Chiropractor near me. How to find the best chiropractor?

I understand finding a good provider in any field is difficult. Although I love to think that I am the best chiropractor in Vancouver and Portland area, here are simple criteria to find the best around town.

Combination of Treatment

From my experience we need to address all structures of our body to get rid of severe or chronic pain. Here are the tissues and the general treatment for each structure and body system.

MUSCLES

– Therapeutic Exercises

– Massage,

– Manual Therapy

JOINTS

– Chiropractic Adjustments
– Therapeutic exercises

LIGAMENTS

– Manual Therapy
– Chiropractic Adjustment

DISC

– Chiropractic Adjustment
– Decompression or Traction therapy
– Manual Therapy

NERVE

– Treatment of the disc (see above)
– Nerve Flossing/Nerve Glide
– Therapeutic Exercises

The truth is – a combination of therapies is needed for to accomplish the following goals:

– healing/rebuild our hardware (Improve joint range of motion. Muscle reflexes and strength. Remove swelling and stagnated fluid. Improve delivery of healing nutrients to specific tissues)

– reprograming our software (Neuromuscular re-education. Retrain the brain to control our muscles, joints, ligaments, disc, nerves to respond to correct distribution of forces through the body)

Ask the right questions to find the best chiropractor around you

Here are a some questions you can ask the chiropractor before and during the first visit to discover the best chiropractor for your problem

– What is the minimum amounts of treatments necessary to see improvement?

– How will you know the problem is improving? What are you measuring to see improvement?

– How will I know that the treatment is helping? (Seems intuitive but will give insight about your expectations and what the doctor is expecting)

Here is a list of tissues involved from mild to severe problems and approximate treatment plans to see improvement. You have to ask your chiropractor the following question with the conditions listed below: “If I have issue ‘A’ what is the average visits needed to get noticeable results?”

List of conditions and length of care, general recommendations

– DISC HERNIATION ACUTE (less than 3 months): 15-25 visits

– DISC HERNIATION CHRONIC (Longer than 3 months): 25-35 visits

– MUSCLE/LIGAMENT INJURY (Sprain/Strain): 5-10 visits

– SPINE JOINT INJURY: 10-20 visits

– SHOULDER/KNEE/ANKLE ETC JOINT INJURY: 5-15

– RECENT SUDDEN ONSET OF PAIN WITH NO INJURY: 5 visits

Bottom line: The time it takes to see improvement should be no more than 5 visits for most problems if the problem is not a disc problem/injury.