Videos

As Mid-Missouri chiropractors, all too often we see patients who have re-injured themselves after returning too quickly to their workout regimen! At Tiger Family Chiropractic, we love an enthusiastic approach to physical fitness; however, there’s one mistake that people make that does more harm than good when trying to recover from a muscle injury: icing the affected area prior to the workout.

Why shouldn’t you ice your injuries before a workout?

When icing an area, you reduce inflammation and the muscle itself becomes cold and less flexible. Therefore, the likelihood of reinjuring or aggravating a minor injury becomes much higher.

We’re big fans of icing your injuries, just do it after your activity.

Instead of ice:

Prior to activity, consider warming the muscle — a warm shower or briskly rubbing the muscle.

Another thing to consider:

Remember to keep your posture in mind when you’re running on a treadmill, especially when using the incline function.

As we walk or run uphill, our bodies naturally lean forward. In the natural setting this typically poses no issue, as hills naturally level out, but on an indoor treadmill, some people use the incline function the entire workout. The change in your posture to bend slightly forward can really open the door to an injury, especially for your back!

If you are a treadmill user, we encourage you to pace your incline usage. Pick a reasonable amount of time. Go on a natural walk outside and see how long your inclines last and replicate those time periods in your indoor workouts. Increase your speed to get your heart rate up.

Of course, if you experience any pain or discomfort during your workout, you should stop immediately. If that’s the case, consider scheduling an appointment with an experienced, local chiropractic office. We have the perfect one in mind.

Your body naturally acts as its own defense system, working to remove any perceived threats. What may seem like an unhealthy reaction may be a totally normal response to the threat of infection or bacteria.

Coughing

Coughing is a healthy process that actually expels unwanted bacteria or objects. Your lungs are lined with tiny hairs, which trap and move bacteria upward. The bacteria travels up from the lungs to the throat, triggering a cough, which allows the bacteria to exit your body (imagine an elevator).

The average cough lasts about 18 days. While a cough may be annoying, in certain cases, the use of cough suppressants may actually prolong the process of getting well. Suppressants coat the tiny hairs, making them unable to move bacteria up and out of the throat. However, coughs can be unhealthy when they are chronic, so when in doubt, it is always best to consult a physician.

Fevers

It’s actually healthy to develop a fever. A fever occurs when your body raises its temperature to help kill off bacteria and viruses. When treating a general fever, consider that fever reducers may actually prolong sickness as they take your body temperature down, making it harder for your body to fight off the infection. It is important to note that a high frequency, or persistence of fevers, or fevers in infants can be dangerous and require medical treatment or assistance.

Vomiting

Yes! When you have ingested something your body shouldn’t be processing, vomiting is yet another way that your body expels unwanted materials. However, it can become unhealthy if dehydration occurs due to excessive vomiting.

Interested in keto? In this video Dr. Amanda explains the keto program and how your body actually achieves ketosis.

A ketogenic diet is made up of macronutrients, which include fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. The goal is for your daily intake to be low in carbohydrates and proteins, and high in fats. This means most of your daily intake, or 70-80%, are calories from foods that are fats. Think bacon grease or olives!

Ketosis is the process of your body burning fat for energy. While going through ketosis, your extra carbohydrates and proteins are taken to the liver, where the carbohydrates and proteins are processed into glycogen. Glycogen is the stored form of sugar, which your body uses for energy. Once your body uses up its stored glycogen, it will begin to burn fat.

As a result, intermittent fasting is a key element in keto diets. Fasting encourages your body to use up all of its stored glycogen and to burn off fat cells for energy in between meals, which can result in weight loss.

At first, it may be hard to achieve ketosis. If you feel frustrated because you are eating all the “right” foods but aren’t in ketosis, it is probably a reflection of past food habits. If your past diet was high in carbs or proteins, the stored glycogen levels will be much higher, and your body simply needs to burn through what is stored first. It is also important to consider that many resources point to low carbohydrate recipes. While low carbohydrate recipes can be keto, they aren’t necessarily always keto.

