Hello everyone! For this week’s blog we’re going to address the question “Are there different types of chiropractors?”. We find that many people visit our office for the first time think that every chiropractor is the same…this is NOT the case! While there are many different types of adjustment techniques and philosophies, this article will discuss differences between a musculo-skeletal Chiropractor and a wellness Chiropractor.

The traditional philosophy of chiropractic based care revolves around adjustments to the spinal base. However, for mainstream acceptance, some chiropractors changed their approach in regard to treatment protocol. As a result patients now get varying treatment options, results, and treatment costs between chiropractors. This can be both confusing and frustrating to the patient. If expectations aren’t met, patients stop chiropractic care never experiencing the healing that can result with continued care.

Musculo-Skeletal Chiropractor

Like the typical Medical Doctor, a musculo-skeletal Chiropractor primarily focuses on relief of symptoms, typically situations dealing with headaches, back pain, and neck pain. The spine is manipulated to decompress the joints, free the body of the fixations, and reduce the patients pain.

Additionally, the musculo-skeletal Chiropractor will use electro-therapies. Certain examples of these therapies are ultrasound, diathermy, tens units, and laser acupuncture. This type of chiropractic care revolves more around short-term pain relief, often also leads to more frequent adjustments. The short-term care plan is good at helping relieve pain but fails to focus on correcting the actual cause of the symptom. The patient may feel better temporarily but since the spine remains structurally misaligned, it degenerates silently and results in damage and dysfunction to discs, joints, and whatever part of the body the affected nerve supplies.

Muculo-skeletal chiropractors tend to focus care plans depending on the insurance plans of the patients. Which makes you think, would you rather fix it for a short time or would you rather have no issues for the rest of your life???

Wellness Chiropractor

A wellness chiropractor practices the chiropractic philosophy of correction of subluxations and the spinal structure as a means to heal. Subluxations are misaligned vertebrae, or a group of vertebrae, which interfere with the brain’s nerve impulses which regulate body functions and keep us alive.

Although wellness Chiropractors does seek to relieve the patient of his or her symptoms, their primary focus is removing nerve interference (subluxations) and restructuring the spine and posture to its most stable biochemical position.

By maximizing the integrity of the discs, joints and nerves, the body’s wellness improves. This is accomplished through the rehabilitation program encompassing spinal adjustments and exercise that promotes postural correction. The length of correction and frequency of adjustments is determined by the severity of the patient’s subluxations and structural alignment.

A consistent schedule of adjustments may be maintained even after a patients symptoms have been relieved if the spine is not yet at its maximum position. Subluxations are often present even though no symptoms are currently being experienced by a patient. If subluxations are found, however, they can be corrected early to help prevent future problems.

In comparison to muculo-skeletal Chiropractors treatment plans, wellness Chiropractors tend to offer fair and equitable payment plans to help make family care affordable, regardless of insurance plans.

Get Involved

What’s your experience with visiting different chiropractors…did you know there are different types of chiropractors? Leave comments below!