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Frequently Asked Questions
Quick Links to Questions
- What is Chiropractic?
- What are the benefits of Chiropractic care?
- How long does a chiropractor have to go to school?
- Why do I need an x-ray?
- Are x-rays dangerous?
- Is Chiropractic safe?
- What is a subluxation?
- Why didn’t my medical doctor refer me to a Chiropractor?
- Does the adjustment hurt?
- Does my insurance cover chiropractic?
- What if my insurance company doesn't cover chiropractic?
- How much does chiropractic care cost?
1. What is Chiropractic?
Your nervous system controls and regulates every cell of your body. When your nervous system doesn’t work right, you don’t work right. And when you don’t work right, you’re sick! Simple as that.
The practice of chiropractic focuses on the relationship between structure (primarily the spine) and function (as coordinated primarily the nerve system) and how that relationship affects normal progression of human potential and the restoration of health.
Chiropractors use their hands to adjust joints, the spine and other parts of the body where restricted movement is experienced. These adjustments improve mobility and relieve pain by restoring normal function to the patient’s body.
Chiropractic has been known to help patients with:
- Neck or back pain
- Ear infections for children and infants
- Colic
- Sleep disturbances
- Hip or shoulder pain
- Fibromyalgia
- Sciatica
- Migraines & headaches
- Numbness and tingling
- TMJ pain
- Sports injuries
- Carpal tunnel
- Repetitive stress injuries
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2. What are the benefits of Chiropractic care?
An accurate definition of health is central to understanding chiropractic wellness care. In our society today, health is often an improperly used term. Many people perceive health as "feeling good, without any pain or symptoms"; but it is much more than that.
Health is really about one thing – function. How well you are functioning determines how truly well you are. Health and wellness are about more than just ‘feeling good’; they are about functioning at your ultimate potential. When your body is functioning at 100%, you have the innate ability to adapt to anything that occurs in your environment and you can continually maintain optimal health.
Ill health results from an inability to adapt to life stressors (i.e. a weakened immune system, stress, etc.) and decreases the way you function. Events like car accidents and physical traumas are often out of your control, but how you are functioning and adapting to your environment on a daily basis is completely within your power. Therefore, the choice to be healthy or unhealthy is ultimately under your control.
Genetics and bad luck are not to blame, and are often used as an excuse in the health care community. Have you ever wondered why when there is a "flu outbreak" not everyone gets sick? It is because only those who have lost the ability to adapt are susceptible to illness. Those of us that are functioning at a higher level deal with the virus without even knowing about it.
This is where chiropractic is different. We understand that you cannot focus on sickness and disease and expect health and wellness to prevail. Merely treating symptoms and refusing to look at the body as a whole, self-healing system is a harmful mistake that is all too common. In our office, we take a broader approach to your health, and look at how you are functioning rather than just asking how you are feeling.
At Krukowski Family Chiropractic we help restore and maintain your health and wellness by working to remove the cause of your problem. This is done through two main areas. First, the Chiropractic Adjustment removes subluxations so your body can continue to function naturally. Secondly, we will teach you how to prevent future injury through proper exercises and patient education that will keep you not only feeling well, but functioning well every day!
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3. How long does a chiropractor have to go to school?
A chiropractor must receive a Doctorate of Chiropractic (D.C.). The chiropractic curriculum is just as intense and rigorous as the medical curriculum. In fact, chiropractors actually have more classroom education hours when compared to their medical counterparts. After completing the required courses to enter chiropractic college from an undergraduate institution, an additional four years are spent in an accredited chiropractic college. Many chiropractic schools now require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree prior to acceptance.
Classes are given 45 weeks out of the year. Another part of the chiropractic education involves working in an outpatient clinic seeing real patients under the guidance and supervision of licensed doctors of chiropractic. After graduation it is required in all states to pass a set of four national board examinations. In some states, there are additional state examinations required as well. Continuing education is required and regulated in every state to maintain chiropractic licensure.
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4. I heard that once you go to a Chiropractor you have to go forever?
