Common Chiropractic Myths/Misconceptions

1. Why do I have to go so frequently for treatment? Is it really necessary? The best way to answer this is to use an analogy. If you had an infection and visited your MD, there is a chance he would prescribe an antibiotic to fight the infection. That prescription might need to be taken twice a day for 14 days. In that 14 day time period you received 28 treatments. It doesn’t seem like it because you only had one actual visit to the office. In chiropractic, the treatment is given in the office, not at home and not out of a bottle. So if you were to receive treatment three times per week for nine weeks, while it may seem like a lot of treatment, you were actually treated one time less than in the medical analogy given above.

2. It seems like once you start going to a chiropractor you have to go forever! In actuality, many patients choose to receive chiropractic throughout their lives because they see the improvements in their lifestyle and health. Let’s face it, our society is geared towards fast food, fast cars, and immediate gratification. It is no wonder that people also want fast healthcare. There have been many cases where the structural problems within the spine can no longer be restored to its original health, these people would need Chiropractic for the rest of their life to improve the quality of their life which would otherwise cause them to be in debilitating pain every day. In most cases, they would be taking opioids for long periods of time, which we all know is a huge problem in our society due to its addictive nature. I jokingly tell my patients, if you want to not have to go to a chiropractor, you can quit your sitting desk job 10 hours a day and or job with repetitive motion and posture, go live in a mountain, eat raw foods and meditate everyday, sounds very plausible right?

3. My medical doctor doesn’t want me to utilize chiropractic. This one is very simple to answer, if I tell my patients I’m going to perform a brain surgery on them right in my office do you think they would say yes? Most likely not. This is because this is not my job, and I am not trained to perform surgery and do any invasive treatments to my patients. Chiropractors have specialized training for exactly the job that we need to do, remove subluxations that cause interference within the nervous system and let the body take care of itself. I personally wouldn’t ask an electrician whether I should go to him or a plumber for my plumbing needs, it is simply not what they are meant to do, and even if they know a little, I would trust that the plumber knows more than the electrician does and vice versa.

4. Chiropractors are not “real” doctors. This statement is true if you mean medical doctors. We certainly aren’t medical doctors and have chosen not to be. I went to Chiropractic school knowing that that modality of treatment is a gentle and non invasive way of getting rid of the root cause of the problem rather than treating symptoms through the use of drugs or surgery. Don’t get me wrong, There is a place and time for this discipline, but with the current situation of our healthcare in the US, more advanced medical intervention yet sickest among the western world, something must not be right.

5. Why do I have to keep coming, the pain is gone! This has to do with the stability of the condition. Our nervous system only perceives pain by less than 20%. Pain is the last to appear, and the first one to go away. We don’t treat pain, but instead we treat function. Many patient will not report pain, but will not be able to move their neck from side to side like a person with normal joint range of motion can. Once normal activity is resumed and the normal daily stresses occur, the pain will again re-appear. That is why we perform routine reevaluations to determine whether a patient is in need of more care or is stable enough to proceed to maintenance care.

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