The world is a very different place today than it was in the 1980’s when I graduated from chiropractic college. There were no computers in doctor’s offices, people did not have insurance for doctor visits, and chiropractic was thought of for just low back or just neck pains. Chiropractors were not included in motor vehicle accident cases or in workers’ compensation cases. It wasn’t until 1990 that a United States Court of Appeals ruled against the AMA in the Wilk v AMA anti-trust case that chiropractic started to find its way into mainstream healthcare.
Once the Wilk case was won, the floodgates opened for chiropractic. Now there is almost universal acceptance by the medical community and insurance companies recognizing the benefits of chiropractic care as well as the cost benefits. Prestigious medical journals such as Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), Spine Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, as well as the American College of Physicians (ACP) all recommend chiropractic care as the first choice in care of musculoskeletal problems BEFORE other traditional medical therapies like medications or surgery.
How people have traditionally perceived chiropractic has started to change as well. When I first started practice, as I mentioned earlier, chiropractic was primarily thought of as a treatment for low back pain or neck pain. Current research now shows that chiropractic could very well be the best and the fastest method of getting pain relief from musculoskeletal conditions, but interestingly the research goes much further than that.
Today’s chiropractor is taught to look deeper than just providing pain relief. You can expect a thorough history and consultation as well as examination from the chiropractor. In my office, I want to know what specific tissue is responsible for your pain and discomfort. This is far deeper thinking than just which vertebra “out of place” or which nerve is the “pinched nerve”. I also want to discover what movement patterns have been altered and how those altered movement patterns affect your daily functions. My goal as a chiropractor is to get rid of your pain, fix what tissue is malfunctioning that is causing your pain, but also to return any functions or movements that may have been lost as a result of that presenting problem.
The bottom line is that chiropractic is, in order to be the most effective, more of a process than an event. Here at Weber Chiropractic, we work to emphasize that thought with our patients. We do our best to make you, the patient, part of the team that designs the treatment plan. We provide you with the latest current medical research on the most effective chiropractic treatments. We work to learn from you what physical functions you have had impaired or lost due to your presenting problem. We work with you to set up a care plan that works with you and for you to relieve your pain, fix what is broken, restore your lost abilities, and show you how to prevent future recurrences of those problems.
If this type of care and treatment interests you, please go to www.kirkweberchiropractor.com and contact us for an appointment. We are very proud of the patient report survey for our office that says 84% of our patients report that they feel excellent in 30 days or less from when they first visit our office. We have downloadable PDF intake forms on our website that you can fill out at home to save time on your initial visit. We encourage you to check out our website and investigate it. Please be sure and check out the links to our blogs and now our podcasts are available on the website as well. We would love for you to go to our Facebook page (kirkweberchiropractor), give us a like, join in, or start a discussion about your experiences with chiropractic. We really want to hear from you, because like our motto says, your health is our concern.
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