This is a transcript from Dr. Echols' what chiropractic does video.
Today I want to talk to you a little bit about what chiropractic is maybe a little
about what it’s not. And a lot of people think of chiropractic when, when they think of going to a chiropractor,
they think of back pain, neck pain or something like that. Maybe even headaches. But a lot of what chiropractors
treat is other things with organs problems, such has heart burn, reflux, indigestion, thyroid issues, constipation.
Those types of things. And today, I am going to take you through a step by step procedure that will show you what
it would be like if you go to a chiropractor. And some of the procedures we might use.
One of the first things we would do when you come to the chiropractic office, is we take a detailed history.
This is very important because it is important for the doctor to know what your health issues have been up to this
point. If you fell off the roof when you were six years old on your head that’s going to be significant for the
chiropractor to know about these things. We also want to know how well your body is functioning overall. So in
addition to you telling the doctor about your back pain he may want to know about your digestive health, your
heart, any heart issues, your cholesterol and those kind of things. So we can get a total picture of your
health.
One of first things that’s going to happen when you come to the chiropractor your going to get a full exam. Now
is my office we do a full physical, orthopedic, neurological and a chiropractic exam. Now this is very important
because the doctor needs to gather all the information that he possibly can in order to treat you in the best
possible manner. So the first thing we would do is some of the obvious tests, like blood pressure, pulse rate, huh.
We would check your reflexes, biceps, triceps, the patellar and the Achilles reflexes. We would also check, do a
pin wheel check across your hands to check see if the nerves are active.
We would also do a whole host of different orthopedic tests that I’ll show you later in the video. These help us
find out if there is any damage to the spine or spinal nerves. We also palpate or feel of all the different muscles
to find out if theres are any spasms in those areas. That will help us to tell what’s going on in that area as
well. We follow it up usually with x-rays. These are very, very important because they help the doctor find out
what kind of shape the spine is in. Is there a lot of arthritis in the spine? Is there some degenerative problems
going on that the doctor needs to know about? Is the spine twisted or contorted in some strange fashion that would
lead to this problem? Or is there something even more serious, some tumor or cancer that need to be identified
before any treatment is done.
After the examination we are going to take all the information we gathered and we are going to sit down and come
up with a solution to the problem. After we reviewed the x-rays and reviewed all the results of the examination we
actually have you come back to the office and sit down and discuss your case with you in detail. We will actually
show your x-rays as well. So, you can see with your own eyes what the problem is and then the doctor can explain to
you how we are going to go about taking care of your particular problem. Each problem is different and each
treatment program is different depending upon what we found in the examination.