Like any program, it is important to look into and research the health benefits and effects of keto. Keto can be very successful for some, but for others it may not be the right program. Before making any major dietary changes, it is always best to consult a physician or nutritionist.

Dr. Amanda discusses everything you need to know about empty calories -- in under 10 minutes!

An empty calorie is another term for macronutrients, which come in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, or fats. Empty calories aren’t a strong source of energy unless they are paired with vitamins and minerals, known as micronutrients. Micronutrients include zinc, iron, magnesium, manganese, and copper.

Most of us have created daily dietary patterns of consuming and utilizing empty calories. For example, your morning latte from your favorite coffee shop is filled with carbohydrates and sugars. It gives you an energy boost, but there aren’t many micronutrients included.

Your body needs to use these calories for energy, but without the presence of micronutrients, the energy that is created from these calories will be weak. As a result, your body will begin to crave nourishment, and you will begin to feel hungry. Those with diets that are high in empty calories will end up eating more servings, more food per serving, and are generally hungrier, as their bodies are actually starving from nourishment.

Think of your body like your car. Your car needs the right fuel to run properly. Without the right fuel, your engine will still function, but not to the best of its ability.

So how do you avoid an empty calorie diet? Processed foods are a major source of empty calories. During the preservation process, foods are often stripped of their natural micronutrients and replaced with a chemical form of the micronutrients that are no longer living. Fast foods are another exhausting source of empty calories, as they lack the nutrients your body needs to create energy.

Foods like fruits and vegetables are rich in micronutrients. In moderation, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats are necessary to function at your best. An optimal diet is a balanced mix of macro and micronutrients.

If potty training is a point of contention between you and your little one, you’re not alone!

Did you know that chiropractic care is a tool that many people utilize to achieve great changes in bed-wetting, constipation, issues with holding the bladder, having bowel accidents, and everything related to bowel movements? Chiropractic care provides a natural and safe way to make a difference in your child’s life.

But here are some other tips that have worked for us:

  • Be open to discussion.
    Are you able to freely talk about bowel movements within your family? We realize that this topic might make you uncomfortable, but when you’re trying to instill habitual patterns in your child, keeping poop a taboo topic can contribute to issues with children not using the bathroom when they need to. Whether they think it’s something they shouldn’t do or they’ve had a painful bowel movement in the past, a lack of discussion on the topic makes it challenging for children.

    And remember, everyone poops.

  • Make it fun.
    Create a song for the restroom. Use it any and every time someone opens that bathroom door. Most important of all? Have fun with it! Try incorporating a dance and create a festive atmosphere around the process of using the bathroom. If you make this activity something fun and exciting, your child will naturally gravitate towards it.
  • Keep a clean environment.
    Keep your dirty diapers outside of your home or your bathroom. When you do have dirty diapers, flush most of the bowel movement down the toilet. Children will see this and think, “That’s where the poop goes.”

Do you know someone who can bend their thumb to their forearm? It’s very likely they are hypermobile.

While that makes for a cool party trick, there are some side effects to be aware of.

But first, how do you recognize hypermobility?
People who have hypermobility traditionally exhibit super flexibility. Another very common indicator is when an individual does the same “normal” activity that 10 other people do, but they walk away with an injury. Picture everyone doing the potato sack race, but this person feels like they’ve sprained their ankles the next day, while everyone else feels fine. Finally, surgical procedures, especially relating to the joint space, often either go poorly or the recovery doesn’t match what doctors anticipate.

What is hypermobility?
Hypermobility ultimately has to do with how the ligament is holding and protecting the joint space. The joint should naturally stop you from going too far into a motion before it causes an injury. Someone with hypermobility can move faster and further into a motion without any pull or resistance. Often that means they have a better range of motion in an activity, but easily have injuries occur in those spots.

