Injuries are part of life, but they may not need to last long. Sometimes we suffer workplace injury, sports injury or something at home. Often age or sickness causes temporary injuries. Whatever the reason, we may not need to live with pain.
Can chiropractic help my injury?
Many people choose to visit a chiropractor because of injury. Pain is often the prompt that brings someone to see if a chiropractor can help them. Common injuries include:
- Neck Pain
- Torticollis or Wry Neck
- Mid Back Pain
- Low Back Pain
- Disc injury (prolapse, bulge, herniation)
- Pinched Nerve (common term for biomechanical joint dysfunction)
- Sciatica
- Hip Pain
- Groin or Pubic Pain
- Knee Injury
- Shoulder Pain
- Rotator Cuff Injury
- Carpal Tunnel
Chiropractic works to get joints moving, relax muscles, soften ligaments and speed up healing times. Most injuries have what is called a natural history of healing. What that means is how long it takes, without any treatment, for a particular type of injury to heal.
The practice of chiropractic is to improve the function of the injured area to allow it to heal as fast as possible and hasten the recovery.
Your chiropractor will be able to assess your injury, see what stage it is at and advise if your issue is something appropriately treated with chiropractic care. If so they will then give you an estimate of what it may take to get you back to your normal happy healthy self. This may include chiropractic adjustments (treatment) as well as stretches, exercises, heat or cold therapy, natural anti-inflammatory creams or even vitamin or anti-inflammatory supplements, all to improve your body’s ability to heal.
Our Family Health Chiropractor has had great success in treating these injuries as well as other common conditions such as:
- Migraine
- Headaches
- Tension Headaches
- Scoliosis
- Postural problems
How long would I have to see a chiropractor for my injury?
That is entirely up to you and what you are aiming to achieve with treatment. The first thing we aim for is getting out of pain and how long that takes is determined by several things. First of all it depends on what your exact injury is, second is the extent of the injury, third is how long ago the injury occurred. Those aspects will greatly affect your recovery time. Your chiropractor won’t know this until they can fully assess you. You may also find that once you are feeling fabulous that you want to stay that way, rather than going backwards and forwards, in and out of pain. Occasional checkups may help with this.
How to prevent injury:
One of the best ways to prevent injury and improve well being in a sitting job is to get up often and move. Research has shown that prolonged sitting, even in a physically active person causes lack of fitness, pain, stiffness and even increases your risk of chronic disease and earlier death. There is a fantastic free app that you can download for either PC or Mac from the Australian Chiropractors Association website. It pops up as a little box every hour or so in the corner of your screen to remind you to get up and move, get a drink of water and can even direct you in some stretching. There’s also the ability to block it for a day if you know you just can’t be distracted by an app that day.