A doctor with a good table side manner. What’s that mean? They should be talking to you like you are a person and not a problem to be solved, or a wallet to be drained. They should want to know what you are experiencing and where in your body it’s happening. Myself, I like having fun, so I’m being serious at the same time putting my patient at ease by educating them about what they are sharing with me and how we’re going to address their issues.
There should be analysis of your spine, the whole thing, not just where you said you had pain or whatever. Top to bottom, the doctor should be palpating (feeling with the middle finger tips, they are also called the chiropractic index finger) your Atlas, Axis, and the other vertebrae of your spine. To be able to make specific adjustments there should be specific analysis, you can’t have one without the other.
After the analysis, usually done with you sitting upright on the table, you’ll be asked to lie face down. Depending on the analysis and adjusting technique the doctor is using, and they should be able to tell you what technique they are using, they will start to make a few adjustments and with these there should be more analysis done to check and see if what they did was effective in achieving a positive result. What’s a positive result? Popping of the joint? Not necessarily.
Specific analysis can lead to an adjustment that happens with very little to no force and the bone seeming to move one its own. Oftentimes the amount of force is just enough to get the table to drop (if a drop table is being used in the technique) and as the patient you won’t even feel that anything other than the table dropping. The positive result will be you feeling a drop in pressure, diminished pain levels, overall relief. You’ll know it was good when it happens.
Something to look out for when you seek out chiropractic care, THE FLYING SEVENS. You’ll know it when you feel it or have already had this done to you. No analysis, you lie face down, they push three times down your back, you lay on one side and then pop the hip, flip, pop the other, lie face up and they crank your neck both left and right and make it pop a lot. This is called GLOBAL MOBILIZATION, just what it sounds like, everything is moved whether it needs it or not.
Then they tell you to put some heat or ice on it and come back next week, and they do it all the same again. No analysis while making as many things make as much noise as possible, and if it didn’t pop, use more force to make it make noise. It’s this type of thing that makes people say that chiropractic doesn’t work or is quackery. Because it isn’t chiropractic, it’s just manipulation with no direction.
When you get this for a while you should start to realize that you are not getting any better, you just plateau and nothing changes. Specific analysis and adjusting will yield positive results you can feel in the moment, hours later, and feel like things are even getting better days later. Continued specific care will get you to the point of feeling great and like you never had the issue to begin with. You also won’t need to use heat or ice since the adjusting of the joint were as they should be and not jamming the bones into one another randomly.
Give us a try, find out for yourself, and live a better life without issues. Schedule your FREE Movement and Function Assessment at 3318chiro.janeapp.com