Preventative vs Reactive Care: What’s the big idea?
An important distinction that I have talked about with my patients recently is the difference in philosophy concerning preventative care and reactive care. Many people operate with the belief that they are perfectly healthy until they have symptoms. This simply isn’t true! Our body is amazing and it has a number of defense mechanisms in place to help us “keep on keeping on” while it’s struggling with issues in the back ground. We say in the office “pain and illness are often the last signs and symptoms of injury or disease”. By the time we have reached the point of pain, we have most likely ignored many signals from our body which would indicate an issue that needs to be addressed. Reacting to an injury or disease is the worst way to approach our health! Instead, lets try to prevent the progression of disease and dysfunction.
So what do these early signals look like? For many people struggling with chronic pain, there may have been an injury from long ago that began the cascade effect of altered kinetics and this started the joint disease process. For example, a patient with chronic low back pain may have had an old ankle sprain from high school that they did not receive treatment for. This may have “healed on it’s own and is no longer a problem”, but more likely the body just altered how the patient walks, sits, stands, etc. in order to bypass the injury. They may walk with their foot turned out “just a little” and they gradually started to have knee, hip, or back pain which seemed to be separate issues. Unfortunately, our joints don’t work independently of one another. Picture this:
The ankle is a very mobile joint (go ahead, roll it around!). The knee however, should only flex front and back (it definitely shouldn’t shift side to side). Then our hip joint is a ball-in-socket with a HUGE amount of motion available to it. Next, the SI joints which are VERY stable. We may start to see a pattern emerging here: mobile ankle, stable knee, mobile hip, stable SI joints, mobile lumbar spine, stable rib cage, mobile neck, stable suture joints in the skull. When we have an injury to a joint that alters its biomechanics, the rest of the joints involved in that kinetic chain (the whole leg moving to walk for example) have to change to accommodate for the loss of motion. The stability of the knee is compromised and it now is more mobile. The once mobile hip is now stiff, and the once solid SI joints and now shifting out of place and causing low back discomfort.
See what I mean? When you originally tweak, injure, or over work a joint, it can help prevent other muscle and joint injuries from occurring if you get treatment right away. Just because pain went away within a few minutes or days does not mean the movement dysfunction has been corrected. This is why chiropractic is so important for athletes, manual workers, stay at home parents, or anyone that is physically active. Our body needs support to help prevent the development of disc and joint disease, soft tissue injury, loss of cartilage, and loss of muscle function.
In fact, chiropractic care is proven to help increase range of motion of joints, prevent common joint injuries by increasing oxygenation, muscle recruitment, reflexes/reaction time, speed and power, helps injuries heal faster with increased CNS activation, and it increases proprioception and body awareness. For people who struggle with chronic illness, chiropractic care is also a great way to increase immune function and healing within the body.
Our patients who usually struggle with chronic allergies, GI issues, asthma, brain fog, mood disorders, and pain due to chronic inflammation utilize regular chiropractic adjustments to help prevent or manage these symptoms, drug free! Many people know that the immune system can sometimes go haywire and auto-immune conditions can arise. But let me ask, what is in charge of telling your immune system what to do? Your nervous system and brain of course! This is why chiropractic can be helpful for people who want to minimize their dependency on drugs. This is why upper cervical adjustments can lower blood pressure without the use of medications(1). This is why chiropractic adjustments are as effective as two antibiotics when treating ear and sinus infections (2).
When you have a spinal misalignment known as a “subluxation”, there is a neurologic deficit experienced by the body; a decrease in what’s called “axoplasmic transportation”. This means, there is a lag time when it comes to your brian communicating to different parts of the body. People who are well adjusted have a nervous system operating like a Verizon 5G network, while those with subluxations are struggling to have their body communicate using a Boost mobile 3G network. I want good communication all the time!
Your brain doesn’t just coordinate the immune system but the endocrine (hormone) system as well. That’s why we work with couples trying to conceive, balancing hormone communications with improved pituitary function, or helping a child regulate their circadian rhythm using a sphenoid adjustment. Your hormones are communicators for your organs and help regulate all of your body activity. Blood sugar is also controlled by hormones known as glucagon and insulin. Blood pressure is controlled by aldosterone, and natriuretic hormones control kidney function. Our pituitary and adrenal glands are mostly responsible for coordinating all of these hormones to allow our organ systems to function the way they should. Reactive medicine would say to ignore these issues until you have a Kidney disease or need blood pressure medication. But why wait? Why not choose to prevent heart disease and kidney disease with preventative medicine?
So what does preventative care look like in the long term? Patients who received regular chiropractic visits during the year (average 14 visits per year, or about once a month) had the following results:
85% of patients used less pharmaceuticals (think of the money saved!)
62% less surgeries
59% less hospital stays
60% less hospital admissions (3).
Researchers also found that chiropractic care helps reduce the number or primary care visits for neck and back pain, resulting in an average Medicare savings of $83.5 million dollars a year (4).
Some might say it is silly to spend money on preventing illness, disease, and dysfunction, but I think it is more silly to wait. An ER visit alone can be thousands of dollars while a year of chiropractic care at our office can range from $300- $600. That is less than a monthly insurance premium! Spending a little money now can save you thousands later when surgery is prevented, ER visits prevented, antibiotics no longer needed, and allergy shots no longer necessary. Chiropractic is designed to give the power to the patient and support your body in all of its functions. Imagine what your life can be like when you take control of your health, instead of letting your health control you!
We hope to see you for preventative care before it turns into reactive care!
ADIO,
Dr. Super
References
Yates RG, Lamping DL, Abram NL, Wright C. Effects of chiropractic treatment on blood pressure and anxiety: a randomized, controlled trial. J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 1988 Dec;11(6):484-8. PMID: 3075649.
Froehle RM. Ear infection: a retrospective study examining improvement from chiropractic care and analyzing for influencing factors. J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 1996 Mar-Apr;19(3):169-77. PMID: 8728460.
Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics; May 2007, 30(4): 263-269. Richard L. Sarnat. MD, James Winterstein D.C., Jerrilyn A Cambron D.C. PhD.
Davis et al. 2015. Journal for the American Board of Family Medicine