How often will I come back?

Consider this. After a few visits to the chiropractor you’re feeling fantastic and the days of living with daily pain are behind you. Great! Time to go back to normal life again. Then the chiropractor suggests booking you in for another adjustment in a few weeks or months time. Surely this isn’t necessary you tell yourself. My pain is gone and I’m feeling good, so why would I come back again? It’s quite challenging for many of us to shift our focus from fixing a problem to working on positively elevating our health and preventing future issues. But we do it with the dentist like clockwork twice a year. Why is this any different to getting your spine and body checked by a chiropractor?

We love seeing people back at our practice for wellness visits. This is the stage of care that you enter once the more ‘active’ approach is behind you. During active care, we focus on re-balancing your body with the goal of reducing any bothersome symptoms and improving your body’s function. Once we enter wellness care, our focus can shift to really improving your overall state of health without being too focused on pain and symptoms.

“The best adjustment happens on a pain-free body.”

People are often surprised to hear us say that the best adjustment happens on a pain-free body. But why? Think about this. If you come in with low back pain on your first visit, you are physically and mentally focused on your pain. Logical of course when something hurts. As your chiropractor, we are also empathic to your pain and our adjustment will be more focused to what’s going ‘wrong’ in your body and how we can correct it. This is very different when you come in for a wellness visit. If you have no pain and nothing to report, our job is to check over your whole body and ensure that everything is working as it should be. People often find this is a very thorough check-up of their whole body – literally from head to toe!

There is a great advantage to checking your body when there is no pain. First of all, your body is far more responsive to an adjustment when it’s not flooded with inflammation and in spasm as a result of pain. Your body is also very intelligent and learns from each adjustment. Many people who have been coming to chiropractors for years will know exactly what we’re talking about. Often a subtle tweak is all that’s needed to correct minor imbalances and get you moving and healthy again. Think of it like trying out a new sport. The first few times you will probably ache all over but over time your body becomes used to the new movements and you won’t feel that post-exercise burn anymore! Finally, and very importantly in todays climate - It makes far more financial sense to get checked and adjusted before symptoms have a chance to resurface. If you wait until symptoms return to book your next appointment, it is quite likely that we will need to start all over again with your active care. It’s the same with going to see your dentist. Far better to find minor cavities at a check-up than wait until they become full blown decay, right?

This is especially true when we start discussing chiropractic check-ups for children. We have a thriving practice of families who choose to bring their children in for regular check-ups once or twice a year as a way to preempt any issues, ensure their bodies are developing and growing healthily, and to realign any imbalances that may crop up. It’s a shame that this doesn’t happen routinely in the way that dental check-ups and GP visits do, but you can freely add in a chiropractic visit a couple of times a year if you choose to. There is absolutely no need to wait until there is a problem – on the contrary – the best adjustment happens on a painfree body, remember :-)

So what would a wellness visit look like for you? Well, the amount of time between wellness visits varies greatly depending on your age and personal situation. For someone with advanced arthritis for example, they may come for a check-up every couple of weeks. For an active child, they may only need to come in once or twice a year. For most of us the frequency tends to fall somewhere in-between. Personally, we check and adjust each other and our little boy every month or two, and more often if there is an issue. Feel free to ask your chiropractor what they would recommend for you the next time you come in :-)