Always Get an X-ray Before A Chiropractic Adjustment | Chiropractor in Manahawkin, NJ
Hey everybody, its Dr. Nicole Bonner with Healing Hands of Manahawkin. I had a really great question from a patient this morning, and I want to share it with you because I want to talk to you today about the importance of taking an x-ray, before you’re ever adjusted by a new chiropractor.
We Always Take Patient X-rays Before Treatment
So the question that my patient had, and she said, Dr. Nicole, do you ever take anyone in for just an adjustment? In other words, no exam, no X rays, they just come in and lay down on the table and we adjust them blind? And my answer to her was absolutely not. And then I shared this story with her. My good friend has a son who is an avid athlete, he’s in fact a baseball pitcher. And her son was like, 1011 years old, right? And he was having, he’s a pitcher, and he was having some numbness and tingling down his right arm. So logically like any mom would think is, and she thought that maybe he had a pinched nerve, or what we call a subluxation in the neck, that would be you know, causing this neuropathy, this, this decreased sensory information down his arm. And she doesn’t live here. But I sent her to a good friend of mine. And thank goodness, my friend took an x-ray, before ever adjusting his neck. And what she found was that it was not a subluxation, causing this boy’s numbness and tingling. It was in fact, a bony tumor at the top of his neck that was pressing on a nerve. And had he been adjusted without the proper testing, that obviously would not have been good.
So I always highly recommend to if you are looking for a chiropractor, my number one recommendation before you ever get adjusted, is make sure they’re doing the proper examination, they’re doing proper testing, and absolutely taking x-rays before they ever give you an adjustment. Because an x-ray is isn’t is the only way that we’re able to truly see exactly what’s happening in the spine. I’m going to show you an example of our patient.
Why X-rays Are Critical Before We Make Adjustments
Now this patient does not have any tumors or fractures in her spine. But she did come to us because she was just having difficulty she was having a lot of fatigue, a lot of heaviness in her body. She wasn’t she had difficulty focusing even when I upon examination, her eyes were like really, you know, drooping down. And then when we took her X-rays, this is what we found. So when we look at the side of the neck, the normal neck is supposed to have a C shaped curve just like this green line right here. And her neck is where the red is. So you can see she’s had different stresses and different traumas in her life that had that actually caused her neck to buckle backward, and these two top vertebrae to push forward. Now here’s the problem with that. The problem with this guys, is that the spinal cord runs right through the center of those spinal bones. So when we look at the x-ray, what we’re seeing here, is we’re actually seeing here’s the brain, okay, the brain stem hangs through the bottom of the skull and travels right through the canal. So the brainstem actually gets kinked, right up here at the brainstem. Now had we not taken an x-ray, we would never know that that’s what her neck look like. And if, if we didn’t know that, and somebody was to make an adjustment, this way, you can actually see we will be pushing the bone right into the brainstem.
So we got her, we took these X-rays, we actually got her under proper chiropractic care, advanced spinal correction. And after just 12 weeks of care, I want you to see where we got that brainstem. So obviously, she needs more care. She’s not completely corrected. But now the kink is a lot better. It’s not buckling as far back as it was on this initial picture here. So if you guys see that, that is really an awesome change. And if we actually look at the actual numbers, you can see when she first started she had 125% loss on this normal curve and then just 12 weeks, we brought her all the way up to only a 72% loss. And she is now in her second phase of correction in which she will continue to get restoration of the curve which means restoration to the strength of her neck and also reduced pressure off of the brainstem and the spinal cord.
Alright guys, hopefully that helped you out and directing you and you’re looking for an amazing chiropractor. Peace. Have a great day!
