It’s six thirty in the morning. Your alarm sounds and you hit the snooze button to give yourself another ten minutes of sleep. Half-awake you envision your day, what you will eat for breakfast, what you will wear to work, you wonder how your day will unfold. You sit up to get out of bed and you feel a stabbing pain in your neck. Your hand automatically goes to the source and you try to remember your sleep positions during the night. You think, maybe I slept wrong. For the rest of the day your focus isn’t as sharp as usual. The pain is intrusive and it affects your mood. At times you are short tempered with your co-workers. A few people ask if you are feeling ok today. As the day goes on you find yourself holding your head at a strange angle in hopes to relieve the pain. You take some painkillers which give a few hours of relief. But by lunchtime your pain has returned and you skip lunch. At the end of the day you can barely turn your head to one side and you feel as if you have been carrying a heavy weight on your shoulders.
How often has this scenario played out in one or more of your days? Now think about a different kind of pain that similarly occurs to most people. Let’s say you went to bed and woke up with a toothache instead of a pain in your neck. You might find yourself having some of the same mannerisms. You feel the pain in a tooth; you cup your hand on your cheek as the pain stabs. You might apply an over the counter numbing gel, take a couple of pain relief tablets and wait for the pain to ease or go away. If it doesn’t you might tolerate the pain for a day or two but ultimately you will call a dentist and schedule an appointment to get to the root of the problem, (no pun intended…well maybe so.)
The pain of a toothache can be an indicator of deeper problems, a cavity, a diseased nerve inside a tooth, or impacted molars which would require the specialty services a Dentist can provide in order to remedy the pain. Likewise pain in your neck, limbs, and spine can be remedied by a trained specialist, a Chiropractor, but are often overlooked and tolerated for a long time before anyone seeks help to ease those pains. If Chiropractic care was prioritized as maintenance care, in the same manner that individuals schedule regular dental check-ups, imagine the improved well-being that could occur. Cavities untreated can cause irreparable damage to one’s oral health, so can equally harmful spinal misalignments to one’s overall health.
Now let’s re-imagine a morning when you have awakened with a stabbing pain in your neck and your first thought is, “I need to schedule an appointment with my Chiropractor.” Once your pain crisis is managed you schedule maintenance appointments as often as necessary for your overall well-being. Chiropractic maintenance care is as essential to good health as regular dental appointments are to good oral hygiene.