I’m always a bit amazed when people looking for a chiropractor in Grass Valley will ask questions that have nothing to do with the care they might receive. The first question might be about the cost of the initial visit or insurance instead of an aspect of care that might actually impact their overall satisfaction.
If you are looking for a chiropractor in Grass Valley, Nevada City or anywhere for that matter I want to encourage you to give some consideration as to what is important to you. I’m not going to tell you what’s important because what I consider to be important might not be a priority for you.
Here’s a short post I did Chiropractic Explained
And, here’s another Chiropractic Restores Balance
If you are going to take the time to find a chiropractor and visit one, why not try to find one that matches you?
Chiropractic is much different from other health care professions. If you visit a dozen dentists you are going to find a very similar approach to oral health; dental cleanings, x-rays, exams, cavity repair, etc. You might find a difference in skill set or the friendliness of the staff but the service is similar.
You would have a drastically different experience if you visited a dozen chiropractors. Some would plug you into more machines than you could count. Some might only work on the top one or two bones in the neck. Some might use such light force you can barely feel it while others might feel very forceful. And, that’s just scratching the surface of the variation within chiropractic.
According to the National Institute of Health Chiropractic is a licensed health care profession that emphasizes the body’s ability to heal itself.
I think that’s a great start to describing chiropractic, however you might not experience any semblance of that in some chiropractor’s offices.
Questions to Ask a Chiropractor
I want to encourage you to come up with questions that are important to you. Here are a few to stimulate your thinking. Hopefully you have questions more personal to what you are looking for.
If you’ve been to chiropractors in the past, what did you like?
What didn’t you like?
What did you wish were different?
And, what would you not want to do without?
What do you really want from your chiropractic experience?
Most people presenting to my office have some sort of pain they want relief from, but underneath that they want to be able to return to the activities they are not able to do or only partially able to do.
Are you only interested in short term relief without any consideration of the longer term implications of your condition? I’ve written elsewhere how even the big medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic say that a common cause of neck or back pain is degenerative arthritis. Do you want to do what you can to correct the underlying imbalance and slow that process? Many chiropractors would be the absolute wrong choice for that.
Here are a few questions to stimulate your thought process. Remember, any healthcare practitioner works for you. Think about it as a hiring interview.
- What are the techniques or approaches you use?
- Do you offer relief care or corrective care and what is the difference?
- What do you do in addition to the adjustment and what is the purpose of each of those?
- What is the additional cost of any services beyond the adjustment?
- How many years of experience do you have?
- What is the focus of your practice? Be wary of a nebulous all encompassing answer here.
- Do you care for infants and the elderly? This gives you insight into the flexibility of their range of techniques.
- What else do you do in addition to the adjustment to correct my problem? Therapies such as ultrasound and electrical stimulation do nothing in the long term – you want to know any other corrective measures.
- Do you call what you do spinal manipulation or an adjustment? This might seem like semantics but words have meaning. Look up the definition of manipulation and decide if this is what you want.
- How long will it take to get better? There should be no way to answer this before examining you and even after an exam the honest answer would be an estimation and you want to clearly define what getting better means. Is it simply out of pain or is it correcting a problem so it doesn’t return?
- What are the top 3 things you do to get great results? You are looking for some self-care practices that support the healing process.
Do your best to define the guidelines of what you are looking for, what would help you feel confident and relaxed, what has worked well for you in the past, what fits your preferences, concerns, fears, or needs.
- Would you prefer manual hands on care?
- Would you prefer the use of hand held instruments to deliver the adjustment?
- Have you had good results with the use of special “drop tables”?
Look up the chiropractor on google search and see how many reviews they have. Read a number of the reviews to get a sense of what others feel about the care they have received. Be wary of a doctor with only a handful of reviews.
Good luck on your journey. Finding the right chiropractor for your needs will help you improve your chances of a great experience.
Make sure to subscribe to my social media pages where I regularly post valuable information.
Facebook: Life Chiropractic Facebook
YouTube: Life Chiropractic YouTube
Instagram: Life Chiropractic Instagram
Blog: https://lifewithinchiropractic.com/blog/
More about my approach and practice on my website here: Life Chiropractic