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At what stage is pain too bad to visit a chiropractor?
It is fine to visit a chiropractor when you are in pain (many people do), but it depends on the degree of pain. If your back or muscles feel tight, it hurts to move, or you can’t move much, a chiropractor can adjust their techniques accordingly.
However, if you are in so much pain that you can barely walk, or you cannot even sit up in the car to visit a chiropractor, this indicates that there is so much muscle spasm or inflammation that it will be very hard to chiropractor to do much. In these cases, you are better resting and icing the problem area for a day or two to allow it to calm down before visiting the chiropractor.
If you can’t move your neck at all (eg. you have Acute Torticollis), sometimes a chiropractor will use a technique called PNF stretching to relax the muscle spasm instead of adjusting the spine. You can even do it at home by yourself because it a very safe technique. Here is a video about PNF exercises for a crick in the neck.
If severe back or neck pain strikes, try to get to the chiropractor quickly before it gets too bad. If you can get to a chiropractor with a few hours of it starting, the chiropractor may be able to release any restricted joints before the inflammation or muscle spasm builds up too much.
Can Chiropractors Make Things Worse?
Chiropractors are trained to know when to work on a spine and when to leave it alone. If there is a lot of inflammation, gently mobilising the joint can decrease the cause of the inflammation, so it can really help, but the level of inflammation needs to be carefully assessed. If the joints are too inflamed, adjusting the spine can increase the inflammation in the short term, so sometimes icing the area and coming back in a couple of days when the inflammation has settled is the best way to go. The chiropractor can use a few tests to assess this.
Stefan Becker
Chiropractor in Barcelona, Spain
