Welcome to the Summer Edition of Chiro Chat for 2023/24.
In this edition we are explaining why we see you every 4 weeks.
If you’ve reached the maintenance stage of your Chiropractic care, and now come in for wellness or maintenance adjustments, you most likely now get an adjustment once a month, some patients will see us slightly sooner at 3 weeks, and a few go a week or so longer. Have you ever wondered why we adjust your spine once every 4 weeks or so? It’s amazing how often we hear patients say at the adjustment “I’m definitely due for this”, or “I’ve been waiting for this for the past week”. So why don’t we check you at 2 weekly intervals on maintenance care, or every 3 months, or even 6 monthly? Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret, the human body cycles work on roughly a “monthly” basis. The female monthly reproductive cycle is the easiest example of this, but let’s look at other systems of the body. If you are a blood donor, following a donation at the blood bank, guess how long your circulatory system takes to replenish your red blood cells back to normal levels again?- roughly 4 weeks.
If we look a little closer to home in the Chiropractic world, let’s look at the musculo-skeletal system. Most ankle ligament sprains take between 2-6 weeks to heal with an average of, you guessed it, 4 weeks. A skeletal fracture takes, yep, 4 to 6 weeks to heal. So you can see the common pattern here, but what does that have to do with your adjustments? Well, the purpose of maintenance adjustments, besides ensuring the spinal joints move correctly and the nervous system is working at its best capacity, is to try and prevent or at least slow the natural progression of joint degeneration (you may know it better as arthritis) that unfortunately we are all susceptible to.
A study was done on rats whereby one group of rats received a gentle adjustment daily over a one month period through the application by a gentle instrument and the control group received no adjustments. At the end of the month both groups were X-Rayed, the adjustment group showed no signs of spinal degeneration worsening, however the control group who received no adjustments showed microscopic calcific changes to the bone structure, suggestive of increased degeneration, and that was over a 4 week period. Our focus as Chiropractors is to try and prevent, or at a minimum, aim to slow an accelerated degenerative process which is often brought on by altered joint mechanics, caused by our daily postural stresses, routines and bad habits. That’s why we feel monthly maintenance Chiropractic care is a valuable tool for ” the future you”. We are treating you now, for the “you” in 10 or 20 years time. So if you’ve been keeping up with your monthly maintenance adjustments, the “future you” thanks you- fantastic work!
Written by Dr Mark Whitfield.
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