Welcome to my all too infrequent blog.
I was reading an article today that stirred me to finally sit down to write my thoughts about a recurring patient question throughout my career. The question repeated, ad infinitum, is, “But I don’t have any pain, why do I need to be adjusted?”
The article I was reading was headlined “Major League Baseball Pitchers Depend on Chiropractic”. The gist of the article was how professional and amateur baseball pitchers value chiropractic care not only for when they are on the field but also off the field.
While chiropractic in professional sports, in itself is not really that unusual, nearly all professional sports teams have chiropractors on staff these days. But, after reading the article it did a great job of answering a question asked by so many after they have received relief and corrective care. That question is, “But there’s no more pain, why do I need to keep getting adjusted?”
In my opinion it actually starts way back during the infancy of our country. As we expanded west many pioneers were reasonably isolated on their homesteads or farms. There were no convenient roads, usually little better than dirt or mud paths, for speedy cars to travel on, just a horse with or without a wagon or buggy, traveling for hours not just a simple few minutes, to a physician who typically took care of everyone for miles around the town, with no guarantee that doctor would be at his home or office (usually they were combined) when you finally arrived. There were no phones to call ahead, certainly no cell phones or smart phones. There wasn’t even a telegraph, yet, for all the good that would have been to an individual farming homesteader. There were no trauma centers, community clinics, hospitals, crisis care centers, or even a Walgreen, CVS, or Rexall to be had on the way. There was no 911 system or ambulances. It was just you and your family, your horse and wagon, distance, time, and the elements.
A trip to the nearest town could take as much as a couple hours to the greater part of a day. Frequently, most of the smaller towns didn’t even have a physician, and if it did the doctor was spread pretty thin covering such a large region around the established town. Since the doctor wasn’t opposed to making house calls in those days, and did so routinely, it is conceivable that he or she would be out of town on a call while someone else needed medical care who took the time to ride into town.
My point is to illustrate where the mentality of our culture’s tendency to not seek out health care developed. The pure inconvenience of a trip to the doctor was huge, unless one was significantly compromised in his or her ability to work the farm or in an obvious state of ill health. One simply worked the homestead until it was near impossible to do so. They dealt with the malady as long as they could provide for their survival.
Culturally we tend to be that way. We continue to do things or act with certain behaviors simply because the previous generation did it that way.
This stoic attitude about getting care for ourselves continues to this day in many families, especially the men. I see it in my practice all the time. Conditions of compromised health that could have been easily remedied when the individual first became aware of the early signs or symptoms instead will take much more effort and time, and possibly a temporary, maybe a permanent, change in lifestyle to remedy now that they have finally decided it was impeding on their life too much. The primary excuse for delay is usually, “I thought it would go away”, or “I didn’t have the time”, or “I can still do most things I use to do”.
Kind of sounds like the pioneering homesteader saying, “Someone’s got to take care of the farm, I’ll get it looked after later”. Doesn’t it?
So, why would someone seek out Chiropractic care if they “ain’t hurtin’ so bad, yet”?
Because they want to be their best, function at their peak potential, handle the stuff our world can throw at them better, heal faster, rest more deeply; just be better humans being.
That’s what many athletes from many different sports have discovered about Chiropractic. That was the main take away from the article I was reading that prompted me to sit down and write about it.
The value of Chiropractic is obvious in contact sports such as football and hockey, where the athlete is frequently and repeatedly knocked about sometimes violently. Getting Chiropractic care for this type of activity seems smart, especially so with a cultural attitude of “don’t fix it if it isn’t broke”. But, it is far less obvious in so-called non-contact sports, although I’ve seen some pretty good contact in baseball and basketball.
Let’s take golf as an example. There’s not a whole bunch of contact in that sport, but for several decades golfers have used Chiropractic. Golfers discovered much earlier than many other athletes the importance of performing to one’s full potential. The fine muscle skills required in efficiently swinging a golf club to hit a ball in the most desired direction is paramount in golf. Professional golfers realized that efficient joint motion, muscle balance and control, was orchestrated by an effective functioning nervous system.
Also, about the same time the golfing world was discovering Chiropractic, similar enlightenment was happening in the Olympics. Athletes from many different segments of the wide range of Olympic sports began asking for chiropractors to be part of the health care and conditioning team that services all American participants. Why? Because they were discovering faster recovery times after practices and events under Chiropractic care. They began seeing subtle, but definitive, improvement in their event performances when including Chiropractic as part of their care.
For similar reasons many of the stars of television and the big screen seek out Chiropractic to improve their performance and stamina during long hours and sometimes tough conditions.
So, for some time now, the world of sports and celebrity have been aware, and enjoyed, the benefits Chiropractic has given them in each of their chosen sport or art. Not only after the game, for injury recovery, but for general recovery even when not injured. They also enjoy the benefits of Chiropractic in pre-game settings, realizing they are more injury resistant, perform better, and heal faster when injured.
The celebrities benefit equally realizing the stress and demands of stardom cause their bodies to fatigue faster resulting in less than effective performances and behaviors. Chiropractic, they’ve discovered, helps them be all around higher performing individuals in their personal lives and their art.
Peak performance, at all times, is the athletes’ and celebrities’ primary goal for receiving Chiropractic care.
And yet this concept continues to be lost on the general public, in large part because we have inherited an attitude of “I’m fine. It’s only a scratch”.
What kind of world would it be if people discovered they and their fellow humans being were less irritable, less tired, more tolerant, had more stamina, were more effective, committed fewer mistakes at work or at home, and still had some gas in the tank for the family after work? When we’re not able to function at 100% of our potential our ability to perform suffers, impacting our performance, increasing our chance for mistakes to happen, effecting our confidence and mental attitude, draining us of energy… you get my drift. It makes for a bad day that we don’t enjoy, and those around become affected as a result. Left unchallenged the chain of events, ever so slightly, spirals downward leaving us feeling chronically drained and less enthused about our lives and the world around us.
There are very few studies on the impact Chiropractic adjusting has on our moods and attitudes, but I can tell you a very common observance of patients under going care for some other condition report, at some point, how their overall sense of well being has improved as well. The anecdotal evidence from sports and celebrity confirm this.
So, why should someone continue, or start for that matter, Chiropractic care even if they have no pain?
As a chiropractor I can list tens of clinical reasons to continue their care or start their care. Reasons like, maintaining improved joint motion, assuring muscle that were out of balance remain balanced, improved communication of the controlling nervous system and the organ, blood vessels and glands of the body, and so forth.
As a Chiropractic patient myself, it is to be the best I can be, not only help in maintaining an expression of good health, but the expression of my full potential.
Your health is a choice. You can choose to do what you can for your greater potential and minimize our increasingly stressful world’s effect on you, or you can choose to keep doing things the way you have always done it. But, where will that get you in the long run? I certainly don’t know, but taking a look at how your parents and grandparents lived out their lives is sure to be a good indication.
The value of Chiropractic care isn’t in the effectiveness it has for pain relief, although it does a real good job of that. The value of Chiropractic is in its ability to help bring out the best of us, our full potential.
Written by Dr. Curtis Baird, Chiropractor & Internal Health Specialist