If you have hypermobility, remember:

  • Physical activities and contact sports require an extra measure of caution.
  • Surgical procedures, especially involving joint spaces, require an extra measure of caution.

In terms of chiropractic care, is it possible for hyper mobile individuals to have subluxations?
A subluxation has to do with your spine where the bone gets jammed up tight where the joint space isn’t moving to its full potential. So is it possible for someone who is hyper mobile, whose joints move too much, to also be subluxated or ‘stuck’?

Yes!

Our bodies are dynamic. You can have one joint move too much and another that’s essentially stuck, especially along the spine.

At Tiger Family Chiropractic, we notice that hypermobile individuals are more aware of their subluxations. Often, they resort to stretching constantly. Their lost area of movement is especially noticeable.

If you have hypermobility, be wise with your choice of chiropractors. You want an office that’s familiar with the condition. If one spot is stuck, while other areas of the spine are hypermobile, you want a very refined, specific adjustment in order to recover and respond to your chiropractic care.

When someone has an injury, especially a muscle injury, people tend to ice the area. At Tiger Family Chiropractic, we think that’s great! However, try not to do this prior to your workout.

Why, you might ask?
When icing an area, you reduce inflammation, which is great; however, the muscle itself becomes cold and less flexible. Therefore, the likelihood of reinjuring or aggravating a minor injury becomes much higher.

In short, we’re big fans of icing your injuries. Just do it after your activity.

Instead of ice:
Prior to activity, consider warming the muscle -- a warm shower or briskly rubbing the muscle -- prior to any activity.

Another thing to consider:
Remember to keep your posture in mind when you’re running on a treadmill, especially when using the incline function.

As we walk or run uphill, our bodies naturally lean forward. In the natural setting this typically poses no issue, as hills naturally level out, but on an indoor treadmill some people use the incline function the entire workout. The change in your posture to bend slightly forward can really open the door to an injury, especially for your back!

If you are a treadmill user, we encourage you to pace your incline usage. Pick a reasonable amount of time. Go on a natural walk outside and see how long your inclines last and replicate those time periods in your indoor workouts. Increase your speed to get your heart rate up.

Safely keep the bugs at bay without all the nasty toxins.

If you’re like us, you have a home with mosquitos that run rampant outside. Early morning, afternoon, evening: it doesn’t matter. They’re everywhere!

Well, we have some tips.

Remember, mosquitoes are not attracted to light. They’re actually attracted to carbon dioxide. What we breathe out is what they track. Unless you’re holding your breath, they’re tracking you down. With that in mind, how do you get rid of them without spraying toxic chemicals?

Create your own wind! Mosquitoes are very weak fliers. If you’ll notice, they’re gone on especially windy days. What we’ve done in the past is take a couple box fans, or any fan that can go outside, and create our own little wind tunnel.

But what if you’re out moving around?

Connect to your local, natural stores. Whether you live in Columbia or somewhere else, there are typically several in-store natural mosquito repellent options to choose from. Our favorite is the insect repellant from Young Living Essential Oils, which is completely natural and safe for your family.

It might not seem super intuitive to think, “I have anxiety; I should visit a chiropractor.”, but, hopefully, after reading this you’ll feel differently.

Just think about it. Your brain uses the nervous system to communicate commands that result in action. One part of your nervous system is the sympathetic nervous system, or the SNS. This is the part of the nervous system responsible for handling your body’s instinct on fight or flight when you encounter a significant stressor or danger. Remember those lessons from school (when you encounter a stress your body decides to ‘fight the stress, or run from the stress’)?

Dangerous situations will increase your SNS activity, but so can stress.

When activated, SNS will increase your cortisol (a stress handling chemical), heart rate, blood pressure, and total lipids. Meanwhile, things like your digestion, serotonin production, short-term memory, and overall concentration take a nosedive.

In other words, the more active the SNS, the more likely you are to have declining health in a number of areas.

Whenever you have a subluxation (a misalignment in the spine), one of the many results is that your SNS activity is increased. In other words, the more subluxations you have, the more likely you are to have anxiety.

