Understanding What We Do

One of the major differences between the practice of chiropractic and that of a therapeutic approach such as medicine is the desire to have knowledgeable, understanding patients. The physician often neither wants nor cares for the patient to know everything that he is doing. This is not a criticism, it just reflects the two different approaches. It is not necessary for the patient to understand the medical approach. They are totally uninvolved with the process. The patient does not participate in the surgery, he or she just lies there. The patient merely swallows the medication. Everything is done by the doctor. The practice of medicine is performed on the patient or done for the patient.

Chiropractic is different.

Chiropractic is based upon the principle that the patient’s body does the healing. It maintains health and it actually makes the adjustment, using the force introduced into the spine by the chiropractor’s hands. Second, chiropractic is directed toward health and increasing one’s potential for an improved quality of life in all areas. Obviously, this takes cooperation on the part of the patient. We will adjust you so that you can get the maximum benefit from your exercise. But you still must do the exercise. We correct your subluxations so that your body, free of nerve interference, can get the maximum benefit from the food you eat. But we cannot eat the food for you. Chiropractic care is a cooperative effort, from the actual adjustment to the patient taking responsibility for being regular in his or her care.
The medical doctor thinks he is smarter than his patients so the patients should just do as they are told. The chiropractor works with your body’s innate intelligence which is smarter than all the chiropractors and medical doctors in the world put together. As a result, it is the chiropractor’s desire that you, the patient, learn more and more about the chiropractic way of life so that you can take a more active role in maintaining your health and directing your life and the chiropractor can step back and do the one thing he or she does best, which is correcting these subluxations whenever they occur.

To be a participant in chiropractic, it is imperative that you, the patient, understand as much as you can about chiropractic and the “above-down, inside-out” approach to health care. If this term is unfamiliar to you, please ask your chiropractor to explain its meaning. You see, we believe that people truly want to be knowledgeable about their life and health and not just be a bystander to what’s being done to them. We believe that you can see by now that the therapeutic approach has made us a drug-dependent, disease-fearful society and while it may have limited success in the treatment of disease, it has very little to do with health.