How often should I get adjusted?
This is the most common question I get. My best answer is once per week. If you have an acute injury or are in pain you may need more initially. Twice a month would be truly for maintenance. Once a month helps, but your body can still deteriorate. For the science behind this, please read below.
Research done at the University of Helsinki, Finland was published by Dr. Tapio Videman in the 1980’s that would revolutionize modern orthopedic surgery. Prior to this time orthopedic surgeons would routinely cast or otherwise immobilize the joints they did surgery on, allowing the joint to heal completely before initiating a program of physio-therapy/rehabilitation. And then came Videman.
His study was done largely using rabbits. He would immobilize their hip joints to varying degrees. No it doesn’t sound pleasant to be a rabbit in his lab! Yes it does get worse for the nose-twitching rodents. After a predetermined period of time he would sacrifice the rabbit, remove the hip joint, section it and look at it under electron microscope. What he found was astounding! Videman discovered that reducing the hip joint motion by just 50% for a period of a mere 2 weeks resulted in, using Videman’s words, “permanent and irreversible” damage to the cartilage surface of the joint. Keep in mind that the cartilage is the hard and smooth as glass liner between nearly every joint in the body.
The same can be said for a broken bone, it was common to cast a broke limb immobilizing it for 6 weeks. This means that you will have permanent and irreversible damage to the cartilage of that joint too, but Videman’s study also concluded that if you restore the joint motion back to normal, the degeneration process will be stopped. So if you wore a cast when you were a kid, not to worry, the amount of damage may technically be measurable, but is infinitesimal and inconsequential.
When the orthopedic surgeons looked at his study, a revolution occurred. Today, if you have joint surgery on a Monday, with rare exception, you will be moving that joint by Tuesday. As a result your chances of developing arthritis in that joint later in life is much much reduced.
A much quieter revolution happened at the same time in chiropractic circles. Our main job is to restore motion to your spinal joints, right? We use the adjustments to do this. I also teach exercises and specific stretches as an adjunct. The question is how often should we do the adjustments? How often should we do the exercises/stretches? It’s actually much more complicated than a shoulder or hip surgery that involves a single joint. Your spine has 24 movable bones in it, not including the joints that hold your rib cage to your spine. Videman says we have two weeks before permanent and irreversible degeneration kicks in. If you were faced with this data, how often would you want to be checked and adjusted? Yearly? Monthly? Every 2 weeks? Weekly? More often?
So we may need a few visits for acute fresh injuries or “intensive care”. Reconstruction will take plan after the initial acute situation has subsided. Once per week for ongoing wellness. Based upon the above data getting adjusted less than weekly just does not make sense. You, of course, can participate however you like.