[QUOTE=PNWjumper;5811153]
My chiropractor is an absolute miracle worker.
I’ve had a couple of times where he’s made a huge immediate difference. One was after a horse flipped with me and pile drove me into the ground head first. I got a bad cold after the fall and my left ear ended up completely blocked. I went to an ENT about 4 times trying to figure out why it wouldn’t unblock itself over the course of almost 2 months. On a whim (and after a frustrating ENT appt where he said there wasn’t a reason my ear should have been blocked, but that there was measurable hearing loss…duh! It was blocked!), I went to my chiro who explained that my head/neck were jammed. He worked on me and within 30 minutes my ear cleared itself after 60 days of torture with no end in sight.
More recently I was having serious pain in my shoulder whenever I lifted my arm. My orthopedic doc told me I needed surgery. I took a fall off of my youngster (who occasionally broncs while being mounted, ugh) and went in to my chiro for my back and mentioned my shoulder in an offhanded manner and he adjusted my collarbone and shoulder and the pain is totally gone.
And as a more long term thing, my guy got rid of chronic lower back pain I’d had since I was a teenager. Even without the other things that’s made him worth his weight in gold.
With all of that being said, I’ve been to probably 6 or 7 other chiropractors through the years who did absolutely nothing. The last one (before this guy) had all of the fancy gadgets and equipment and was great at topically addressing pain and stiffness, but never did ANYTHING that lasted beyond maybe 30 min past the appointment. They used a pro-adjuster (or some sort of hammer-like instrument on each of my vertebrae that never seemed to make even the slightest dfference). My current guy has basically no equipment, just uses his hands.
So my feeling is that much like horse chiropractors, there are lots of mediocre to poor chiros out there and very, very few great ones. The great ones can make a huge difference. The mediocre ones do next to nothing. I would be inclined to figure that a clinic that was soliciting business was probably more in the mediocre category than great category. But I certainly could be wrong.
In terms of how often…
The clinic that had all of the gadgets wanting me coming in 1-2x a week basically forever. My guy has a program that he goes through that consists of about 12 appointments and you shouldn’t need to ever go back to him (unless you occasionally wreck yourself…such as a…oh…I don’t know…horse back rider? :lol:). And after I went through his set of appointments I went 3 years with no pain, no repeat appointments, nothing. Since then I’ve only been back to him when I have a bad fall.[/QUOTE]
This is interesting. I lost all hearing in my left ear five years ago (plus about 15% of the hearing in my right), and my episode with the pinched nerve and chiropractic visit was about two years ago. At the time, the chiropractor mentioned that the C5 vertebrae can also be implicated in hearing issues, and she implied that regular chiropractic adjustments might restore my lost hearing. It wasn’t a promise, just a hunch, but I couldn’t really afford to follow up and see if she was right.
I felt sort of angry and sad about it afterwards . . . like someone had dangled a lollipop in front my face and then snatched it away. Wondering if it might be fixable was harder than just living with the “definitely dead, dead forever” ear.
for humans and horses!