How Often Should You Get A Chiropractic Adjustment

Frequency of chiropractic adjustments is one the most common concerns our patients have. Should the sessions be done closer together for optimal benefit? Could you have too many adjustments? If you are feeling well, should you stop getting chiropractic help all together?

The answers to these questions will vary from patient to patient and depending on the type of injury and pain you are experiencing. For some patients, the aim is to prevent injury and retain or improve flexibility versus a cure for a specific pain. Each of these factors will affect frequency of chiropractic adjustments and the period of time you receive them over.

Here we will look at some of the primary reasons people visit a chiropractor and answer the question: how often should you get a chiropractic adjustment?

Common Chiropractic Adjustment Frequencies

Each injury type and personal goal will have an affect on how often you need chiropractic adjustments. However, patients can generally expect to need more adjustments in the beginning with a reduction in frequency as the goal becomes maintenance.

To achieve maximum benefits, most injury and pain types will need somewhere between four and twelve sessions. Ongoing maintenance is used to prevent pain from coming back and to prevent additional injuries from forming due to a misalignment of the spine.

A common regimen for a neck or back injury may look something like this:

Weeks 1 and 2: 3-4 chiropractic adjustments each week.

Weeks 3 through 10: 2 to 3 adjustments each week

Ongoing: once every two weeks for maintenance

Again, this is merely a sample adjustment schedule and yours could be more or less frequent.

How Long Do Chiropractic Adjustments Take?

This may seem like quite a few sessions but most sessions will likely only take around 10 minutes. Your first adjustment will take the longest and could be as much as a half hour but each session after that will see an improvement in your health and a reduction in the amount of time it takes.

By the time you reach maintenance sessions, your adjustments should only take around 5 minutes. We see many patients on their lunch breaks or even in the morning before work – that’s how quick it can be!

Can One Session Make a Difference?

We all lead busy lives and it can sometimes be difficult to commit to an ongoing treatment schedule. Fortunately, yes you are likely to experience immediate results with a single chiropractic session. This is not true for every patient or every type of pain or injury though. While pain relief in a single session is common, you should not expect maximum results without ongoing sessions.

A single treatment will likely produce more temporary results than ongoing treatments as well. Aches and pains may take weeks to come back, months or just a few days. Without follow up sessions, it is often difficult to predict how your body will respond.

What to do if you will be unable to schedule follow-up sessions? If you know you will not be able to come back for additional sessions, discuss this with your chiropractor. Your chiropractor may be able to offer advice on steps you can take at home to try and prevent aches and pains from returning.

These measures may include buying ergonomic furniture, a stretching routine or even something as simple as keeping a pillow between your knees when you sleep. Each of these supplemental treatments will have a positive benefit, but will not be guaranteed to keep you pain free.

Ultimately, you should strive for multiple sessions and what your chiropractor feels is best for you. If you begin to feel discomfort after a chiropractic session, it is best to schedule a follow-up as soon as possible.

Will My First Chiropractic Treatment Hurt?

Your chiropractic treatment should not cause you pain. The exception to this will be if you are already in pain when you come in. If your chiropractor is working on an injured or inflamed area, there may be more discomfort.

However, if you are in pain before a visit, you should tell your chiropractor prior to the adjustment. Your chiropractor may advise you to wait until you are healed or inflammation has gone down before attempting chiropractic care. This is not always true, but is a good precaution.

For most patients, there will only be mild discomfort and possibly a popping sensation as the spine and/or joints are realigned. Some soreness may be present after a chiropractic session, similar in pain level to what you might experience after a workout. This pain should, in no way, be unbearable or intense. If it is, you should contact your chiropractor immediately.

Chiropractic for Symptomatic, Preventative and Maintenance Care

Aside from additional sessions being needed for maintenance, one of the main reasons that people often need several sessions upfront is that they do not seek chiropractic care until they are symptomatic, meaning they are already in pain.

By the time symptoms of pain are present, the spine or other joints are often significantly out of alignment. Multiple sessions are needed just to get to a baseline of normal. Then, more sessions are needed to help transition to preventative and maintenance care.

When Should you Go See Your Chiropractor?

Ideally, everyone would get chiropractic care before they experience pain. Regular adjustments throughout life can help to keep you from experiencing greater injuries and possibly even contribute to preventing some types of arthritis.

However, we understand that this is not possible for most patients. Therefore, the next best time to visit your chiropractor is as soon as possible. Chiropractic intervention after a joint, neck or spine injury can often help to prevent the need for surgery or greater pain from developing.

Similarly, if you have been putting off chiropractic care because you have been feeling better after a few sessions, it is important that you make time to visit your chiropractor before pain starts to return. Holding off could result in essentially having to start over. You may need multiple sessions close together to get back to where you were before going into maintenance care.

Other Reasons You Should Seek Chiropractic Care: Back and neck pain are the most common reasons people seek chiropractic care, but they are not the only reasons you should consider making an appointment.

