There’s a certain part of the healing process that has long gone undiscussed. It’s the part where everything gets a little foggy, a little confusing, maybe a little frustrating even. It’s much easier to teach the members of the Restorative family about what can be done when they’re injured, ill, or whenever they come to our wellness center for a new complaint. It’s much more straightforward to perform an exam, diagnose a complaint, and then move forward with treatment. The doctors at Restorative understand that the period of time following standard of care procedure is just as important to understand as the care itself – the period of time where treatment has decreased in volume if not completely; when we are “returning back to life.”
You see, something that much of modern medicine has failed to inform the greater public about is what the recovery process behind any condition is like – what should we experience following successful treatment and returning back to our so-called “activities of daily living?” Should we be completely better? Will I experience any symptoms again? What happens if there is a flair up? If I experience pain again, does that mean I’m back at square one? Are there certain activities, exercises, or movements that I shouldn’t be doing? Anything else I should or shouldn’t be doing? And so on and so forth.
The return to life stage of care is filled with questions, and with questions can come fears, and with fears can come panic. The most important concept to drive home when it comes to what may be experienced following a treatment plan is that it is different for everyone. Some people will finish care pain free, dysfunction free, and feeling the best they ever have. These types of patients may never have a problem for the rest of their lives. Others may have a flair up here and there - there may even be some pretty bad days. What this does not mean is this: just because you have symptoms of your previous condition is not a sign that you are right back to where you started prior to care. What it does mean is that there are some potential factors that will need to be addressed that coincide with more of a lifestyle change rather than strictly from a biomechanical/anatomical dysfunction perspective. Understand that much work can be done inside of the office, but there is a very important take-home message that the doctors of Restorative Wellness Center truly believe in:
“Life will not stop when you leave the wellness center.”
What does this mean exactly, that life doesn’t stop when you leave Restorative Wellness Center? Let’s put this into perspective – each chiropractic new patient appointment is approximately an hour in length, follow ups being half an hour, and each regular chiropractic appointment is 15 minutes (although this may change depending on your condition and severity of symptoms (aka, no cookie cutter approach). Once you have begun your regular appointments, that’s approximately 15 minutes of your 24 hour day, which equates to only about 1% of the total time. Essentially, with so little of your time of day being taken up by treatment in the office, we will eventually have to account for what you’re doing the other 99% of your day. While about 40% of that time will also include sleeping, there is still a large chunk of time that needs to be addressed and planned out in order to allow for the most optimal environment that is in line with your health goals.
Take, for example, a patient that comes in with non-specific low back pain. They work several hours throughout the day sitting at their computer, and after a while they notice that their low back starts to ache deeply and constantly. They soon begin to notice the pain as they wake up in the morning, but it goes away as they walk around and get ready for the day, then comes back around mid-afternoon until they get up and finish their daily tasks. They come in for their initial appointment, several joint restrictions are found, there are trigger points throughout their gluteal region, and their hip flexors are hypertonic. After a few appointments, the patient reports that their pain is more than 90% gone, and really only bothers them when they sit down for more than 5 hours at a time. This is fantastic news! Because of this, the patient is instructed to perform at home stretches and core strengthening exercises, informed of why prolonged sitting played a role in their symptoms, and told to make an appointment for a month away to check in and see how everything has been going.
Now imagine this patient goes home feeling great after their appointment and continues to feel great every single morning without any low back pain, gets all of their work done every day, and still has no pain. Because they feel so great, they’re even able to start going back to the gym again 3 to 4 times a week for about an hour to do some light cardio and strength training. Overall, they feel fantastic! But then suddenly, they wake up one morning and their low back is hurting again and continues to hurt throughout the day. The pain that they used to have would go away when they’d start moving around, but this pain isn’t going away. It’s the same deep aching pain they had, but it seems to be relentless today. Suddenly the pain is gone the next morning. “Okay, maybe this was just a false alarm,” they tell themselves. That is, until the next morning the pain is back. What’s the deal? Why is this patient having low back pain again? Was their treatment unsuccessful? Did they get injured and just not know?