In this office our patients, or practice members, always have a choice as to what kind of care they want to receive. Once your symptoms go away and you reach maximum objective improvements you have the choice to continue care on a wellness level. This means that you are taking a more preventative and proactive approach to your health and well-being.
As doctors, we have an obligation to teach you how to prevent future injury. Much like a dentist recommends receiving a cleaning every six months or an eye doctor telling you to have your eyes checked on a yearly basis, chiropractors recommend check-ups as well (all depending on the amount of activity you subject your spine to). It is important to remember that, just like your teeth or eyes, your spine experiences normal wear and tear as you walk, drive, sit, lift, bend, and sleep. Routine chiropractic care can help you feel better, move with more ease, and stay healthier throughout your lifetime. Although you can enjoy the benefits of chiropractic care even if you receive care for a short time, the real benefits come into play when you make chiropractic care a part of your wellness lifestyle.
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5. Why do I need an x-ray?
X-rays are an important diagnostic tool to help rule out potential structural damage. It is for this reason that we only take x-rays as needed. The doctor will discuss if and when x-rays are necessary.
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6. Is Chiropractic safe?
Chiropractic care is one of the safest and most effective forms of natural health care. In fact, chiropractic is so safe, gentle, and specific that adjustments can be given to infants just hours after birth or to the elderly. Every person is given a complete chiropractic examination and any necessary x-rays are taken so that a personalized, specific adjustment is given to every individual.
Chiropractic care is so safe that chiropractic malpractice insurance is only a fraction of what a medical doctor would pay. An average MEDICAL doctor’s malpractice insurance can range from $20,000 to $80,000 per year. The average CHIROPRACTIC doctor’s malpractice insurance is $1,000 per year.
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7. What is a subluxation?
My mentor Dr. Fred Clary, D.C. describes a subluxation in the following way. Chiropractic traditionally uses static structure to diagnose dynamic functional loss. Segmental and Postural Chiropractic techniques presuppose that structural correction (by our imposed standards) will lead to functional improvement. The overriding belief is poor structure leads to poor function. Yet everyday we see cases that defy this underlying belief. Clinical cases were dysfunction and pain are not in doubt but the structure is grossly normal. Also everyday we see cases were structure, as verified by MR and other objective tests, is grossly abnormal yet the functional performance of the individual is above what would be considered normal for normal structure.
Does structure determine function or does function determine structure, or does each determine the other, and if the latter, how can it be? The answers to these questions seem to be matters of definition, personal paradigm and recognition of the driving purpose of the natural order.
In the inorganic world, structure may be regarded merely as a mechanical collocation of parts in a whole. But in the biological world, structure is a mechanical collocation of parts adapted to an end.
One cannot argue that “structure leads to function” is a popular belief yet when evolutionary forces are considered one is drawn to concepts such as Wolff’s Law: Function precedes structure. A look at biology gives the clinician a unique understanding. That understanding is that efficient function and behavior in the external environment leads to adaptable structure through natural selection. Saving and economic use of resources drives the individual and the species. Efficient function with available finite resources determines the survival of an individual. With enough time and offspring, structure adapts to save resources and energy. What can be said definitively is that structure and function are interdependent with the biologic drive of survival being efficient utilization of available resources.
Another Model of the VSC
The brain seems to be run by a program that says, “Do it in the most efficient way.” In all of its functions, the brain seeks optimum metabolic (energy) efficiency, or the path of least resistance. If one particular function is not accessible, the brain will automatically go on to the next most efficient process for doing that particular task. If the second task is not available, it will go on to the third or the fourth most efficient way. Because each alternative process is less efficient, it becomes more stressful and energy expensive.
The brain will keep searching for an appropriate processing method, until eventually the activity may become so metabolically inefficient that the brain will either strengthen the program to make it more efficient through neuroplasticity or not run the program at all. The individual will decrease the energy partitioning to that process, making this activity minimized or force the program to be more efficient. Disease and dysfunction depend on whether the strengthened program is physiological or pathological. If the program is not run, there could still be symptoms if the minimized program is physiological. It all depends on where the process is located in the physiological hierarchy.
