Laying the foundation
Chiropractic care is like building a house - certain things have to happen in a particular order in order for everything to stand strong and work correctly. When building a house, if you tried to put up your walls before you had a solid foundation, your walls would be weak and eventually collapse. If you tried to put on your roof before the walls were ready, you would run into the same problem. The same is true for your body. Your body has to go through a particular plan of care in order to repair itself correctly and fully. There are four general phases of chiropractic care . . .
Phase 1: Initial Intensive Care
When new patients come to our office, we ask what their health objectives are. Often, the answer is to help them get rid of a health problem that they have and do not want. Assuming the problem is either acute or chronic, but not permanent, we can often help turn the direction of a person's health around during initial intensive care. To many, this is the treatment phase of care though that is an over simplification.
Phase 2: Prevention
Once the outward signs of the problem have been addressed, the obvious question is, "would you be willing to take the additional steps that would be necessary to strengthen and stabilize your health so that the problem that caused you to consult us would be far less likely to return?" Almost everyone understands the value of this step and we move on to the prevention stage of care.
Phase 3: Maintenance
Almost always, patients who work towards stability and strength in order to prevent the return of a health problem find that their overall health also improves and they want to maintain it. More often than not, if we make the analogy of a gym, what would you need to do to maintain weight loss after you have achieved it? The answer is to keep doing everything that you did to accomplish your objective in order to prevent the problem from returning. Maintenance in this office is almost always at a reduced frequency of visits than either correction or prevention.
Phase 4: Health Development
Health development clients consult with us regularly about which lifestyle strategies could be employed to cause their health to improve year after year.