Wednesday, May 26, 2010
It was sometime around 1997 and I had been in practice for about 7 years. A man I had helped decided to bring his teenage son in to see me. The son was a football player. Football was his life, his passion, and I’m certain he had aspirations of playing through high school, into college, and beyond if he could. And Dad was PROUD! This was Texas after all!
So the son had been dealing with some pain in his upper back that had gotten to be quite irritating. Dad brought him in so I could fix him up. I did a couple of X-ray pictures on him in the area of concern.
And I found something I didn’t want to find. This young teenager had a compression fracture in one of his upper back vertebrae. What is that? Well, think of a real thick sandwich that you have to squish a bit flatter with your hand in order to get it in your mouth and eat it. That’s kind of what had happened to the front part of that particular bone in his upper back.
How long had it been there? No way to tell for sure. Would it get worse? Hard to say. Should he be cautious because of it? Of course.
I had to tell him and his father something that kind of broke my heart to have to say, something that could shatter both of their dreams. And that was this.
It was my advice that he shouldn’t continue playing football, taking the kind of intense hits to his body and the compression that could possibly make that fractured bone worse.
I adjusted him a few times and he felt some relief. (With a broken bone? Sure, I’m a lot gentler than being hit by a football player.) But after a few visits I never got to see them again. Maybe they didn’t want to tell me he was still playing. Maybe they went for a more “favorable” second opinion. I don’t know.
The point is, sometimes I have to tell people what they don’t want to hear. But I’m obligated to do so anyway.
“I need to come in 3 times a week for a month or two to fix my problem?” “I need to come in monthly or I’ll lose my improvement?” “My kids should be adjusted?”
Yes, yes, and yes. I didn’t make it up. I’ve carefully watched and observed what happens to people as they make various choices and the results they get, or don’t, from those choices. So I make my recommendations with the confidence of experience, and the objective testing to show it.
And the facts are this. Most of you reading this brush your teeth 2 to 3 times daily, and feel kind of weird if you don’t. Well, getting chiropractic adjustments is about 100 X more important for your health, livelihood, function and longevity than brushing your teeth. It’s just a fact. For 20 years I’ve watched the difference in the health of those who just get adjusted when the pain is bad, and those that get adjusted somewhere between weekly to monthly. There is a HUGE difference in the life and vitality of those groups. And there are a variety of blood / chemistry studies to back it up.
My recommendations to you are always based on what can be done to help you achieve and maintain your best health, vitality and wellness. Been more than a month since you were adjusted? That’s simply too long. You are accumulating new problems and old ones are deteriorating further. Think of what would happen to your teeth if you treated them the same way.
Call me and come in to get your next adjustment. I’m always here to help. I try to encourage you to achieve your best without making you feel bad if you make a decision that’s less than “optimum”.
In Health,
Dr. Brad
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