Patients often ask how they can maximize the benefit from the care they receive from our chiropractic physicians. They want to be sure the care we provide is being utilized effectively.
The answer is straightforward… patients must properly follow the advice of their treating physician. This is often easier if they understand goals of treatment and the reason for the advice.
- Ice or Heat? – New injuries often benefit from home ice treatment while olderconditions often benefit from heat. Using the proper home ice or heat treatments can significantly shorten your recovery time. Discuss this with your doctor to find out what is best for you.
- Keep your scheduled appointments – Your visits are spaced to provide optimal recovery time between treatments. When you miss a visit, we often lose momentum in your recovery and cannot effectively build on the work we provided before. So, keep your visits or make up the visits that you have missed.
- Stop doing things that make you worse – This sounds easy, but not so fast… there are lots of things patients do to slow their recovery. Stop or reduce cigarette smoking, drink water, and eat well (fresh fruits and vegetables, lean cuts of meat, along with nuts and berries.) Reduce your stress, get plenty of rest, and do your home exercises when instructed.
Much of the care we provide focuses on proper joint and muscle function. This is a major cause of the conditions we treat. If the joints and muscles are working correctly, pains are reduced.
Oftentimes, when a patient first visits us, they are in extreme pain. They may have been experiencing the pain for a long time, or it may be related to an injury that occurred recently. Either way, they are primarily motivated to seek care because of pain. We may need to see them frequently and regularly for a period of time to remove the pain. During this initial treatment phase, the goals are to stop and reverse tissue damage that is the cause of the pain.
Once the pain is reduced and healing has started, we will focus on joint stabilization to prevent further injury. We usually recommend exercises and other lifestyle changes that improve and maintain functional balance of the body. It’s important to follow these instructions to complete your recovery and to achieve optimal joint health.
Once we have completed a patient’s care plan, some patients require supportive care. Patients who are under significant stress, have posture problems, or have tough ergonomic challenges at work are at risk of continuing to have spine problems. Also, patients who have spine weakness due to arthritis or developmental impairments will experience ongoing spine challenges. These patients benefit greatly from ongoing supportive care.
Our physicians take the whole person into account when we provide treatments and recommendations. Once your initial health concern is resolved, we are prepared to provide advice on nutrition, exercise and posture that will continue your health gains. Our goal is to help you maintain the improved health you’ve achieved. Working together, we can ensure that you maintain good health well into the future.