What is Our Role?

Wrapping up my third month in practice recently was a real treat!  The clinic is growing weekly with new referrals from previous patients and marketing efforts aimed at getting the word out are finally coming to fruition.  It is amazing what happens when you focus on solving problems versus selling a protocol.

I recently gave a talk at Boise Cascade, a timber and paper company, to help explain my approach to patient care and to give insight into when traditional chiropractic adjusting is appropriate and how it can be used to inappropriately create dependency for the adjustment.  

Many folks in the crowd were long time users of traditional chiropractic.  There was some eyebrows raised when I told them there is more to chiropractic than simply adjusting the spine for every condition.

It was evident that there has been a lot of DC's in Boise pushing subluxation theory on patients.  The claim of better nerve flow for optimum health has been the hallmark for many successful clinics in town.  From my perspective of wellness obtained through fitness, I have some reservations in building a practice this way because it falsely represents the reality of what's going on when a person gets adjusted.

I continued by explaining that most conditions require a fair amount of myofascial release and rehabilitation of dormant motor programs instead of simply adjusting the area over and over.  I explained how our dominant movement patterns throughout the day set us up for dysfunction because of adaptation of soft tissues.  I then explained the force-couple relationship involved with overactive muscle groups and the risk of demanding excessive loads through "rare" activities, such as: skiing and snow boarding with such dysfunction.  It was wordy but they were deeply interested.

The intention of explaining things logically to this crowd was purely educational and objective.  I told them I don't adjust every condition and the assessment approach I use helps depict what tissues are causing the restricted motion.  I explained how traditional chiropractic adjusting creates movement to the deeper musculoskeletal structures such as: the ligaments, joint capsules and surrounding stabilizer muscles.  I then helped explain how some conditions are myofascial and using traditional adjusting on these problems will not completely solve the issue.  I told them, this is where dependency on traditional manipulation is established.  I ended with explaining how it is no different than PT's using exercises as the only tool to fix problems or MD's focusing on medication only.  We must be versatile.

If our role is to be technicians that merely provide adjustments to patients, I feel we are doing a great disservice to the community.  If we focus on getting patients better, our clinics grow because that is what they want - results.

All for now,

Dr. Spangler
Trailhead Chiropractic