GCB Health

Do you need to seek out chiropractic care following an auto accident? My answer is a resounding “yes!” Why is it so important? Why can’t you just rest and take the medications that were prescribed by your medical doctor? Is the insurance company going to give you a hard time about it?

The reason why chiropractic care is so important after an accident has little to do with you being in pain (although it’s good for that too). A vertebra that moves out of its normal alignment can wreak havoc on your neck and its associated nerves. You may not be in a lot of pain immediately following the accident, but research indicates that most people will experience a bulk of their symptoms after a few days.

Once you start to feel symptoms, this is a good indicator that something has moved out of place, and likely that you’re experiencing a sprain/strain kind of injury. Sprain and strain don’t sound horrible, but really they are describing tears of various tissues in your body. The severity of the tear will indicate the type of treatment you should probably consider first. The chiropractor can help make the determination.

Eventually, your body will heal with scar tissue. Scar tissue is more sensitive than the previously uninjured tissue that you had within you before. Once scar tissue sets up (this takes about 3 weeks following the trauma), it will become increasingly difficult to get you back to your pre-accident state. Receiving some chiropractic adjustments to your spine will help assure that your spine is in its best position as that scar tissue begins to form. The better your spine is when all of this occurs, the more likely you can return pain-free following your therapy and treatment.

So why can’t you just rest and take the medications? That may be your best first course of treatment for a couple of days following your accident, but certainly can’t be the best choice long term. The medications are there to help you with pain, to help you get through the difficulty of the initial phase of your injury. However, they’re certainly not fixing anything.

In addition to the chiropractic adjustment, you can typically receive additional therapies that will help your muscles and other soft tissue heal more quickly than just “resting” alone. The additional therapies also help with pain, swelling, and inflammation and can be a big help in the speed of your recovery.

Will your auto insurance or health insurance company give you any trouble? You have insurance for just this type of situation, when you need health care and you can’t afford to pay for it yourself. Your health insurance company may have issue if the accident wasn’t your fault and the other person should be paying for it (or their insurance), but otherwise you shouldn’t have trouble here.

Your auto insurance policy will determine the amount of coverage and just how much help the company has to give. Still, it’s your body and your health and you’ll need to make sure your injuries are taken care of following the accident. Where you will have trouble is if months have gone by and you haven’t gone to see any doctors, just hoping it will go away. Then you decide to tell your insurance company that they need to pay for it all. That doesn’t go over too well.

If you’ve been in an auto accident, it’s a good idea to see a chiropractor and do it as quickly as possible once you realize you’ve been injured. The faster you get some type of treatment, usually the better your results.

Consideration #1: Do I Really Want To Be A Doctor? (Even If It Doesn’t Make Me Rich?)

It used to be when your parents asked you: “What do you want to be — a doctor or a lawyer?” that whatever answer you gave would ensure you an extremely successful financial future. Because of certain economic realities we face today, the medical profession is no longer the giant cash cow parents once credited it to be (and many doctors will probably tell you it never was to begin with.) Therefore, if you have begun to think about applying to and going to medical school, you should really be doing it because of a passion for the field.

Consideration #2: Dermatology or Epidemiology: What Area of Medicine Do I Want To Specialize In?

Of course, you will have time to figure this out in medical school as well, but you will be the most informed applicant you can be by doing some of this thinking up front. Medical schools are like any other kind of school: even the best ones are stronger in some areas of medicine than they are in others. Therefore, it’s worth your time to spend some time thinking about what area of medicine you would like to practice in. If you want to be a pediatrician, apply to the schools that are the best in pediatrics; if you want to be an oncologist, seek out those schools that have the best reputation for education young doctors in this area.

Consideration #3: How Will I Get Into The Best Medical School In My Area of Interest?

Be the best pre-med student in your area of interest. If you are in undergrad reading this, there is no time like the present to start getting your prerequisite classes out of the way to qualify for medical school. Also, the more homework you do outside the classroom on the schools that you’ll be applying to, the better your application will be.

Consideration #4: Where Do I Want To Live After I Get My Medical Degree?

While the school that specializes in the area of medicine you want to practice should probably win the day in terms of where you decide to attend, you should also think about where you’ll want to live after you get out of school as well. Much of your medical training will be hands-on, and so you might meet and develop relationships with your future patients as a medical student if you attend a school located in a place that you intend to make your home. Also, you will have to take and pass state medical licensing exams, which will be easier to prepare for when you are studying in the same state that you hope to be licensed in.

What do I know about weight loss? For starters, I am a medical doctor with a nutrition minor from Cornell University, obesity research experience, and experience having worked with a world-leader in the psychology of obesity while at Cornell. But most of all, I know about the subject from my own personal experience. I grew up morbidly obese and then lost 75 pounds 25 years ago–and kept it off.

Through my research and personal experience, I learned that the best way to lose weight and keep it off is to attune to your hunger pangs and learn to use them the way God intended. Let yourself become hungry, and then eat smaller portions of normal (non-diet) food. And exercise more. Basically, you must mentally retrain yourself to eat for internal reasons (hunger pangs), rather than external reasons (the site of food, smell of food, emotions, etc.).

When you go on a traditional, restrictive reducing diet, you typically end up wanting what you think you shouldn’t eat (fattening food like junk food, fried foods, breads, and desserts) even more. Then, you might even overeat those foods when you finally give up and “cheat.” When you are on a diet, you eat as though you’re in a famine, depriving yourself the food you crave. And when you are off the diet, you splurge, and eat as though every meal is a feast. In turn, that roller-coaster-like erratic eating pattern affects your metabolism and causes you to gain weight when you actually wanted to lose it.

Dieting also reinforces your habit of eating for the wrong reasons–reasons that have nothing to do your body’s physiologic need for fuel. On a diet, you may be required to eat according to the clock, at certain times of day, and eat only the amount or type of food the diet allows. All those things are very unnatural, and far too difficult to keep up indefinitely. Hence, most people regain the weight they lost, and more.

That’s why I advocate the opposite philosophy when I counsel my patients for weight loss. Instead of giving them a detailed menu or pre-set plan, which only reinforces their eating for external reasons, I teach them how to eat small portions of food in response to their internal cues (their hunger pangs). And I teach them how to beat the urge to eat when their bodies don’t actually need food. That part can be tricky, but with time and a little effort, it is a method that delivers long-term, postive behavioral change–and, hence, permanent weight loss.