OUR PURPOSE AND VALUES

OUR DRUG POLICY:

Chiropractors do not prescribe drugs and do not tell people to stop taking drugs. That is the practice of medicine. Our role is to alert people to the dangers of poor lifestyle decisions, the use of drugs, and to help them optimize their health naturally.

You must begin to judge for yourself whether your medications are keeping you alive, merely palliating symptoms of an unhealthy body, or actually causing some of the ailments from which you are suffering. The bottom line is that taking any drug will cause some level of adverse side effects. With the guidance of your prescribing physician, you need to make your own best decisions on medication. As you heal, work with your medical doctors to help you reduce or eliminate the drugs you are taking.

HOW DOES PAIN, DISEASE, and DYING RELATE TO CHIROPRACTIC OFFICES?

It is very common to have some level of pain and fatigue, poor posture, improper eating habits, a non-existent exercise regiment, and/or the habit of regularly using medications - medications that are often just covering the symptoms or side effects of subluxation and of an unhealthy lifestyle. While many never break from this routine, all, on some level, know that eventually they are going to be lying in a hospital with a severe problem and regretfully saying to themselves, “You know what, I knew it. I knew I was going to end up here.”  Of course, that is if they are lucky enough to even contemplate their disease, as many die abruptly before they even get that chance.  The most deadly disease is truly the one of ignorance or denial.

Those of us, who have lost or watched the suffering of family members, close friends, or even an acquaintance at a young age, often wish there was something more we could have said or done.  Many will dedicate their lives to helping people avoid early pain and death through care and education. We do not use medical, fear-based “scare tactics”.  We simply believe in (and have dedicated our lives to) being a wake-up call for those who are unknowingly or unconsciously causing pain to themselves and to helping them before it is too late. 

1.     While opinions within the profession tend to vary on certain matters, the Association of Chiropractic Colleges agrees that Chiropractic helps create balance and harmony between the central nervous system and the organs, muscles, and systems of your body.  A spine out of alignment will stress the nervous system.  Since the nervous system controls all function and healing, this can only lead to poor development in children, poor health, and diminishing skeletal and cellular function.

2.      According to the laws of physics (Wolf’s Law), stress placed unequally on bones and vertebrae will cause arthritic degeneration at the point of greatest stress.

3.      A chiropractic lifestyle is defined as a natural, drug-free lifestyle.  While chiropractors do not prescribe or un-prescribe drugs, they do offer information on the extreme dangers of manipulating your body’s physiology using prescription and non-prescription medications and the potentially deadly effects of poor nutrition, negative stress, and inadequate levels of exercise.

In determining whether or not you will choose to use this office as a resource for wellness, you must decide for yourself whether or not you want a doctor that takes life and health this seriously.  We are in no way, shape, or form here to scare you or disturb you.  Yet out of extreme compassion and service to God we have made it our purpose to create awareness classes and care plans designed to increase quality of life, as well as increase quantity.

CHOOSING A WELLNESS CHIROPRACTOR

While some chiropractors choose to limit their scope of care to short term pain relief only, today’s wellness chiropractor focuses on overall health and maximized living.

Health and wellness oriented chiropractors provide a care plan designed to reduce or eliminate the problems they discovered while using the precise measurements of the spine they have taken. They work to help your spine return to as normal and healthy as possible using specific, scientific chiropractic adjustments along with pin-point therapeutic techniques to help restore normal spinal curves, reduce abnormal lateral curves (scoliosis), strengthen the spinal musculature, balance posture, and even allow for certain levels of regeneration of the bones, discs, and other soft tissues.

Once you are at your body’s optimum state, these wellness leaders will then have you follow a solid spinal hygiene program, establish an ongoing schedule for wellness adjustments, hold lifestyle workshops, and provide personal lifestyle guidance.

When you are ready to choose a wellness doctor, here are some important things to note:

Purpose of adjustment

Wellness doctor: A very specific, gentle force is applied with the intent of removing interference from normal nerve transmission.

Non-wellness: A general manipulation is applied, similar to an osteopath or physical therapist, with the intent of loosening you up.

Objective of care

Wellness doctor: To help create and maintain optimum position of your spine based on scientific norms as well as align your lifestyle with what it takes to produce health.

Non-wellness doctor: To alleviate symptoms alone.

Assessment of improvement

Wellness doctor: Seeing actual change in objective findings: X-ray, posture, EMG, computerized range of motion, muscle testing, etc.

Non-wellness: Basing frequency, duration, and type of treatment on whether or not it is covered by insurance. Looking for change in symptoms only.

