“But Dr. Spearman, stuck joints are not healthy.” Precisely, Watson! Much of the travail that people experience is because it is not routine in our society to check for stuck joints. Yet, a stuck joint starts to DECAY TWO WEEKS AFTER A JOINT STICKS. It does not have to hurt to be stuck. Most of the stuck joints that are quietly decaying and need to be adjusted (unstuck) you will not be aware of because they do not hurt. Why don’t they hurt? Glad you asked. The body smoothly shifts other joints slightly so you can stay in action without distraction. Unfortunately, years down the road the pain appears. Often, if you x-ray the area the obvious decay is seen. At this point you have a more or less chronic situation. Oh boy!
When your chiropractor says get regular visits, the underlying FACT is he wants to keep you free of stuck and decaying joints. Now, chiropractors sometimes want to adjust you all the time. Sometimes, it takes several visits to get a person loosened up and balanced. After that, routine visits should follow. If you have never seen a chiropractor before, are grown, and played active sports or are still active then you may need substantial work to get you in good shape. What if your first visit to the dentist was at age 25? You might need substantial work and then you would switch to routine visits. The analogy is appropriate.
Determining how often you should be adjusted as a routine is between you and your chiropractor. It could be once every 6 months or even once a year or it could be monthly or more often. Pro football players get adjusted daily during the active season. I go every month as I have a physical job adjusting bodies and I hike weekly and do other physical activities. I am ready every month. If you go once a month, and there are several stuck joints, then a monthly routine visit is adequate time spacing. If nothing can be found after a month then try two or three months and see how your body adjusts then. If there are several stuck joints at 2 months then this routine is good time spacing.
You will find a good routine by experimenting this way. Remember you have over 200 bones in your body and many more joints than that, and you have 28 teeth in your mouth. So, there are far more opportunities to get stuck joints than to get cavities. You can also do additional visits if you fall or play weekend warrior and overdo it or otherwise stress a joint excessively.
Just to scare you into compliance a bit, let me tell you something that I see periodically. A patient comes into the office with pain down a leg or down the arm or in the back that does not easily resolve. Sometimes this can be fixed completely and other times x-rays show decay in a spinal joint or other joint. That slow decay has been at work for years and now is chronic. Perhaps it can be calmed down but is always a bit of a problem. The moral of the story, Watson, is to get in an administrative routine for checking out your joints. In my office if I cannot find any stuck joints the visit is free of charge. In other words I am fairly confident that I will win this challenge the great majority of the time and can afford it for those of you who are close to perfect. It is a challenge that we all win at in the long run.
Dr. Mike Spearman
