Chiro- Maintenance Care

~~I have actively recommended maintenance chiropractic care to all of my patients for that last 30 years. I also practice what I preach. I am adjusted regularly. I do this not due to my having any specific pain or complaint. No, I am adjusted regularly and recommend this practice to my patients so that they and I remain healthy and well. I want my nervous system, my skeletal system, and my muscular system to function correctly. By having proper nerve function, I am also attaining the best possible function of every organ that those nerves supply. This is something that I was taught throughout my doctoral education. Once I graduated it was just a natural recommendation that I had with every patient that I treated throughout my career. As a matter of fact when I encountered a patient, especially early on in my career, who did not comprehend the significant health benefits of lifetime chiropractic maintenance care, it just didn't compute in my mind. I would begin to question whether I did something wrong in my conversation or the education that I was able to impart to that particular patient during their acute, and rehabilitative care. Why did they have a "disconnect" when it came time for them to graduate to maintenance care? I would wonder if perhaps they have a concept that there just was not enough benefit to a periodic adjustment. I would wonder, even though this was incomprehensible to me, if perhaps in some perverted way this patient would honestly believe that this was some despicable sales gimmick on my part to "just keep that patient coming back." This, in spite of the fact that I could never bring myself to do something so unethical, immoral, and just plain wrong in the care of any of my patients.  
 
For years I would read periodic studies that would tout the benefits of periodic maintenance chiropractic adjustments. It was not until recently that I was exposed to a referenced journal article which at least from the musculoskeletal standpoint makes the case for routine maintenance adjustments. This particular blinded, placebo controlled research study was published in the orthopedic spinal journal "Spine". This particular article was published in August of 2011.
 
The study used two separate patient groups. The 60 patients in this study were separated into 3 groups. The first group received 12 "sham" (fake) adjustments. The second group received 12 adjustments over a one month period, but no adjustments after that. The third group received the same 12 adjustments over a one month period. This group however received adjustments on a maintenance schedule every 2 weeks for the next 9 months.
The patients were evaluated using pain and disability assessments and a number of other patient assessment tests at 1, 4, 7, and 10 month intervals.
 
The results were extremely validating to the concept of maintenance chiropractic care. You see, in the first group, obviously there was little to no improvement. At the end of the first month of care the second and third groups made significant improvement.
 
The truly validating findings however, were the differences at month ten between the second and third groups. You see the second group by month ten demonstrated a return to virtually the same pain and disability that they had experienced before they initiated their spinal adjustment care. While the third group, those that underwent maintenance adjustments every 2 weeks for the remaining 9 month period of the study demonstrated even more improvement in pain and disability scores at month ten.  
 
The researchers' conclusions were that not only are spinal adjustments effective for the treatment of chronic lower back pain (that's a no-brainer), but "to obtain long term benefit, this study suggests maintenance" spinal adjustments after the initial intensive care period.
 
So there it is Gang! Maintenance Chiropractic Care is the answer to the recurrences of problems whether those problems are neurologic, skeletal, or muscular in nature. For those of you who are under maintenance care in our office, kudos to you! If you were undergoing maintenance care and fell off the wagon, which has been known to happen at times when "life gets in the way"; give us a call and resume your "life preserving" maintenance care. For those of you who never decided that maintenance care "was for you", I will invite you to reconsider your decision. You see if you "just let it go" you will invariably end up like group number two did in this study. We will always gladly welcome you back to our office for care once your condition returns. Unfortunately, in most instances we will have to once again go through a treatment plan similar to what we had gone through previously. If I can recommend anything to those of you who fall into this last group, it would be to initiate care as soon as you can. In this way we may prevent you from having to go through the same acute care treatment plan that we went through together previously.
 
I thank you for being a part of the growing group of satisfied patients who truly understand the importance of Maintaining their spinal health and wellness. They also recognize that by doing this, they are truly supporting the health and wellness of every gland, organ, and tissue in their body.
  
Dr. Pfeiffer's "Think Right"
"Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and
killing ourselves to get it."