Proper evaluation

Wellness doctor: Posture, X-ray, EMG, computerized tests to create an accurate measurement of your spine and other important indicators of good health.

Non-wellness: Doctor just works where it hurts.

Ongoing evaluation and care

Wellness doctor: Re-measure within a 90 to 120 day period to see changes in initial measurements. Give an ongoing wellness care plan. Offers continual lifestyle education and counseling programs.

Non-wellness: No plan for on-going care.  Just has you come back when pain returns (Receiving care only when there is pain allows your spine to deteriorate, acknowledging a problem only when there is damage and/or inflammation).

wellness and Insurance

Insurance companies, particularly HMOs, now set a limit on how often chiropractors can see an individual patient and how much they can charge for visits.  Only a chiropractor, not an insurance adjuster, can determine if you need chiropractic.

Real wellness doctors cannot work solely with insurance or HMOs because of the amount of time and the number of visits it takes to bring about and maintain wellness. Insurance is not designed for health care. It is designed for disease care.

It may be helpful to think of chiropractic care in the same way you think of orthodontia. Straightening teeth takes a long time and a lot of adjustments. In the same way, the duration of care and the frequency of adjustments are essential to changing the bone alignment in your spine. It is also necessary to use very specific, highly advanced techniques in order to get the subluxation in your spine corrected and to see a noticeable improvement on subsequent X-rays. Infrequent visits or non-specific manipulative techniques will make no significant or permanent changes to spinal structures.

While all doctors want their patients to be free of pain, the focus of wellness based chiropractic is to remove as much nerve interference as possible through a specific rehabilitative program of spinal adjustments, stretches, and exercises that are customized for each individual. The frequency and cost of care are determined by the severity of the subluxation and structural imbalance in the spine. An insurance program does not determine it. Results are not based on how the patient feels, but on re-examination and follow up x-rays- the only methods that provide tangible evidence of improvement and wellness.

Fortunately, as caring doctors we have created corrective programs and family wellness plans that are cost effective.  This makes it affordable for those with limited or no insurance to still receive all of the care they need – really need.

NATURE AND PURPOSE OF CHIROPRACTIC PROCEDURES
Chiropractic strives to improve the health and function of the central nervous system- the control center of the entire body. This protects the spine from damage caused by ordinary, everyday activities including physical, mental, or emotional stress and allows for maximum cellular function. 

Do Chiropractors Cure?

The biggest misunderstanding about chiropractic is that chiropractors claim to cure disease. Responsible chiropractors do not claim to “cure” anything. The medical profession tries to cure disease by using drugs and surgery. By contrast, chiropractic maximizes the natural, God given strength of the human body and its capacity to heal without using dangerous drugs or surgery.

People go to chiropractors with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, infections, osteoporosis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hyperactivity, learning disorders, asthma, allergies, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, intestinal disease, aches and pains, and paralysis. In addition, chiropractors have treated patients who are in a coma. While chiropractors do not heal these people, they use care of the nervous system along with nutrition, diet, and healthy lifestyle programs to lead those who are suffering toward their greatest possible level of wellness.

Many do get well and call it a miracle, but it is really just a return to normal. The best miracles are the “silent miracles” which occur when people who were at risk for the above conditions or diseases went to a chiropractor for care before they developed. As a result of maximized living- a chiropractic lifestyle, people have their best chance to avoid the condition or disease in the first place. That is the miracle of real wellness.

WHY DO I HAVE TO KEEP GOING?

One of the many questions people ask about going to a chiropractor or any wellness provider is, “Why do I have to go for the rest of my life?” The easy answer is, “You don’t. You only have to go for as long as you want to stay healthy!”

When do you stop drinking clean water? When does it stop being important to exercise? When do you stop building loving relationships? The answer of course is never, unless at some point you stop caring about your life.

It is the same with your spine. The level of physical, emotional, and chemical stress your body is under will determine how often your spine needs to be evaluated and adjusted. Because most of us face these things regularly, some sort of regular care is needed. Posture and EMG are two safe, effective, and practical ways to regularly determine how much stress your central nervous system is under and what the frequency of your need for ongoing care is.

Insurance companies do not consider corrective, rehabilitative, preventative, or wellness care to be necessary. They pay only for people who are sick. This is not “health” insurance; it is really “sick” insurance. While prevention would save companies billions, they have not yet gotten the picture. Ongoing care is something which must be paid for through reasonable and affordable wellness programs that are found in most wellness chiropractic offices. 

We thank you for choosing Maritime Chiropractic for your health and wellness needs.  We have dedicated our lives to serving this community.  It is our purpose to educate, inspire and lead as many families as possible toward their optimal health and performance. 

May God richly bless you!

Dr. John