Thankfully, the patient has their monthly check in the next day. It’s already been almost 5 weeks since their last appointment and they go in eager to tell the chiropractor at Restorative Wellness Center how they were feeling amazing up until a few days ago for no apparent reason. After discussing with their chiropractor, it comes up in conversation that the patient never started doing their at home stretches or strengthening exercises. They said they were “feeling so great, I didn’t think I would have to.” But their chiropractor reiterates a few points that are vitally important for everyone to understand:
The degree of pain you’re in or not in is not an accurate indicator of degree of injury or dysfunction. Just because you have a lot of pain does not mean you have a major injury, whereas just because you don’t have a lot of pain does not mean there is nothing wrong.
Many chronic musculoskeletal dysfunctions are present for months prior to symptom onset.
Lifestyle factors play an immensely important role in understanding the cause, progression, and re-exacerbation of many musculoskeletal injuries.
Discussing daily choices with your chiropractor that can positively affect your symptoms is vitally important.
A flair up does not indicate that you are back to square one. It does mean that you may need to pay more attention to that area.
A flair up does not mean that you should suddenly stop moving, rest completely, go to the ER, or panic. While some situations require immediate intervention, the vast majority of these situations are not emergencies.
The most important thing to note here is #5 – you are NOT back to square one simply because you had a flair up. The best thing to do is take a deep breath, call your doctor, and ask for your options. The way we feel will have ups and downs and highs and lows. We’re here to ensure that we have longer highs than really deep lows. Lows are bound to happen, but having one doesn’t mean you don’t have a high right around the corner.
Now what about injuries and/or conditions that have been present for a significant amount of time? What if we don’t come in for back pain that happened due to a sudden injury last week, but rather have been dealing with, for example, chronic neck pain off and on for 5+ years? This is a significantly longer period of time to be dealing with a condition. Many instances in which patients come into Restorative Wellness Center with a long history of a condition, it’s not a surprise when they say they’ve already been to several other practitioners that either only managed to create a small benefit or did nothing at all. From nerve ablation to chronic opioid use, discectomies to extensive at home exercise routines, you name it, we’ve heard it. What can be done for this type of situation, and what should a patient expect?
First, longer periods of time with a condition generally requires more intervention. This is not to say that more office visits will be necessary, but that greater discipline will be required regarding showing up to appointments, doing any at home exercises and/or stretches, altering lifestyle factors, getting adequate sleep, and sticking with the process too. Second, the longer period of time a condition has been present, the longer the body and brain have had time to generate compensation patterns in order to optimize your function as best as possible while limiting the impact of the dysfunctional areas too. The dysfunctional patterns include biomechanical joint restrictions, tissue adherence, gait alterations, decreased range of motion from pain and/or fear compounding, and many more. This is exactly why the doctors at Restorative Wellness Center base their mindset off of HEALTHcare and not SICKcare – by taking a preventative approach and addressing problems sooner rather than later will prevent further problems from arising. Conditions with longer, more extensive histories will require a different approach from conditions that occurred just the other day. They may sometimes take longer to regain complete function, and they may even need to have treatment plans altered halfway through when the patient no longer responds. Regardless of when the condition and symptoms started, the best choice is to have it addressed as soon as symptoms begin.
The human body is extremely resilient. It’s able to withstand enormous amounts of stress physically and chemically before breaking down and giving in to pressure. With that said, it’s still in everyone’s best interest to ensure that we’re minimizing that pressure and having any of our nagging symptoms examined before time takes its toll. There’s no way to know how long your specific healing process will take place, but there is one thing that the doctors at Restorative Wellness Center can promise:
Addressing the root cause of your symptoms now will pay off immensely for the future in ways that you’ll never have to experience. This is all because you took control of your own health and didn’t allow your acute problem to become a chronic condition.
If you have any questions about how we can help you here at Restorative, feel free to give our wellness center a call, email, or contact us through social media. We can’t wait to help you on your path to a more restored lifestyle.