How can chiropractic care help?
Chiropractic care provides a natural, safe option in terms of changing the health of the chemistry inside your body. When people have anxiety, we encourage you to give chiropractic care a chance. Chiropractic patients report experience not only reduced anxiety but also pain relief, improved digestion, serotonin levels, and concentration, among other benefits.

Do you feel incredibly full after every meal? Food just sitting there, leaving you feeling bloated and without energy?

Consider adding in some B vitamins. Our body needs a ton of them in order to process the food we eat. When your body is trying to process macronutrients (carbohydrates, fats, and proteins), you require a number of various elements to convert those macros to particles that the mitochondria can convert to energy. The most common denominator between all those elements? B vitamins.

Where do you get B vitamins?

One great way to boost your B vitamin levels is to find whole food vitamins or supplements. Grocery stores, natural stores, and even the Tiger Family Chiropractic office can provide these to you. When looking, try to find a B complex rather than individual B vitamins by themselves.

One other option is liver. It’s chock full of B vitamins. While tastes differ, try working it into your diet for a completely natural way to boost your system.There are also liver vitamins available, so even if you dislike the taste but still like the idea of something completely natural, this is one avenue available.

You may remember from your childhood that one relative who was always harping on your posture. Maybe this felt like nagging, but it turns out there is some foundational health benefits related to your posture.

Previous studies have divided people into categories based on posture, and what they found was that the worse posture an individual exhibited, the more their health was compromised. Their vitality and overall experience in life was lessened due to a loss in posture over time.

However, posture isn’t as simple as it might seem.

A lot of people experience discomfort when they sit up tall and exhibit “proper posture.” This is your body talking to you.

Your body will naturally compensate to avoid pain. You may also notice that your posture worsens whenever you are especially engaged with something, like this video.

So, are posture bras a viable strategy?

Well, it’s important to remember that bracing has a short window of appropriate use. For example, during heavy lifting, a back brace is one option that could help for that one-time use. However, if heavy lifting is a daily activity, you’d be better off training. The more you use the back brace, the more you become dependent on it. Your body will actually stop making muscles in those areas.

This is similar to a posture corrective device. The more you wear it, the more you’re going to rely on it because your body stops maintaining muscle in the area being supported.

Instead, address the reason your posture is compensated. Create strategies in your home or work life to prevent you from being too long in a compromising position.

Otherwise, you may experience some less-than-desirable side effects.

Watch the video above to see Dr. Amanda walk through a real life x-ray example of how poor posture can lead to strange side effects like extra bone growth.

Dr Amanda discusses a topic that is important regarding health that people don’t often think about, “suck it in underwear”. It is a weird topic but there are many products like this on the market. They are clothing modifications that specifically suck or push your body in. As fabric technology advances these products have become more underwear like. But unlike underwear, when worn regularly, it behaves like a back brace. We need to be cautious because our bodies know when to do work and when they shouldn’t, based on what is going on around us. If you were to wear a back brace every day, your back would become weaker because the body wouldn’t think to strengthen those muscles because the work is already being done for it.

One of the things I love to tell clients is to get in the habit of flexing abs. It is important to keep the body in good structural alignment, even when doing everyday tasks like cleaning. If you twist your spine when turning to throw laundry in dryer, you could be injuring yourself. In this video I give tips on how to keep good structural alignment while doing everyday household chores.

In a normal delivery, the average amount of pressure on a baby’s head can be up to 70 lbs. After birth it is recommended to check for alignment in newborns. Young children learning to crawl and walk fall more in a week than an average adult does in a single year. With every fall a child can sustain what is called a micro trauma. In this video, I will explain the benefits of Chiropractic care for children.

Spring brings allergies and for many this is a miserable time of year. In this video I share techniques your Chiropractor can do, as well as what you can do to lessen the symptoms. Believe it or not your Chiropractor can adjust sinuses which can provide great relief.

