Over the 14 years I’ve been in practice, I’ve heard of a few misconceptions and some myths.
I would like to set to rest and help clarify anything that you guys don’t know about chiropractic.
These are the top six I’ve heard over the years, and why they’re absolutely not true.
Myth #1: After you begin chiropractic care, you can never stop going.
I hear that a lot and it’s just simply not true.
In response, I would say, “I hear that once you start brushing your teeth, you can’t ever stop.”
There is some maintenance involved in taking care of this thing called our body and that’s really where we come into play. Our big goal for our patients is to get them out, living their life. It’s even in our tagline, GO LIVE LIFE.
Sometimes it takes a little more time and effort to get them back on the road to help. Once they’re there, our lifetime care for patients is pretty minimal. Our goal is to not keep you in here three days a week.
In fact, I see our long-term patients a couple of times a year. Ideally, they’re clear, and they shouldn’t need to be adjusted, because that’s what we’re trying to do, is get people well for life. We’ll check them up a couple of times a year and make sure they’re still doing good. If you’re a chiropractic patient of ours for life, it means we just do a checkup once in a while to make sure all the work we put in when we started is paying off and you’re still doing good.
Myth #2: Chiropractors only treat back pain.
Because of the neurological emphasis on our office, only about 10 to 15% of our patients suffer from low back pain. Most of our patients are coming in with significant neurological disorders, like fibromyalgia or migraines, autoimmune dysfunctions, memory issues, and seizures.
We do good work for people who have back pain. But it’s not all that we see and our scope is much broader than just that.
Myth #3: Chiropractic care is dangerous.
Is it dangerous? It could be, but that’s why we do a very thorough initial exam because we want to make sure that it’s not dangerous. If it is, then we can’t obviously can’t take care of you. We have to do a workup on our initial evaluation to ensure that what we’re doing is, first and foremost, safe and effective. Obviously it must be safe.
We want to make sure that we take you from where you’re at to where you want to go. That’s our main goal, and that’s why we design our care plans and our, especially our initial visit.
Myth #4: Chiropractic is for absolutely anyone.
Is it for anyone? Again, going back to the examination, basically anyone with the nervous system, a brain system, and a spinal cord ought to at least get checked.
Some people come in, and after our examination, we determine they do not need the type of services that we have. We can point them in the right direction and send them to the more accurate doctor that is going to suit their needs. Not everybody needs what we have here.
We try very hard only to take on the people that, again, we know it’s safe and we know we can make a difference for them. But everyone at least should be checked. We want to see if your central nervous system is operating at tip top shape. We want to see if what we do is going to be the best thing for you.
Myth #5: Chiropractic is expensive.
Now there’s other types of chiropractors out there that we’ve referred to cause they be a better fit for that individual based on some of the exam findings. And sometimes there’s other professions completely not chiropractic that we need to send this person to. And we’re happy to do that. That’s again, why we put an emphasis on our initial workup to make sure that we’re putting our patient in the very best possible care even if it’s not in our hands.
Myth #5: Chiropractic is expensive.
The cliche would be like, How important is your health to you? And how cheap is it to be sick?
I can tell you that I have plenty of patients that have spent tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, just simply getting diagnostic testing done at various hospitals with nothing to show for it. There’s no like action plan. They just did. The test, spent 50,000 and got nothing. We’re not even a 10th of that.
We actually can provide care and treatment for anywhere from probably six to eight months for a 10th of what those people are paying for those types of testing, and their outcome is a lot better. We’re actually getting work done during that time. We’re not just simply diagnosing, we’re putting in work and we’re getting them the results so that they can go back out there and live their life.
No, it’s not expensive and we do our very best to make it as affordable as possible. We set up all sorts of payment options for our patients. Make sure they can make payments to make it affordable for them and their whole family.
Myth #6: Chiropractors aren’t real doctors.
I’ll admit – this one always makes me laugh a little bit. We are doctors. We are primary healthcare physicians here in the state of California. MDs and chiropractors both learn all the “ologies” – neurology, anatomy, kinesiology, biology, all of those things.
When it comes to treatment, they learn pharmacology mostly, and we learn how to do chiropractic. So that’s where the big difference is – but the root, the core and the foundation of education is very similar.