What I Didn't Know About Gonstead Chiropractic Checkups! From Pain To Mood, The Nervous System Is So Important

Yesterday my wife and I had a light-bulb moment. For those of you who don't know, my wife is a long term pain sufferer stemming from multiple falls and simultaneously, multiple medical conditions, the most significant of which are Lyme disease and endometriosis.

It's put us in a place of near desperation when navigating the medical system as a whole; something designed to ignore medical histories for the most part and prescribe harmful pharmaceuticals after a 3 minute consultation.

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It was last Thursday that a colleague happened to mention to me the great success they'd had with three sessions at a Gonstead Chiropractic practitioner.

Bless you...

I'd said, thinking that my colleague had sneezed. No, Gonstead is actually a word. One I'd never heard of before. I looked it up.

From gonsteadseminar.com

Gonstead represents the ultimate standard in "hands on" spinal adjusting and remains the leader in chiropractic techniques. Adhering to the definition of true chiropractic as defined by D. D. Palmer, the founder of Chiropractic in 1895, Dr. Gonstead found there was no substitute or better method for analyzing or correcting spinal misalignments than with a pair of skilled chiropractic hands. This remains true today.

It's an analytical approach that focuses on root cause analysis of problems rather than a quick crack of the back, a slap on the bum and a "see you next Tuesday" which is the classical approach.

After some clever booking on my part, we were able to be seen for an initial consult just Yesterday. I was stunned. The lovely practitioner was warm and greeted us openly. She allocated an hour for our first session and most of that was taking a detailed medical history.

What amazed me from the outset was her interest in all symptoms, even the mental or psychological ones. She explained that she conducts her analysis in a holistic manner and everything is important. She continued to educate us and file away the burs of ignorance in terms of how we thought of the spine, brain and nervous system.

It's essentially crucial to how everything else functions in the body. Interestingly physical injury through the nervous system can result in mental symptoms and the other way around. A slip and fall on the tail bone can result in shoulder pain. It's all about finding the root cause. Even issues such as menstrual difficulty; something a traditional practitioner would simply throw hormones at, can be the result of skeletal misalignment.

Mind Blown

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My wife's case was (and is) severe. They have an XRay machine on premisis and we had a number of images taken on the spot. These images confirmed what the practitioner had suspected from our discussion earlier in the session. Additionally, a small device that was run down the spine and deflected a needle as it moved was used as supplementary instrumentation. It apparently detects temperature differentials that assist in the diagnosis of issues.

From Wikipedia

The Gonstead technique is chiropractic method that had been developed by Clarence Gonstead since 1923. The technique focuses on hands-on adjustment and is claimed to expand "standard diversified technique" by implementing additional instrumentation including X-rays, Gonstead Radiographic Parallel, a measuring device, and the development of Nervo-Scope, a device said to detect the level of neurophysiologic activity due to the existence of vertebral subluxation based on changes in skin temperature.

As part of the same session, we learned that we were not sleeping in the correct orientation and that pillows should be used to support the legs when either laying on the side or the back. There's a wealth of information a good chiropractor can offer that can promise to improve everything from mood, to skin problems, vision, breathing, digestion, the works!

Then came a minor adjustment of the pelvis which had been apparently rotated for decades. A few jolts on the high-low and we were done. It turns out this alone was sufficient for some relief! There were pains that developed on the drive home in odd places, we were warned this may happen and it's a good sign. Then there was fatigue. When pressure is released the body can finally relax, again, a good sign.

All this after only one initial consult. We're booked in for more and I decided to have myself checked too. I'm really interested to find what may be impacting me and making things more difficult than need be. It feels like the beginning of an exciting journey to well being. We will keep you all posted!