At home there are many things you can do as well. In this video I share some tips that can help you enjoy the season.

Many patients have asked Dr. Amanda how she makes time in her busy schedule to get her hair so perfectly styled. In this video, Dr. Amanda shows you the secret to her “30-second hair.” This style is perfect for people who have trouble finding enough time in their busy schedules to make sure their hair stays in place all day long.

Dr. Amanda talks about sugar, how much we consume, and what affect it has on our body. She reveals just how much sugar is in soda and suggests a few good ways to replace sugar in our diet. She also reminds us that our bodies adapt to what we give it, so if we always eat sweetened things, we will crave more and more things that have been sweetened. Our bodies are not built to have daily large servings of sugar, and too much of it can cause many problems such as weight gain and diabetes.

Dr. Amanda takes time to explain the bones and joints in our spines and how the spine has a huge impact on the health of our bodies. She shows us every part of the spine and the body parts that interact directly with it. Dr. Amanda says that “every single nerve in your body goes through your spine before it goes anywhere else.” This means that if you do not have a healthy working spine, it could cause a variety of harmful symptoms to occur. Your spine is a “super highway” of communication in your body, so keeping it healthy is essential. 

Dr. Amanda addresses the concept of different treatment styles. She urges people to choose a style of treatment that helps their body relax. The first treatment style she demonstrates is adjustments for small children. She also discusses one particular style of instrumental care. The most detailed style she talks about is the “traditional style,” which are adjustments that make the “pop” sound that people are most familiar with. The “pop” is nitrogen leaving your joint space and is nothing to worry about. Finally, she goes over the treatment style that uses an adjustment table.

Dr. Amanda explains why our bodies naturally change to a poor posture position as we go through the day when we are sitting. She then talks about how important good posture is for our bodies by using three examples. First, the negative effects slouching has on our backs and shoulders. Next, how slouching and looking up at our work can cause a buildup of pressure in our necks and dizziness. Third, how slouching puts a great deal of pressure on the muscles and joints in your jaw. 

Dr. Amanda talks about the importance of getting up and moving around while we are working during our day. When we sit down to start our work day, our brain and body are interconnected and aware that we are sitting. But if we sit too long without moving, that communication between the two becomes lost.  When this happens, our body’s posture and alignment become compromised, which can cause all kinds of problems. In order to make sure our brain and body stay connected and keep our posture from deteriorating throughout the day, Dr. Amanda suggests that we simply stand up and sit back down once every 20 minutes. 

Dr. Amanda shows us an exercise that people can practice in order to lower the risk of getting carpel tunnel. Many people spend nearly eight hours a day at work with their hands partially flexed, which can result in many of the symptoms of carpel tunnel. These symptoms commonly start with damaged nerves. So, in order to lessen the risk of damaging these nerves, Dr. Amanda suggests people do the “Soup Can” exercise. The exercise is very easy to do, and all you need is a flat surface as long as your forearm and a light item the size of a soup can. Doing this exercise will strengthen the muscles around the at-risk nerves in your wrists and hands.

Dr. Amanda discusses the importance of drinking enough water in our daily lives and how doing so can make our backs better. She discusses two main concepts that apply to this. The first is: “In order for your body to get rid of inflammation, it has to have somewhere to go.” There are a lot of different chemicals in our bodies that can cause inflammation. Drinking water allows our bodies to flush out these chemicals, which leads to better health and less pain throughout the whole body. Pure water is the absolute best way to do this, and other things like Gatorade or energy drinks will be much less effective. The second concept she discusses is “the cushions or discs that are in between the bones in your back which are made up of mostly water.” This is important because our bodies are constantly putting pressure on these discs, and in order to keep them working correctly, they need nutrients. Our body uses the water we drink to refresh the discs in our back with the nutrients they need.

Hi, this is Dr. Amanda with Tiger Family Chiropractic and Wellness Center. I just wanted to start off, as always, sharing that I am not intending to diagnose or change any treatment that you may have in sharing this information with you today. It is simply something that we hope will help improve your life!