Both highly active people and people who must sit at a desk for many hours can benefit from chiropractic care before actual pain starts. In both of these scenarios, pain from a misaligned spine can come on suddenly and dramatically interrupt your plans. Preventative chiropractic care can help address this before you find yourself losing three days of work because you cannot sit at your desk without intense back pain.

Other symptoms and reasons include:

• Loss of flexibility
• Frequent headaches
• Other joint and muscle pain
• You were recently involved in an accident
• Tingling and/or shooting pains in your legs – this could be a pinched nerve.
• Uneven wear on your shoes- this is an indication your spine is misaligned and intervention can prevent greater pain from forming.

When Should You NOT Go See Your Chiropractor?

While a chiropractor is an important part of your healthcare team, there are situations that are not for chiropractic care. Primarily, if you have or suspect you have any broken bone or fractures, you will need other medical intervention before seeking chiropractic treatment. Chiropractors can often be beneficial after a break or fracture has healed but chiropractic services alone will not mend bone.

Similarly, chiropractors cannot treat joint or spine pain that is caused by certain underlying conditions. Your chiropractor can, however, help you to work towards a diagnosis for unexplained pain. A doctor of chiropractic can take x-rays and refer you to other specialists if chiropractic care alone is not helping.

What if Chiropractic Care Is Not Working?

Any time a medical treatment is not working, you should talk to your doctor. This is especially true for chiropractic care which should have easily felt results. If your pain is not getting better or getting worse, your chiropractor can order x-rays to see if there are additional issues or change up your treatments. They may also refer you to a specialist to help rule out other underlying causes that cannot be addressed with chiropractic care.

Chiropractic Care in Combination with Other Treatment

Chiropractic care is often used in conjunction with other treatments such as exercise/stretching, medication and surgery. Chiropractic adjustments can be an especially useful tool in supporting the work that surgery has done for your back and spine. However, you must be completely healed from surgery before any chiropractic work can be done.

Chiropractic adjustment frequency after surgery will be based on your personal progress and healing. You can expect your sessions to be increased or decreased with an emphasis on going slowly as to ensure your chiropractic adjustments are working well with your surgery, pain medication or exercise routine.

Importance of Comprehensive Care and Transitioning to Maintenance

If you have hesitated about starting chiropractic care because you or someone you know complained that they had a chiropractic adjustment, felt better and then relapsed into feeling pain, now is the time to try again and do it the right way.

The most common reason pain comes back is because a patient stopped receiving chiropractic care or they ceased their doctor recommended care they do at home (i.e. stretching, sleeping with an ergonomic pillow or avoiding certain activities).

To avoid this, maintenance and preventative adjustments are needed. Arizona Personal Injury Centers will ensure you have all the information you need about optimizing your care with a schedule of maintenance adjustments. We will also often prescribe measures you can take at home to further stimulate long term healing and pain relief.

Why Do I Need Follow Up Chiropractic Adjustments?

One of the common misunderstandings about chiropractic care that leads to frustration is that it is intended to “cure” someone in the same way a course of antibiotics will rid you of an infection. Instead, chiropractic care is more similar to the way you would treat going to the gym: for it to work its best, you must do it consistently.

This is not to say that a single session or two will not make a difference or that skipping a few sessions will set you back months. However, for the best chance at maintaining progress, consistent sessions are needed.

Chiropractic care can also be likened to other preventive and routine medical practices.

If ongoing chiropractic care seems unnecessary, consider this, does your primary care physician only want to see you once and never again? No, of course not. Your primary care physician likely wants to see you at least once a year and more often if you have certain conditions. They want to help you maintain your health throughout your life and chiropractors have that same goal.

Determining How Many Chiropractic Adjustments You Need

No matter the kind of injury you have or are trying to prevent, the best course for deciding your treatment plan is to begin with an initial consultation. During the initial consultation we will get a baseline for where you are physically and where you would like to be.

A tentative treatment plan will be given during your consultation. However, it is best to get a follow-up appointment to see how your body has responded to your initial adjustment. From there, a plan will be set in place and then adjusted based on your progress towards your goals.

Let Arizona Personal Injury Centers Create a Custom Treatment Plan for You

Many of the treatment frequencies we have discussed here will have variations depending on the patient and goal of the treatment. Ultimately, the answer to “How often should you get a chiropractic adjustment?” is best answered with a personalized plan designed especially for you.

At Arizona Personal Injury Centers, we have worked with thousands of patients across our multiple locations to fully customize treatment plans to optimize healing for each individual we see. When you schedule a consultation with our experienced and compassionate doctors of chiropractic care, we take your personal history, health goals and concerns into consideration before prescribing a course of treatment.

Start optimizing your chiropractic care and get the right treatment schedule for you. Contact our offices at 480-442-4445 and be connected to the Arizona Personal Injury Center closest to you.