I love stories, I love telling them and listening to them. There is a lot to be learned from stories. Today I want to tell a few stories, I want to tell a few chiropractic success stories that I have had a first-hand opportunity of witnessing. Without these stories what I do would be obsolete. Thank you to all those who I will talk about for permitting me to be a part of your story in health.

To maintain strict confidentiality between with our practice members all of the names used are not the actual names of people I have seen but the stories are true. 

Put your head on straight! 

The first chiropractic success story I want to tell is one of the more severe cases I have seen yet was of an individual who came in unable to hold her head up straight. We will call her Jodi for the case of this story. Jodi called me and she said she was in severe pain and that she couldn’t move her head very well. We booked her a same-day appointment to get her in as soon as possible. When she came in I thought to myself “uh oh, I hope I can help her, this looks pretty gnarly”. She came in with her head leaned over to her right side with her ear almost touching her shoulder. This was the position she felt most comfortable in. My first thought was that she had a major disc injury. Turns out she had had a previous neck injury and they had taken an MRI of her neck and found a protruding disc. This had happened within the year of her and i’s first meeting. 

During the first visit, we went over together what she was feeling and how this started and a ton of other questions to verify what was happening with her situation. Then after we spoke we performed a few orthopedic exams to help me pinpoint what exactly was causing the issue she was having. After that was complete I looked at all the information I had gathered and concluded that the disc protrusion on her previous MRI was likely not the main cause of the issue she was having. the symptoms she presented with did not match up with the prominent symptoms of a disc injury. After checking for other issues known as red flags that would contraindicate an adjustment we decided to go ahead with care. 

To my astonishment, after two adjustment visits and about 5 days down the road, she had nearly regained all of her range of motion. She was able to hold her head upright without issue and she could perform many of the duties that she had to leave behind because she wasn’t functioning optimally. Jodi has since continued to improve under chiropractic care. She has noticed now that she is sleeping better than she was before she started to care. It is amazing to see what happens when the body is communicating properly and healing on its own. 

Rugby is fun, 13 years of Low back pain from rugby, not fun.

I had the opportunity to go to Fiji to take care of people through chiropractic during chiropractic college. One of the coolest things I saw was an individual we will name Bula, Bula had experienced an injury 13 years before our meeting. He played rugby as a kid and was tackled on a certain occasion that left him with chronic Low back pain for the next 13 years. When he laid on my chiropractic table I started to check him and could tell that he was quite off. He had a misalignment in his pelvis and so we got him adjusted that day. 

Bula was very quiet and I couldn’t get much out of him regarding his situation. He just said that his back hurt, so we did a few tests and determined that there were no contraindications for his adjustment and so we went forward. After his adjustment, he went and sat down with one of the team members I was with who was Fijian as well. Bula began to tell the story to my team member about the rugby accident. He told my Fijian colleague that he was no longer in pain. After 13 years of dealing with that pain and then with one adjustment it was completely gone. Misalignment in the spine can have long-lasting effects on an individual.

A high school kid’s post-concussion struggles

One of my favorite demographics to work with is young athletes. Recently I had a new patient who played soccer. We will call her Rose. Rose came into her first visit with a pretty tough situation. She had recently had a concussion and was not recovering very well from it. She had difficulty focusing in class, brain fog, frequent headaches, sensitivity to light, etc. She was struggling with filling out applications to universities because she couldn’t focus on them long enough to get anything done. The post-concussion symptoms were affecting her life currently and had the potential to affect her future drastically.  We got her started under the care and introduced her to the concussion protocol that we use at Happy Family Chiropractic and we started to down her path to healing. After a few weeks, she was back to normal, functioning as she was pre-concussion.

Hearty coincidence

I’m not saying it was chiropractic but, the coincidence is hard to look past. This patient will be called Erik. Erik came into the office with a concern for low back pain and some mid-back tightness. After going through his history and doing a few orthopedic exams I found no contraindications in his case to proceed with a chiropractic adjustment to help with his concerns.

As we progressed through his care plan his low back pain slowly eased and he felt more mobility in his mid-back. He eventually switched to wellness care and has been coming into the office for nearly a year. About 4 months into his care he told me was having trouble with his heart for a couple of years. I said “What?? There was no mention of heart issues during our initial exam and history and you didn’t mark any heart conditions on your chart?!” I was concerned that I had missed something very big. Then he told me this story, He said “a few years back I was living down south and I was walking with some friends and the whole world seemed to slow down and I could hear my heartbeat very slowly. This happened a few times and finally, I decided to go to the hospital they all seemed very concerned with what was happening with my heart but couldn’t figure anything out. I was passed around to a few different specialists and no one could figure out what was happening. These episodes started happening about 1-2 times a month. I would have to slow down and take a seat or lie down and wait for them to pass. But they haven’t happened in a while.” I immediately asked when the last one had happened and he said they had been happening for about 3 years 1-2 times a month and then about 4 months ago they stopped. I opened up his chart and looked at the date of his first visit, it was 4 months prior almost on the dot. 

Now like I said at the beginning I am not saying that chiropractic healed his heart issue. That simply is not what chiropractic does. I will say that on multiple visits to the office I found and corrected misalignment at the spinal level of T4 which is where the nerves that control the heart originate. Disruption in the communication between the brain and any system in the body can be caused by misalignment in the spine at the origination of the nerves that communicate with that system. It could be that the body on its own was already dealing with this issue. It could also be that the body was functioning better without the misalignment and could heal this aspect of the body. We don’t know, but the coincidence is hard to look past. 

At the office, my bread and butter are checking and adjusting people. I love it and I see positive results nearly every day. I don’t claim to be a super healer or some wizard who knows everything about how the body works. Your body is the super healer. It knows how it needs to function. Sometimes the body just needs some encouragement and many times that encouragement can come in the form of a chiropractic adjustment. Sometimes that encouragement needs to be a little stouter and comes from the practices of a medical doctor. The point is true healing comes from within you. From the perfect intelligence that allows you the miracle of life. Medical practitioners merely offer encouragement to that beautiful system that heals itself daily that is called your body. 

I don’t claim that chiropractic is a one-stop-shop, cure-all health care system. I simply want to note that when the nervous system is functioning at 100% there’s no telling what kind of potential the body can live up to.