What I wanted to talk about today is the concept of getting into and out of your car and how that can impact your alignment. Especially for a person who has a condition that is going to cause some increases in severe pain, we want you to be aware of moving in your everyday activities in ways that help to keep your alignment in place and help to decrease the impact of pain on your body as you are moving around. One thing we keep in mind is that when you keep your body in a consistent frame, it’s stronger. What I mean by that is when your shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles all make a straight line, your body is in a stronger position, versus when you’re twisting, bending and things of that nature.

One of the places that people tend to cause some misalignments, or even cause increases in pain they already have, happens to be how they get into and out of their car. So, we are going to pretend this is a car for demonstration purposes. It is pretty simple in terms of the concept. You want to get into your car keeping that frame as together as possible. So, I am going to sit down and then I’m going to twist both legs together with my hands assisting me so that I get into the car as a unit, as opposed to kind of crawling and shifting into the car one leg at a time. It is a very simple, small thing that we can do in our everyday lives to help make sure that our bodies withstand a condition that is currently uncomfortable and hopefully prevents loss of alignment as well.

Hope you are having a great day and thank you for joining me!

Hi, this is Dr. Amanda with Tiger Family Chiropractic and Wellness center. I wanted to start today as I always do, sharing with you that-with this information I am not intending to change or imply a diagnosis or treatment of any particular kind. Just sharing information that we hope will improve your life and make it better.

What we are going to talk about today is what I call a “work envelope.” Work envelopes are going to be your immediate work station space. There are ergonomic things we should consider and ergonomics is the topic that has grown in popularity and greatly over the years. This is specific to how far your tools are away from you in your work station. This is a standing station behind me so we are going to utilize that for some thoughts or references, but overall this is something that could apply to a standing or a seated workstation. We have is what’s called the first work envelope and what I recommend is you relax your shoulders to your side and tuck your elbows into your side and move your hands gently back and forth. In this area, you have your first work envelope and this is where you should be able to reach 90% of what you’re going to use in your daily work routine and what we want for this is your keyboard and mouse to be nice and close to you in that work envelope because if you’re constantly reaching for your mouse (it’s over here) but your keyboard is (over there) you’re going to distort the upper part of your body over and over again in your normal work routine and that intern could lead into some issues relating to pain and discomfort.

Your second work envelope is just an extension of your first work envelope and it’s the things that if you extended your arms all the way out and move them back and forth this would be the ancillary things you use in your day. Maybe you use it occasionally, but it’s not part of your normal consistent routine of tools that you have on hand. Things that are in your second work envelope, maybe your stapler, my hole punch, anything else that relates to organization- they’re going to be (out here) and my immediate things, my mouse and keyboard are going to be nice and close.

You can analyze your workstation at home and move some things around. If you have a laptop-this is super, super common now and people are doing work from home, they are sitting on a laptop, there is no way to make that perfect in terms of ergonomic because you’re either going to have your arms (up here) typing and looking straight ahead or have your head down (like this) with your keyboard sitting in your lap. I strongly encourage anyone who has a laptop for consistent use of work to get an external keyboard, they can Bluetooth or plug in with a cable but really you want to have your monitor in a position where you could look straight ahead and see it. So your head isn’t’ tilted down, up, right, or left you want it straight out in front of you. You can stack up a couple books if you need to or put it on your coffee table and have that external keyboard on your lap instead of curling your whole body over and compromising your posture consistently. These are just a couple tips and tools that will help you have a healthier work environment.

Hi, this is Dr. Amanda again from Tiger Family Chiropractic. Again, I wanted to share some information with you today that I hope will be helpful for improving your life. And as always I want to share that this is not to be any form of diagnosis or treatment or to replace a treatment that you sought out just some information that hopes to help make your life better.

