THE TOP 3 THINGS A PROVIDER MAY HAVE TOLD YOU THAT PROBABLY AREN’T TRUE!
I’m gonna keep today’s post short and spicy 🌶️ because frankly, I'm not feeling particularly creative and flowy with my words, I am, however, feeling a bit fired up and would love to share a hot take 🔥with you!
Chiropractors, like any profession, have different sects and factions with differing opinions and techniques. Some of these opinions and principles are simply antiquated while others are far worse, using fear-mongering to sell treatment. Almost all chiropractors help people out of pain with their treatments, but that doesn't necessarily mean they’re instilling confidence and resilience in their patients while providing those treatments. Today, I’ll share 3 of the most common things people have told me other providers have mentioned to them in the past, and why I generally don't care about them, and often find them to be providing a disempowering narrative in patients' lives.
Diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal pain is like putting together a puzzle, except someone took a handful of random pieces from different puzzles and put them in the box. The challenge is determining which puzzle pieces are actually relevant and which are simply present, but not necessarily contributing to the big picture. I take the approach that the human body is resilient and adaptable and while there are always things we can do to better optimize the function of our bodies, not every small finding is relevant. With that being said, here are the 3 most common things I’ve heard from patients. ⬇️
You have a longer/shorter leg - Simply put, the test that chiropractors use for measuring leg length by bending you at your knees and comparing the height of your heels side by side is a shoddy one at best, if you veer off to one side or another the results of the test can switch completely! Also, human bodies are naturally a bit asymmetrical and lopsided, so if you have a millimeters discrepancy between the length of your legs, it's not the end of the world and it's very unlikely to be the actual cause of your pain. Unless I see you walking in with a limp or notice that your legs are different lengths without manipulating and moving your body around, I’m generally not too worried about the length of your legs.
You have scoliosis - Scoliosis is a left-right deviation of the spine which often begins to present itself in youth, more commonly in females, and lies on a spectrum from mild to severe, often requiring intrusive bracing and surgery to fix on the severe end. Most of the people I see coming in were once told they had scoliosis without an x-ray and certainly not follow-up x-rays to see if it was progressing. Likely, someone ran their fingers along their spine and interpreted a curvature that may or may not have been there. Again, the human body is extremely adaptable and resilient and even people with moderate scoliosis can manage their symptoms and live a wonderfully active life with exercise and proper bodycare. Unless you have x-ray proof or I can visually see your scoliosis, I generally don't think to look at it as a significant finding as an adult patient.
You're out of alignment - This is a narrative that is as old as the chiropractic profession itself. Once upon a time, the “bone out of place” (BOOP) model was the predominant theory for how a chiropractic adjustment worked. Your vertebra was out of alignment, I pushed it back into alignment, and your symptoms felt better! Now the mechanism of how an adjustment works has been updated. We know that it works because by putting a quick and sufficient force into spinal joints (the thrust of an adjustment) that are sticky or locked up for whatever reason, and the muscles, ligaments, and tissues surrounding those joints are rapidly stretched, this sends a signal to the brain to tone down the pain and muscle tension in that area. We are not physically moving the bones within your body back into or out of alignment. If the mild force of an adjustment could physically move a bone within your body, think of what an actual traumatic event like a car wreck, falling off a horse, or getting tackled in a football game would do! Your vertebra would go shooting out of your spine and land 10 feet away.
I hope busting these myths will provide you with a sense of resiliency and great adaptability in your body. I don’t intend this to be a knock on any previous provider that has told you any of these things, I believe most providers are doing their best to help, but sometimes these false narratives can become part of people's identities and a cause of great unease and sense of anxiety about them when they begin to have pain, which is the last thing I want people to have while under my care!