Acute/initial Chiropractic treatment
Understanding your pains/symptoms
You probably have not considered your pain or symptoms like this, but a simple way to understand your problem is to consider it like having toothache. Just as tooth symptoms vary from mild to severe, so too do mechanical symptoms.
- Severe abscess + extraction = surgery is needed for your problem. In this case we will refer you.
- Tooth abscess = severe pain and symptoms all the time.
- Toothache = pain all the time but less than in 2 above.
- Mild toothache = discomfort all the time.
- Hole in the tooth with pain/sensitivity with hot or cold = pain or symptoms such as stiffness that comes on with doing certain activities (e.g. sitting, driving, when you get up)
- Plaque on your teeth and they feel 'fury' = very little pain/mild discomfort just stiff and 'not right'.
- You feel back to your normal self.
- You feel well but go for a dental check up, removal of tartar and polish. The chiropractic equivalent is a vertebral manipulation/adjustment which is the spinal equivalent of 'descaling'. It aims to improve any loss of vertebral mobility which could be a cause of pain later on. At the very least many of our patients just report to feel much mobile and better able to cope with everyday activities with the occasional check up.
To get you well again, your Chiropractor will address your as a three stage process:
- Think of stage 1-3 above as acute treatment (getting you out of pain)
- Think of stage 4-6 above as corrective treatment (re-training your muscles, joints etc.... to work as they should, if required)
- Think off stage 8 as elective check ups.
If you come to us at stage 2/3, and we consider your problem suitable for chiropractic treatment we expect you to progress with treatment to stage 6/7. Of course if you come in at stage 5, then you should only have to pass through 2 stages until you start to feel well again. How quick you progress also depends on whether you are a Type A or Type B patient.
Type A patient
Your pains or symptoms have not been there for very long. This can be from a day or so to a few weeks. Often this will be the first episode of pain for you and you have consulted someone like us straight away, or perhaps it has been years since you have had a problem here or elsewhere in your body. This type of problem generally does not have many tissue changes-muscle imbalances, permanent damage or Osteoarthritis. It also is less likely to need much corrective care.
Exception to Type A patient
Your pain may not have been with you for very long and so you may think it shouldn't take much time to go. For some patients this is quite true but the reality for some is that pain is the last thing to occur after numerous physical changes in your body. Your body can be very good at adapting to keep you out of pain for as long as possible.
For example:
- A sudden heart attack (chest pain) is often the first sign that your arteries are badly clogged up. This of course occurs over many years.
- Tooth pain can be due to a hole in the tooth. It can take a long time to develop before eventually reaching the nerve in the centre of your tooth which causes pain. Very much like domino's toppling over, the pain you feel is often like the last domino to fall. In order to achieve long-term stability the WellBeing approach is to address all the changes (all the toppled domino's) that have finally lead to your pain.
For this reason we recommend a programme of care that is tailor-made to you, taking into consideration your problems and your lifestyle. In so doing, we try to address any underlying cause(s) of your pain. By altering/correcting as many of these causes as we can (toppled domino's) we aim to help try to prevent a relapse.
Type B patient
Type B patient
Pains that have been there for longer than a few weeks or that have come and gone over the previous weeks, months or years and have finally got bad enough to affect your life e.g. sleeping, sitting, working or playing with your children. You are fed up with struggling against your pain and restricted activities and now you have decided that it is the time to do something about it.
How often will you need to see us?
Our aim is to get you out of pain as quickly as possible - this is normally what you want too. With this in mind, your treatments are closer together in order to get the maximum results as quickly as possible. Once you are feeling better, you can then enter your next phase of treatment (if you need this), the corrective treatment phase. A typical acute/initial treatment plan could be 3 -6 visits over a 2-4 week period. Clinically we often find treatments grouped closer together gets faster results. We appreciate that finances, time, work and family constraints often mean that you cannot always commit to the fastest plan. We, of course, can work with what you are able to do.
Many patients feel an improvement in their pains immediately whilst others start to feel different after 2/3 visits. The important thing is not to worry; you are in expert hands (no pun intended!) Its quite normal for some people to feel some soreness. Don't worry!, it is perfectly normal as your body gets used to the changes it has been asked to make - the soreness should subside within 1-2 days of treatment. Of course, if you are concerned contact us we would rather hear from you than have you worry. Equally if you think of something you wish you'd asked during your visit, just pick up the phone and call. Alternatively you can email us if this is more convenient. We will aim to reply within one working day.