And so one thing that we keep in mind is that many mamas when they get pregnant they actually end up having separation in the abdominal muscles. And we call that a diastasis. If you can picture for me the abs should be together just like this but, over time during pregnancy, it’s going to cause separation to occur for most people. And what’s really interesting is if we don’t fix that it will stay separated and this is important because your abs are part of the core which stabilizes your back and whole body to stay strong.

So, what I wanted to share with you or teach today is just a self-check that you can do at home to see if that diastasis is present. Pregnancy is an example of how it can occur but not the only reason. It can be happening to people who are small of frame, large of frame, someone who’s really physically active, or someone who is very sedentary.  So, this is something that is really good to know about your body but not something we check on a regular basis about ourselves but, it’s super simple to find out. So, what you want to do is lay like this. You’re going to end up doing a little sit up or crunch while feel your stomach along the midline. And what you’ll often feel if there is a diastasis present is when you’re pushing down on your stomach as you do a sit up you will feel two muscles pushing together on the sides and relaxing away when you lay back down, the muscles push in and go back out.  You can feel a rivet a space in between those muscles you would have a diastasis. I’m going to push on my stomach do a sit up and come back down, a little sit up and come back down.  And as you can see I’m moving my hands down a little bit as I do it lower down into my tummy. I usually go about two inches above the belly button and two inches below the belly button to check this. So, if you find that you have a diastasis then there are certainly great exercises available and your chiropractor can talk to about that as well. It’s something that I think that if you can adjust it your core is going to be stronger and will improve the health of your life.

So, as always I want to thank you for spending time with us and take care.

Hi, this is Dr. Amanda with Tiger Family Chiropractic & Wellness Center. Thank you for spending time with us today I did want to start with a reminder always that any information shared is never to replace a care provider’s recommendations, or to diagnosis or offer treatment. These are simply some words that I hope will improve your quality of life or allow you to implement something that will make life better for you.

I did want to share some information about specifically what makes our office different or what we are focusing on when we meet patients and when we find someone to join the patient practice and become a patient in our office. One thing that we really feel is important, is to sit down with an individual and have a conversation and learn about what they need, where their areas of health are to improve, what the goals are and to find out just what is important to them in a relationship when they look for a healthcare provider. So, that’s how we are going to start off with each of our new patient exams is to sit down and have a great discussion. We then feel the importance of an exam is imperative. We want to get great information by putting together the pieces of the puzzle from what you tell us, what we can see, and then by evaluating those two things we can determine whether or not we would need an x-ray of your spine. So we have what you tell us, what we can see, and what we can find with analysis through x-ray. Those things put together allow us to have the opportunity to create the best care plan for what will help you to achieve your health goals. So, in our examination we are very thorough, we do a full physical examination, neurological exam, orthopedic evaluation and chiropractic evaluation. We just want to get lots of details and for doctors, the more information we can gather in that time, the more pieces of the puzzle will fit in place and the better the overall experience will be.

So, after we do all of this information gathering, that’s everything we do with our patients that day. We then invite our patients to come back for a follow-up visit prior to starting treatment because for our side we need to analyze all the information collected to provide an appropriate care plan for you. That takes us quite a bit of time. We want to add all those pieces and elements together so that we can make the right decision and recommendations for what you need for your health. From the patient perspective at that time you have already been with us quite a while that day and you’re probably ready to get on with your day.

On your second visit to our office, we will sit down again and have a really important conversation about both what we found, how we can help, what our recommendations are for your care. Our staff will sit down with you as well and talk about any financial obligations there will be with care and they will answer your questions on scheduling concerns. We really try to ensure that the consent process for you to start care is respected and you have the opportunity to think about it. Then if you’re ready we go ahead and start you with treatment that day.

Keep in mind there are many forms and styles of chiropractic treatment. We love for patients to choose the right method that fits them. As we provide care we are going to ask for feedback on how comfortable you are with receiving care and we’ll make modifications based on how you are doing. Thank you for spending time with me today! We encourage you to ask questions or call with concerns. We appreciate your time! Thank you very much and take care!

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