Check Engine Light (Phase 1-Relieve)
Welcome back to this week’s blog post!
At Peace of Health Chiropractic Wellness Clinic, you will often hear, “Pain is a symptom.” Pain is analogous to your car’s check engine light. It does not tell you what is wrong, and it does not tell you how long something has been wrong for; it simply tells you that something is outside the normal. Pain is likewise your body’s way of trying to get you to slow down and get your attention to the fact that something isn’t right. Pain is the brain’s perception of inflammation in the body. When that inflammation threshold triggers the pain “check engine light” lights up.
Pain is often the last symptom to develop, but usually the first to leave. However, the absence of pain is not the same as being healthy. So, when patients say, “I’m out of pain, why should I still come in for treatment?” My answer is, “Because your body is still adapting to changes as it relearns proper movement patterns again. If we stop at getting you out of immediate pain, that’s like seeing the check engine light and simply turning it off, having never addressed why the light was on to begin with. We must reteach the body to move more optimally, possibly reversing years of improper movement patterns and imbalances. Re-establishing those more proper neuromuscular pathways can take some time to do. Often, we are correcting “bad” movement patterns, some that may be deeply ingrained from years of moving a certain way.” This is potentially a movement pattern that has gone through thousands of movement cycles, creating muscle memory. This is one of the things that I (Dr. Grant) am looking for when you enter the office. I am analyzing your movement patterns, posture, balance, and symmetry.
Frequently, where you feel the pain results from compensatory patterns. For example, if someone has low back pain, I will assess hip mobility and the quality of hip motion. Your hips should be mobile while your lower back should be more emphasizing stability. When these roles “flip” often from tight hips, the lower back will compensate, which is usually when we develop problems and perceive pain.
Another example might be when a patient comes in for shoulder pain, most of the time I won’t adjust the shoulder at all because the true cause is coming from either the neck or the upper thoracic spine (between the shoulder blades).
3 PHASES OF CARE – RELIEVE, RESTORE, RESUME
The first phase of your care is the relief phase. This phase’s primary goal is to get you out of pain. This phase usually requires more frequent visits to accelerate your healing process. At Peace of Health Chiropractic Wellness Clinic, we recommend combining your treatments with a whole-root supplement called “Traumeric” from Ortho Molecular Products. This combines whole-root turmeric, Quercetin (a powerful antioxidant flavonoid in plants), Rutin (a flavanol found in apples, tea, buckwheat, and passionflower), and Bromelain (an enzyme isolated from pineapple) to all act synergistically to provide a multi-faceted approach to more optimal inflammatory response to help you recover from a neuromusculoskeletal injury. We will be going into further detail on the inflammatory process and healing in future posts. That’s all in this discussion! Thank you for stopping by and making your health a priority!
Yours in Health,
Dr. Grant Shelton, DC
Doctor of Chiropractic at Peace of Health Chiropractic Wellness Clinic