A chiropractic subluxation is interference in the CNS summation, filtering and integration of sensory input leading to an inefficient output. The main challenge is the processing component.
The reason an adjustment is effective in the treatment of disease and dysfunction is due to the extensive network of connections possessed by the neuronal clusters in the composite thalamus and cortical maps representing and interacting with the chiropractic listing (the adjustable areas of the spine) in the periphery. This afferent information from the chiropractic adjustment gives the CNS just the right recipe to formulate and process more functional efficient local and global outputs.
We now understand the biophysical, energy constraints and energy efficiency impulses that have governed the evolution of thalamo-cortical networks. To operate efficiently within these constraints, natural selection has optimized the structure and function of CNS networks with design principles similar to those used in electronic networks. The brain also exploits the adaptability of biological systems to reconfigure (neuroplasticity) in response to changing needs caused by the internal and external environment.
Shifts in neuronmodulation such as caused by chiropractic adjustments, exercise, yoga, positive mediation and diet or any other systematic constant afferent input help assure a favorable balance in the CNS of performance (processing, integration, summary and filtering) and metabolic efficiency.
In the subluxated patient, the brain is not processing or organizing the flow of sensory impulses in a manner that gives the individual good, precise information about himself or his world. Thus any efferent output will be inefficient and lead to eventual dysfunction and limitation.
The chiropractic subluxation is stress to the system that causes inefficient processing that can lead to long-term pathology.
The human brain is an expensive tissue whose evolution, development and function have been shaped by available metabolic energy within and without neurons. The human nervous system is innately tuned towards survival of the organism. This survival tendency manifests itself as the development and continuance of efficient use of energy for all its processes.
This survival tendency, or drive, is for the conservation of energy and efficient use of that energy towards expression of optimal potential in life. These processes and pathways are directed on the input (sensory) side of the system. Chiropractic should address conservation of energy and the efficient use of that energy towards expression of optimal potential in life. Chiropractic should not ignore the 400 million year history of the evolution and development of the vertebrae brain. Working in synergy with this reality leads to incredible clinical results.
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8. Why didn’t my medical doctor refer me to a Chiropractor?
The American Medical Association’s opposition to Chiropractors was strongest in the 1940’s under the leadership of Morris Fishbein. He attempted to discredit the profession of chiropractic by stating that they were unscientific and cared only about taking people’s money. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the medical establishment purposely conspired to destroy the profession of chiropractic. This was documented in the landmark Supreme Court case known as the Wilkes Case. The AMA was found guilty of conspiracy and ordered to pay restitution to the chiropractic profession. In the years since, the opinions are starting to change. Current research is proving chiropractic effectiveness with a variety of conditions and more chiropractors across the country are on the staff at hospitals.
The main difference between medical doctors and chiropractors is their method of caring for patients. Most medical doctors are primarily trained to use medicines (chemicals that change your body’s biochemistry) or surgery to remove something “non-functioning” or add something artificial to the body. Doctors of chiropractic believe that you heal from within. We help correct the inefficient processing of the nervous system through specific adjustments allowing your body to heal naturally.
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9. Does the adjustment hurt?
A chiropractic adjustment should not be painful. In fact, it is so gentle that babies can receive adjustments without any problems. However after an adjustment some have felt some mild soreness similar to how muscles would feel after a strenuous workout. This soreness is temporary and usually goes away within a few hours.
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10. Does my insurance cover chiropractic?
Most health insurances have chiropractic benefits and Dr. Krukowski accepts many different insurance plans. As a courtesy to, we will verify your coverage and discuss it with you.
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11. What if my insurance company doesn't cover chiropractic?
Ultimately, it is up to you to decide if chiropractic care is of value to you. Though insurance companies may try to dictate your healthcare choices, it is your responsibility to decide what’s best for you. We offer affordable cash plans for those without insurance coverage.
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12. How much does chiropractic care cost?
This varies from practice member to practice member and how well you respond to care. The best thing you can do is see if you are a candidate for chiropractic care. Contact us to set up a consultation at no charge to see if chiropractic care is right for you.
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