Hi, my name is Dr. Katie Sleigh with Sleigh Family Chiropractic and today we’re going to be talking about how we in this office help patients to eliminate neck pain.
Getting Your Health History
The first thing and one of the most important things we do on the initial visit is take a thorough history. So this is when you would sit down with the doctor and the doctor would basically listen to your story. So they’re going to be asking questions about when your pain started, how it started, what it feels like, just to get a good idea of exactly what’s going on.
Neck Pain Evaluation
From there, the doctor would recommend an evaluation, that evaluation is designed to determine the root cause of what’s causing your pain. And really, what we look for the foundation of what we look for here in the office is what we call subluxation. So what we know is that the brain controls every single thing that happens in the body through the nervous system, which is this up and down yellow line, the spinal cord that goes through all the bones in the spine, and then branches the spinal nerves which go to every single cell tissue, muscle and organ in the body. What we look for as chiropractors are those subluxation. So those are the red blocks up here on this on this poster. And what that is, is it’s an area of the spine that’s either not aligned correctly or not moving properly, that puts pressure on the nerve and stops that are from working like it’s supposed to. So when that nerve is not working like it’s supposed to, especially in the vertebrae up in the neck, a very common result is neck pain. So the first part of our evaluation is going to be palpation. So that’s where we’re going to feel the spine and feel where the joints are moving properly or not moving properly. Then the next thing that we’re going to do our posture pictures, and what we’re going to be looking for on these are imbalances in posture. So we always say postures the window to the spine. So when we see imbalances in posture, it gives us a good idea of where things are out of alignment in the spine as well. So we’re going to be looking for things like head tilt from side to side, we’re also going to be looking at posture from the side, we’re going to look at the alignment of that year being directly over the shoulder is the ideal. And when the head shifts forward in front of there, it tends to put a lot more pressure and stress on the neck, which is a very big contributor to neck pain.
Subluxation Scans
The next part of the evaluation is our insight subluxation station scans. These are a computerized objective way for us to measure how that nerve system is working. So the first scan that we will typically do is our pair of spinal thermography scan, which is going to be looking for inflammation in the joints along the spine. And when it relates to neck pain, we’re going to especially be looking at inflammation in the neck and in the upper back. And then the next scan that we’re going to do is going to be a surface EMG scan. What that scan is going to be looking for is how the muscles are working that support your spine. Then we will move on to taking some X rays. So we do have digital X ray on site here at Slate Family Chiropractic. Digital X ray will reduce exposure and it also gives us results very, very quickly. We’re going to take x rays on most adult patients, but we do take it on a case by case basis. The X rays are very important to us, especially when treating neck pain. The reason for that is that we can see a lot of things on X rays that we can’t necessarily feel. And those things will oftentimes affect where we adjust where we don’t adjust how we adjust or how we shouldn’t adjust. So those x rays, what we’re going to be looking for is alignment in the actual vertebrae of the neck. And we are also going to be looking at the normal cervical curvature. When patients do not have that proper proper curvature commonly from things like using cell phones or working on computers all day, when we have a loss of that cervical curve. It’s a major contributor to neck pain.
Your Treatment Plan
It was we will put together a thorough plan specifically designed for you and how to get rid of your neck pain. So that plan will include what we think’s going on. It will also include how often we want to see you how long we think it will take to fix this problem. And it will include exactly what types of therapies that we would recommend. We will also verify and show are in so that we can let you know any out of pocket costs that you can expect. So the the main foundation of what we do as far as treatment for neck pain is going to be the chiropractic adjustment. So what that adjustment is going to do is it’s going to free up the the joints to free up the subluxations that are in the neck to allow the nerve system to work better, so that your body will feel better.
Chiropractic Adjustments
So there are three types of adjustments that we do in the office. The first type is a more manual type of an adjustment. So this is the type of adjustment that oftentimes you will hear a popping or clicking sound with. For many patients, they love the style of adjusting some people, they do not prefer it. So another type of adjusting that we do also offer for people that don’t prefer that manual adjustment is a drop table adjustment so the patients can be lying on their stomach. And we will use the table to adjust assist the adjustment so the table pops up just a little bit. And then the doctor will apply gentle pressure and the table drops down and augments the pressure that the doctor uses so it’s a very gentle style of adjusting. The third type of adjustment is instrument assisted, we use an activator adjust adjustment tool, and what that does is it essentially taps the bone back into a line. So having several styles of adjusting allows us to really tailor treatment to exactly what the patient needs. Another part of your treatment plan may also include electric stim and intersegmental traction. What these two therapies do is they help to bring more blood flow and oxygen to your muscles to help support healing and help you to hold your adjustments quicker.
I hope this video has helped you to understand how we work to eliminate neck pain. If you have any questions please feel free to contact the office or leave a message below.
