A Chiropractic Adjustment Is Not the First Thing We Do

Most people who come into our Point Loma office expect to get adjusted on day one. That is not how we work here, and there is a good reason for it.

Before anybody gets adjusted at Element Wellness Center, we do an exam and we take x-rays. We want to figure out what is actually causing the problem, create a solution to fix it, and then come up with a game plan for long-term health. An adjustment delivered before you know what is underneath it is a guess, and guessing is not care.

One exam that did not end with an adjustment

One patient really sticks out.

He came in the way a lot of people do, not because he was in crisis, but because we are persistent about people getting their friends and family checked. He came in, we did our exam, and we took his x-rays.

We found something on those x-rays that was not ours to treat.

We referred him out to the medical doctor. They found out it was cancer.

So not only were we able to help him with the pain he was suffering from, but we were able to make a referral that ultimately ended up increasing his lifespan, because he got to the medical doctors in time to catch it so he could take care of it. He would have never known about it otherwise.

That is not a chiropractic story in the way people usually mean it. It is a story about looking first, and about being willing to say this one is not ours.

What the adjustment actually is

An adjustment restores motion to a joint that has stopped moving the way it should. When a segment of the spine locks down, the joints above and below it start taking load they were never built to carry, and the muscles around them start guarding. That is the pattern behind a lot of what people call a bad back.

Restoring that motion is precise work, and it is specific to your spine, not to a protocol we run on everybody who walks through the door.

Why we x-ray before we adjust

Three reasons, and they all come back to the same idea.

We want to see the structure we are working on. We want to know what stage of degeneration a joint is in, because a joint with disc space left is a different conversation than a joint without it. And we want to know if what we are looking at belongs to us at all.

Most of the time it does. Sometimes it does not, and that is exactly the point.

What happens after

An adjustment on its own is a moment. Whether it holds depends on what happens between visits.

That is why adjusting is usually one part of a plan rather than the whole plan. Depending on what the exam shows, that plan might include spinal decompression to take pressure off a disc, SoftWave therapy for the soft tissue, and physical rehabilitation so the muscles that hold the correction get strong enough to actually hold it.

The goal is not to keep you coming in forever. The goal is to get you the tools and exercises so you can maintain it yourself, and become independent of having to go and see doctors at all.

What to expect on a first visit in San Diego

You will talk before you get on a table. We want to hear what the problem is costing you, not just where it hurts, because a back that stops you picking up your kids is a different problem than a back that aches on a long drive.

Then the exam. Then imaging if it is indicated. Then we sit down and tell you what we found and what we think it will take. If your problem is something we cannot help you with, we will get you to someone who can.

San Diego lives a proactive lifestyle. People here are out in the sun, boating, surfing, playing pickleball, and they want to keep doing those things for the rest of their lives. That is what our care is built around, and it is why we look before we adjust.

Finding out what is actually going on

If you have been putting up with something and nobody has looked at the structure yet, that is the place to start. Learn more about chiropractic adjustments at Element Wellness Center, or call our Point Loma office at (619) 523-9355 to get an exam on the calendar.