Facts
- Chiropractic was founded in 1895.
- There are approximately 85,000 chiropractors around the world. Of this total approximately 65,000 practice in the United States.
- Chiropractors are recognized throughout most countries in the world. Each country or state has rigorous statutes that regulate the profession.
- Chiropractors, by law, are allowed to use the title, Chiropractor, Chiropractic Physician, or Doctor of Chiropractic . The degree a chiropractor receives is DC.
- Various federal health care programs in the different countries recognise chiropractic. Various chiropractic organizations are working hard to have the government increase this coverage.
- Health insurance coverage is provided in health insurance policies of most major health plans, including state workers compensation plans, and auto insurance policies.
- Doctors of chiropractic have been known to provide exceptional treatment for many spinal related disorders. Some of these conditions include neck pain, back pain, and headaches to name a few. Many doctors of chiropractic have taken additional training and have become certified in the treatment of sports injuries, as well as the care of auto injuries.
- The main philosophy of chiropractic is to utilize a treatment method that seeks to help the patient restore normal physiological function. This, in turn, helps the patient improve his or her health. Also, advice can be given regarding proper nutrition and exercise as it relates to the total picture of one's health.
- Over the last 100 years, chiropractic has enjoyed increasingly higher acceptance by the public after many years of growing pains . This has occurred because of a number of reasons. There have been more and more research studies that have proven that chiropractic is one of the most helpful and cost-effective treatment for a variety of conditions. And, more importantly, patients have seen for themselves that chiropractic, in many cases, simply helps for many conditions! Many patients like the fact that they have an alternative to the use of drugs. As society becomes more and more aware of the contraindications and serious side effects of medication, patients are now more willing to try non-medical forms of treatment for their health issues.
Dorland's Medical Dictionary describes health as a state of wellness, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Another way of looking at this is that the absence of pain does not give us a good indication of the patient s health level.
"The doctor of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."
- Thomas Edison |
Health is an ongoing process; one that evolves as we age. If you look around at our society, you can see a rampant crisis of health problems. People are looking for answers, and in many cases, are not getting them. It is my opinion that the main cause of these issues is that for many years prevention of disease and illness was scoffed at by society. If someone felt good, no problem, nothing to worry about. We are now realizing that health maintenance is the key to good health. Rather than wait for the health crisis, let's attempt to prevent the crisis from occurring to begin with.
Chiropractic health care focuses primarily on the examination and treatment of the spine and pelvis to determine if some part of the body's structure is malfunctioning. And, if so, what can be done to correct the structure to return the body to the best possible physiologically state?
Think back how many times you have received treatment for an illness, and after feeling a bit better, you stopped treatment. That was usually a simple case of being fooled by our childhood training that if there were no symptoms, we were well. In reality, the short-term treatment only helped to temporarily alleviate the symptom, part of the condition, but never really addressed the cause of the problem. It is this fact that makes chiropractic care so beneficial.
How Does My Body Work?
An analogy will help start this explanation The power company supplies energy to run our homes and offices. That energy travels to our homes by way of cables. Once that energy gets to our location, it allows our appliances to run the way they were designed. If, for some reason, there is an interruption or lessening of the energy coming to us, our lights would be less bright, or perhaps our appliances would fail to operate. The same is true with our bodies.
Let's use a similar analogy. Let's say you have a dimmer switch (rheostat) installed in your dining room. As long as the dimmer switch is set all the way up, the lights burn very brightly. Now, let's turn down the dimmer switch as low as it can go and still see a little bit of light. If, at that time, you replaced all the bulbs with the absolute best, state-of-the-art, light bulbs, would the bulbs be any brighter than the previous set? Of course, not! The reason is the electrical energy traveling through the wires of your home are being stopped by the dimmer switch. Now, if you slowly start increasing the switch to allow the energy to increase, the bulbs will increase in brightness. The light is a metaphor or analogy for how our body expresses its health. The better the flow of energy to the vital organs and tissues of our bodies the better our bodies, can perform. Therefore, better health!
Now, let's take this one step further. There are 31 pairs of spinal nerves in our spinal cord. These nerves travel from the brain and exit the spinal cord at very specific areas. For example, the nerves that control your small and large intestines, kidneys, sex organs, as well as the nerves that control your lower back and legs exit the spinal cord in the lower back region. That is why many patients who enter our office for lower back pain also tell us upon questioning, that they have constipation or diarrhea problems, or perhaps menstrual difficulties. This is very common. Another example is a patient has neck pain, but also complains of headaches or sinus difficulty. That would make sense because the nerves of the neck innervate those specific areas. The examples are numerous, however, suffice to say that the nervous controls our body functions. To the degree that we take care of our spine, and to the degree that it is working properly, is the degree we can expect our best level of health.
Think about this. Would you expect your teeth to continue to stay healthy if you never brushed or flossed them, or never visited a dentist to clean or correct them? Why is the spine so different? In reality, the real difference is that our spine is covered by skin and muscles so that we can't see our spines.
If patients were able to see their spine to the same degree they see their teeth, many patients would be horrified with how bad they have allowed their spines to deteriorate.
In a Chiropractic office the first thing you can expect is to have your spine evaluated. This is an important step in elevating your health level and, in fact, is what differentiates chiropractors from other types of physicians.
Accidents, falls, tension, stress, overuse, and other factors can prevent the spine from working within its normal range of motion. This can cause misalignments of the segments of your spine. If this misalignment irritates spinal nerves, various malfunctions can occur in your body. These misalignments are called subluxations. Various studies have shown that subluxations can cause improper function of the organs and tissues of the body, leading to increased susceptibility to various conditions, including chronic disease. Logically, this should make sense. If, for example, the brain cannot control the stomach or intestines in the manner that was designed because of nerve compression or interference, would it be hard to imagine the body having less ability to digest and absorb nutrients from the foods you eat? And, if you are getting fewer nutrients, would a lower level of health be that far fetched? Think about each organ of your body. Let your mind ponder about what would happen if each vital organ or tissue was working at only 50%. What impact would that have on your health over the short or long term? It is this observation that leads many people to begin giving their spine the attention it deserves. Ask your chiropractor about these facts to open up your potential to a whole new level of health awareness for you, your family, and friends.
Yours in health,
Dr. Stacey Burke and Dr. Eric Brukwinski
Doctors of Chiropractic
West Coast Family Chiropractic,
22 Banks Ave, Hillarys, WA 6025, AUSTRALIA
(08) 9402 8845
