all these things happen automatically via the nervous system.” It’s important for your overall health and most people think of chiropractors as back doctors. But the truth is we’re really nerve system doctors.
During your first visit, I will do a complete initial consultation, history and discuss health problems and what your health goals are. I will give a brief explanation and what we do and how we go about it. I talk about the nervous system and explain that health comes within and not from the outside. You don’t have headaches because you don’t take enough aspirin — something is wrong. The majority of times you have an interference in your nerve system. Stress, tension, poor posture, accidents, falls — all these issues can create a misalignment in the spine that irritates the nerves that chiropractors call a vertebral subluxation. When this interference exists in the spine, pain, discomfort and malfunction can occur in the body due to lack of communication across your nervous system, which is designed to regulate everything your body does 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
When you have vertebral subluxation, your body is robbed of important nerve energy and the ability to regulate itself and heal itself is interfered with. The body in most cases will heal itself unless there is interference to its normal healing pathways. The body will heal because immune system knows what to do. As long as there is no interference, as in the case from vertebral subluxation, the body will strive to heal itself. Health is the body’s natural state.
How often will you have to see a chiropractor?
It really depends on the case. After a detailed examination of your spine, the chiropractor will determine if the misalignments are subluxations that are acute, chronic, or in some cases, permanent. A 55-year-old man who has never seen a chiropractor will likely need to be seen longer than a mother who brings in her 15-year-old son who fell off a bike. The 55-year-old man has had 55 years for stress tension, poor posture and other spinal stresses to effect his spine, and therefore will take longer to correct. After x-rays are taken, we can classify them into different subluxation phases. Usually, an x-ray indicates how much misalignment and/or spinal degeneration is visible. We classify them as phase 1, 2, or 3. Some people need longer corrective care plans; others are shorter. Some don’t want to commit to long-term corrective care and say, “Doc, just get me out of pain.” Others are interested in getting out of pain, and staying healthy. They want to improve their overall health, the health of their spine and keep themselves healthy, and enjoy a high quality of life.
The information in the article is not intended to substitute for the medical expertise and advice of your healthcare provider. We encourage you to discuss any decisions about treatment or care with an appropriate healthcare provider.
