FAQs

TAKE A LOOK AT SOME OF OUR MOST COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS.

Chiropractic is a form of natural health care. Unlike traditional medicine, chiropractors believe in the natural ability of the body to heal itself. Chiropractors are taught the importance of nerves functioning properly.

If a joint is irritating a nerve, then that nerve will not function properly. In return anything that the nerve connects with, including muscles and organs, can not be functioning at their optimal level. This can lead to pain, injuries, and even disease in extreme cases.

Chiropractors specialize in treating this type of dysfunction through the use of the chiropractic adjustment, which puts the body into an optimal state for healing. An adjustment is a high velocity low amplitude force applied to a specific joint that is not functioning properly. The adjustment pushes the dysfunctioning joint into a new position that allows the joint to function optimally.

By correcting the alignment of the joint to reduce nerve irritation and maximize joint function there are added benefits such as better functioning muscles and organs and reduced pain. By allowing everything to function properly we are giving our bodies the best chance to heal.

For the most part adjustments do not hurt at all, and in most cases people experience immediate pain relief. It is always a good idea to stretch and move around a little bit before getting a chiropractic adjustment.

This helps warm up the muscles around the spine and makes adjusting the joints easier for the chiropractor. Generally people with neck and back pain are not experiencing pain in their joints, the pain is coming from the inflammation and irritation in the muscles.

This can cause some slight discomfort while the doctor is moving you around to set you up for the adjustment. If you are sore after a chiropractic adjustment always remember to ice the area. Icing will help reduce inflammation and help to reduce the amount of pain.

There is nothing to be afraid about when seeing your chiropractor. The audible popping and cracking that people hear during the adjustment can be scary at first glance, but it is no different than cracking your knuckles.

That noise is just a small amount of CO2 being released from the joint. The CO2 gets built up and trapped within the joint space due to repetitive movement over time and is completely natural. Do not be worried about the doctor breaking your neck, doctors of chiropractic go through countless hours of practice setting people up and working on hand positioning before they ever get to the adjustment itself.

In order to become a doctor of chiropractic you need to complete an undergraduate degree then 3.5 years of the chiropractic graduate program, along with passing 4 rounds of boards and nearly 1000 hours of interning. During this time chiropractic students have to complete over 300 individual adjustments. More than likely the chiropractor you are thinking about seeing has performed thousands of adjustments and is very capable of performing a safe adjustment.

If you are still leery about getting your neck adjusted that doesn’t mean you should not go in. Chiropractors have a tool called the activator that gives a very specific and calculated adjustment. If that still scares you, then your chiropractor does not have to adjust your neck, trust us there are plenty of other joints in the body that we can help with.

This is a tough question to answer, every chiropractor has a different fee schedule, and every patient has different insurance benefits, so it changes from patient to patient.

The best way to find out how much it costs to see a chiropractor is to bring your insurance card in and have us do an insurance verification. After doing the insurance verification our doctor’s should know how much your deductible is, if you have a co-pay, co-insurance, and a visit limit.

Based on all this information the doctor can talk with you about whether a cash option or an insurance option is best suited for you!

Chiropractors can treat a variety of conditions, even though most people assume we are just limited to neck and backs. Of course our specialty is neck and back pain, but we can adjust almost any joint in the body.

That includes shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. Chiropractic care is proven to get great results with whiplash, migraines, headaches, fibromyalgia, neck pain, low back pain, thoracic outlet syndrome, and sciatica. Chiropractic also offers pain relief management to patients with other more sever neurological disorders such as concussions, vertigo, MS, AS, parkinsons, and even ADHD.

For a more complete and in depth description of what chiropractors can treat take a look at our conditions we treat page. Each heading has a description of the condition, signs and symptoms, and tips from the chiropractors at Northern Edge Chiropractic LLC in Plymouth, MN. Check out the common conditions we treat here!

Like we mentioned before chiropractors believe in relieving nerve irritation. Think of your spine as a busy highway with cars traveling on both sides. Just like a busy highway your brain is sending information to and from muscles and organs all day long via your spine and nervous system.

Now we all know how terrible it is when we are trying to get somewhere fast and we run into a traffic jam. Again the same concept applies to our nerves, if we have a misalignment in our spine causing irritation to the nerve roots we can get a small traffic jam.

This does not allow the information to be sent back to the brain as quickly, causing decreased functioning muscles and organs. About 45% of our nerve fibers run to both organs and muscles leaving only about 10% of the nerve fibers for sensory things like touch, vibration, and pain.

Pain is generally a very small amount of nerve fibers and is the bodies last resort to alert you that something is going wrong (that a traffic jam has occurred). So even though you are currently not in pain does not mean that you are functioning optimally.

That is completely false, the reason why people tend to think this way is because chiropractic care can be used as a preventative tool. Going in for regular adjustments is a good way to prevent spinal degeneration, arthritis, muscle breakdown, and disc herniation’s.

We recommend going in for a regular adjustment once every other week, and at a very minimum once a month. I think of it like going to the dentist twice a year, I still go to get my teeth cleaned even if I don’t have any tooth aches or cavities.

Same idea here we are trying to prevent damage and disease later in life, and keep you doing the things you love to do as long as possible.

The number of treatments varies greatly depending upon the condition of your spine and the severity of the injury. Generally pain is the last signal to the brain that dysfunction is present, which means it is possible that the body has been dealing with irritation to the joints for a long period of time.

Typically after the first adjustment there is immediate pain relief, however we are trying to correct things that have been out of place for a long time. This pain relief generally only lasts a few days before you need to be adjusted again. Typically chiropractors will need to see patients multiple times a week in the beginning and then taper off to about once a month in the end in order to get good results. In most cases you will see pain relief within the first couple weeks, but most treatment plans consist of multiple treatments over a longer period of time in order to stabilize the spine and make sure to fully correct the problem or injury.

Chiropractic is no different than any other type of healing. Think about how many medications you would need to take to get over strep throat, 2 doses a day for 10 days. Your sore throat goes away within the first 4 days of taking penicillin, but you continue taking the pills for the rest of the 6 days to fully get rid of the strep. That is essentially 20 treatments in 10 days to fully correct the problem and rid the body of the virus/bacteria.

The same principal applies to chiropractic, treat the patient to get them out of pain quickly then continue to treat until the problem has been fully corrected.

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Here at Northern Edge Chiropractic, we are committed to providing personalized chiropractic treatment plans to address your individual unique needs.