Importance of Protection Care
Why do I need regular treatments once I am ‘fixed’?
This is a question that comes up a lot in practice and I can understand it completely. Why would you want to continue to invest time and money into your body when it feels great?
We see a variety of different clients, many of them have tried many other forms of physical therapy such as traditional chiropractic, physiotherapy and massage. Clients usually express limited results from these therapies or find the issue reoccurring on a regular basis. With ABC we have great success with our clients, helping them to feel far less pain and for their bodies to be functioning at a much higher level. However, once they are feeling great again, what is the point of continued care after that?
When I answer this question for people, I ask them this: “What is the thing that your body cannot self-correct?” If the client has been listening to me ramble on about ABC and bodies over the course of their adjustments, they will usually answer with an exasperated expression “Bones that get pushed forward, because if this happens there is no muscles behind them to pull the bone back into place.”If this is news to you check out our blog post on how ABC differs from traditional chiropractic HERE.
In answering this question, they would be 100% correct. My follow up question is usually this: “So what things do you do during the course of your daily routine that could potentially knock bones forward?”
For them, this creates awareness of all the things they do day to day that have the potential to knock bones forward like slouching in the couch, sitting at a desk all day, surfing big waves and getting rolled, exercising at high intensities, sleeping in soft beds, driving cars, picking up or wrestling with the kids, being pulled along by the dog, bending over a computer all day, carrying shopping bags, lifting heavy objects while working, being stuck in uncomfortable positions, touch football on Wednesdays, social netball on Monday’s – the list of potential ways humans can knock bones forward goes on and on.
In our office we have a process called crisis care. This is when we help people start to move and feel better and achieve their health and body goals before deciding to close their case. Because of the activities in our everyday lives, their bones will eventually begin to knock out of place in the forward direction again. This will cause the body to twist and compensate for these problems. If left long enough, there will have been enough bones knocked forward and enough layers of compensatory twist developed that the person is once again in some form of significant pain or in crisis.
Above is one option, to wait until your body is in significant pain again before seeking further consultation. The other option is maintaining a regular adjustment, in a process we call protective care, or maintenance care. These processes provide for and understand that we all have daily unavoidable activities that have the potential to knock bones forward again. It also understands that it would be a good idea to take care of these on a regular basis rather than wait until they form a problem in the future. Maintenance allows you to remain in great upright posture, breath well regularly, move well and think well. So of course, you can choose to stop coming once you are well but at Posture HQ we think that crisis care is like robbing the bank to steal the pens. Why would you wait until your body is in trouble again when you could have a great functioning body everyday?