There are always two types of treatments: one to ease symptoms and help the body heal itself, known as relief care, and another that finds the source of a disease or condition and tries to nip the evil in the bud, known as corrective care.
In Chiropractic, you’ll be able to find both: many causes of pain will heal naturally; what is really necessary is that you prepare and strengthen your body so it can do its job.
However, there are cases in which your body itself won’t make it. You’ll need assistance and proper treatment after a thorough analysis of your body condition. Then, your chiropractic can finally start building a plan for your case.
We’ll describe it deeply down below.
Chiropractic Care: Perspectives and forms of care
Millions have been adhering to chiropractic care lately, but few know the type of treatment section they have been going through.
What exactly are you treating? Are you just looking for pain relief?
Yes, chiropractic care can work as a painkiller, and probably better as a painkiller literally only hides the pain, while a chiropractic section will deal with pain, relieve your body levels of stress, improve blood circulation and provide support to your body heal faster.
However, there are cases where you go once, twice, or maybe three times, and you start feeling that the pain relief occurs just for a few days, but soon the body starts aching again, and you feel like you need one more section.
In this case, you have to take action and say it to your chiropractor, because what you need is corrective care and not relief care.
Relief care? Corrective Care? What is the difference between them?
In the last 20 years, chiropractic technology has developed more than ever, and now chiropractors don’t need to rely only on their hands to perform chiropractic care.
In other words, in cases the pain is coming from a deep spot that hands can barely reach, there will probably be equipment that can reach further, with the necessary softness to heal it properly.
Moreover, because of the technological advancements in general, there are also multiple exams that traditional medicine utilizes to diagnose diseases that can be used for chiropractors as well. X-rays and other imaging exams are great examples of that.
Once a chiropractor has identified your problem, they can start their plan of action, thinking about what you’ll need exactly, in terms of chiropractic, to heal completely.
That’s the difference between relief care and corrective care, in practice.
The three stages of chiropractic care
Corrective care won’t happen quicker than relief care. It means you’ll probably have to go through sections five, six, or seven times. Sometimes more.
What differs relief from corrective care is the reason why you’re doing it and the level of consciousness of both, patient and chiropractor.
There are 3 levels of reasons that lead a patient to look for chiropractic care, and we’ll understand them right below:
Wellness care
We all know some diseases/conditions come with aging, and that they affect our muscles, especially on the hands, back and neck. Arthritis, muscle stiffness, low mobility, and pain – a lot of pain.
Honestly, no one likes this perspective of getting older, isn’t it true?
Then, what many people have been doing is to look for ways to prevent them from happening since they are younger, especially when people work with repetitive activities, like training the body, cleaning rooms, or sitting in front of a computer.
It happens that chiropractic care is one of the most efficient treatments for disease prevention since it is a form of holistic care, and works on the root of most diseases in the body: the spine, the center of it all.
By improving blood flow, increasing the immune system, strengthening the body, and reducing stress, chiropractic can help benefit from a healthy and joyful life, in the short and long term.
Acute Care
If a patient is already in pain, they’ll look for help. Then, a chiropractor will take the case, listen to the patient carefully, maybe perform some tests on the patient’s body, and then prescribe a proper treatment.
In most cases, the body will heal itself from the injuries, and chiropractic care will be there to make sure it will happen less painfully and quickly.
However, in some cases, the patient has been suffering too long from a certain condition or maybe has been through a traumatic situation, and their bodies are deeply hurt. In that scenario, acute care will reduce pain and relieve the patient’s suffering, but won’t necessarily heal.
Both the chiropractor and the patient will have to keep their eyes wide open to take the proper action: keep the treatment and wait a bit more, or go further.
Recurrent/chronic care
If a patient is taking longer to heal, one of the possible approaches is to increase the section frequency for a short term. If not effective, a couple of exams have to be requested to investigate the patient’s body deeply.
Once it’s possible to diagnose the problem, the chiropractor has to decide if they can help by providing a different chiropractic solution, or recommend another treatment that will complement the chiropractic work if it’s been effective at least at some point.
In extreme cases where chiropractic care didn’t prove to be efficient, the chiropractor, a professional entitled with doctorship in a globally recognized medicine area, will recommend what step would be the best next, taking into consideration the traditional medicine or maybe a different type of physical therapy.
Relief & Corrective Care: How they relate with the 3 stages
The 3 stages are formal definitions, stated by the ACA (American Chiropractic Association).
Relief and corrective care, though, are just popular – and maybe philosophical – definitions that have become recurrent even in academic space.
Relief care, i.e., a treatment to relieve pain or other symptoms, lies somewhere between wellness care and the early stages of acute care. On the other hand, corrective care occupies the late stages of acute pain and the earliest of recurrent/chronic.
Keep in mind that the more advanced your condition is, the further you’ll be at these stages, and more sections of chiropractic care will be necessary. If you’re in pain right now, look for help before your case gets worse, and your condition becomes severe.
