Dr. Brett Hill - Eat Think Move Chiropractic

Would you consider chiropractic care to be an expense or an investment?

Most people will automatically say an expense but when they really think about it they realise that it is an investment too. They realise that they are investing in their future (and present) body, their future health and indeed their future life. As the old saying goes, chiropractic helps people add life to their years. What people often don't realise is that chiropractic is a sound financial investment too.

One of the most common questions we get asked as chiropractors (and one of the easiest to answer) is the question of chiropractic safety. The simple facts are that chiropractic care is incredibly safe.

There are so many rumours and old wives tales out there about the supposed "dangers" of chiropractic care (and believe me I have heard them all). In fact many of them are propagated by people who should know better if they had read their research.

One of the most common and persistent stories we hear is around the safety of neck adjustments (and in particular in relation to strokes). This topic has been studied in the research time and time again and the conclusion has always been the same, these events are exceedingly rare (less than one in a million) and in fact the most recent in-depth review of the relationship between stroke and chiropractic care, was published in the February 15, 2008 issue of Spine Journal. It looked at 10 years of hospital records, involving 100 million person-years and showed that you are just as likely to suffer from a stroke after visiting your Medical Doctor as you are after visiting a chiropractor. In other words cases of serious injury with chiropractic care (even with the supposedly "riskiest" adjustment) are virtually nonexistent.

Not only that but safe, gentle and effective chiropractic care can often reduce your need for drugs and surgery, which we know do have adverse side effects, further increasing the safety benefit. In fact one good way to measure chiropractic safety is to look at the Professional Indemnity insurance premiums paid by chiropractors. They pay only a fraction of what medical doctors pay (not to even mention spinal surgeons). Do you think the insurance companies are biased towards chiropractors, or do you think they just care about the bottom line?

So as I said this is a question that we get asked a lot but it is also a very easy one to answer. Chiropractic is a safe, gentle and effective form of care that you can feel comfortable recommending for friends and family of all ages.

Scoliosis is an abnormal curvature of the spine. It begins as a postural distortion and over time leads to increased wear and tear, nerve interference and possibly a permanent deformity.

People often say to me, ‘I have a slipped disc. Can chiropractic help?', or ‘I have a slipped disc, so chiropractic can't help me. I need surgery'.

First thing's first: a disc can't slip. It can wedge, it can bulge, it can protrude or it can herniate, but it can't slip and if it has done one of these things more often than not, chiropractic care can help. In fact research shows that given the risks and limited success rates of surgery, a more conservative form of care, like chiropractic, should always be tried BEFORE going down the surgery route.