Why Do People Delay Going To A Chiropractor?
That is a question I have been asking for the past 50 years. For many years, I thought it was all because of medical propaganda, which was definitely anti-chiropractic. Let's face it: from birth to the grave, in Western society, we have been programmed to think medically. We don't have bathroom cabinets, they're called "medicine" cabinets.
Unfortunately, it's been the public that has suffered. I can't tell you how many patients were hesitant about chiropractic care. Finally, they relented, perhaps because a family member finally convinced them to seek care or because they were sick of being in pain or constantly ill. So many would kick themselves with statements like, "I should have done this years ago", or "Why did I wait so long?"
There are 3 significant reasons why people don't seek chiropractic care. There are many examples of the life-changing impact of chiropractic care, a couple of which I describe in this article.
1. Lack of Understanding
While chiropractic has become more mainstream in the last 30 years, many people still don't know what we do or believe it is about bad backs and stiff necks. That is why you see many chiropractors today instituting educational programs so that people can learn about the spine and how it affects their health. We live in the information age, so people are eager to receive information to be more proactive in their health decisions. Chiropractic care is about delivering spinal adjustments and informing people about good health choices.
Sometimes, we need to blame chiropractors because they don't educate their patients. So the patient gets their care, feels better or not. Still, their image is that chiropractic and physiotherapy are the same thing.
While chiropractors work on the spine, another way of thinking about it is that we are nerve doctors. The chiropractor's goal is to correct vertebral subluxations that cause nerve interference. That can influence many areas of the body and provide a better healing environment and health outcome. This is why you will hear of people responding to many different ailments.
Chiropractic does not seek to cure or treat disease; a better functioning body can heal itself.
2. Professional Bias
For most of its history, chiropractic has dealt with bias directed by the medical profession. In more recent years, this has lessened. However, there is still resistance by the establishment to acknowledge something different. Studies in the late 1990s found that people were visiting "alternative" health practitioners more than medical doctors. As we used to say, if medicine worked, professions such as chiropractic would have died out long ago.
In my early days, we heard statements from medical doctors such as, "If you go to a chiropractor, he'll paralyse you", or "If you ever go to a chiropractor, don't come back to my office". Thankfully, such statements are rarely heard today. However, much like the ongoing propaganda we heard during the Covid pandemic, some of these memes have been ingrained in people's psyche.
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