I’m starting out 2017 with an offer for prospective new patients. Through the end of February people who schedule new patient appointments and are referred by a current member of the practice will receive the adjustment portion of their first visit complimentary. This reduces the cost from $120 to $70 for the 45 minute initial appointment.

This post is a reminder that when scheduling an appointment online it is critical to remember to press the “FINISH” button at the end of the sequence in order to have the visit sent to the server. If you don’t receive a separate confirmation e-mail as soon as you make the appointment and a reminder e-mail the day before you’re coming in then the visit doesn’t exist! The button is at the very bottom right corner of the screen and can be hard to see on smaller devices. Thanks and I’ll see you in the office.

I’d like to talk about problem-solving care vs. wellness care in chiropractic. Most of the time people initiate care with a chiropractor to address a particular problem or symptom, usually musculoskeletal in nature. What happens after the issue improves or resolves varies from person to person. Some discontinue care entirely, while others return if the problem (or other problems) re-occurs. Some will adopt a loose schedule of ongoing maintenance visits to fill in the gaps between any symptom-based care they may need and still others incorporate a wellness aproach with regular adjustments aside from feeling bad or good.

With all of these different approaches to care it is important to clarify the difference between a symptom-based adjustment and a wellness adjustment. Actually, there isn’t one!  A chiropractic adjustment has a singular goal every time it is performed; to detect and help the body correct spinal misalignments (subluxations) which are interfering with the nervous system’s ability to properly express health. This is the same on the first adjustment as it is on the 5,000th. Therefore every adjustment is both problem-solving and wellness-promoting at the same time. There are always problems which are addressed through spinal care, even though most of them are asymptomatic and there are always potential problems which adjustments help to keep from becoming an issue.

Most of you know that I am a strong advocate for wellness care. I frequently use the examples of changing the oil in your car or having preventative denatl care to support the concept of proactive spinal maintenance. Waiting for poor spinal health to result in dis-ease in the body is like waiting for a tooth to abscess before going to the dentist.

So the real distinction between symptom care and wellness care resides in the mindset of the patient. I encourage you to consider the preventative benefits of chiropractic; after 23 years of observation in my practice it is a clinical fact that long-term wellness patients tend to have fewer symptom-based problems and are more pro-active about their health overall.

See you in then office!

How have we strayed so far?
A health care crisis grips this country. More importantly, a health crisis grips this country. Americans are among the most fortunate and best positioned to experience and enjoy true health of any people on the planet. Yet statistics tell a rather different story. Infant mortality rates, the growing incidence of chronic degenerative disease, rates of diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, violent crime perpetrated on one another; all place us well back in the pack. This, even though we spend significantly more on “health care” than any other country,
The reason for the quotations above is at the heart of the contradiction. We don’t have a system that enlightens and encourages us to be healthy nearly as much as one that waits for and then reacts to and treats sickness (dis-ease care); a for-profit system that cannot survive on wellness, but thrives on illness. It is one that too often uses fear of becoming sick as a powerful marketing tool, fostering the belief that our bodies are inherently wayward and prone to malfunctioning (“Ask your doctor if the purple pill is right for you”). This is a departure from the truth with far-reaching consequences. In fact, our bodies, innately intelligent and self-regulating, strive for perfection every moment of our lives, right to the last. And the fact that we will never actually be perfect, at no time deters the organism from pursuing it.
Tragically, the majority of ill health in this country is the result of bad choices people make (both individually and collectively) over and over and not the genetic cards we were dealt. Of course, there are millions of exceptions that are related to environment and genes, but it doesn’t change the overall proportion. The big money-costing (and money-making) conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. are driven more by ill behavior over time than any other factor. Deep down, we all know this to be true and don’t need it spelled out to us in a study. Yet many accept the notion that no matter how they behave, medicine will be there to fix them. When Michelle Obama modestly promotes a campaign to encourage healthy eating in kids (with current childhood obesity rates hovering around 40%) she is criticized by many for “over-stepping”. This is like saying that educating kids about crossing busy streets at cross-walks instead of jay-walking through traffic is excessively controlling. Adults don’t like being presented with the reality that they are passing on their bad behavior to children.
It isn’t access to health care that should be our priority as a birthright instead of a privilege, but rather health itself. We are each individual stewards of that birthright, with a responsibility to behave in a way that honors it. When we actually have a robust and center-stage Public Health System that educates, promotes and inspires people to be well, then perhaps we will begin to actually empty hospital beds rather than fill them. I work towards this every day, because it is our very lives that are the measure.
Stuart Grey, D.C.
Brookline, MA