What to expect upon your first visit to our clinic

Prospective patients aren’t automatically accepted for care. If we feel we cannot help you or that you are unwilling to be an active participant in your care, we will gladly refer you to one of our competitors. 

We have a very specific mission at Form and Function Chiropractic:

• To improve the health and wellbeing of our community to ensure a life of longevity and vitality. 

Those patients wishing for simple symptom relief will not be accepted in our clinic. But if you have the desire to live a better life. If you have prayed and promised that you would do anything to get your health back, to those people, we say, we hear you and we got you.

Orthopedic and/or neurological examinations, range of motion examination, postural examination, and the radiographic examination

It all starts with a thorough evaluation

A Clinical Impression (Diagnosis) of the current state of your health is derived from a variety of sources, including the consultation and discussion of your health history, including your future health goals. Orthopedic and/or neurological examinations, range of motion examination, postural examination, and the radiographic examination all aid in determining how we proceed.

Posture Evaluation:

Your posture is a window into the structural framework of your body. Abnormal posture has been associated with the development and progression of many health conditions including: Decreases Heart & Lung Capacity, high blood pressure & heart rate, early mortality, increased muscle activity (spasm) and disc injury, arthritis, scoliosis, sports injuries, back pain, neck pain, headaches, carpal tunnel symptoms, shoulder and ankle injuries as well as many other conditions.

After filling out your health and lifestyle history questionnaire, we start by taking a computerized analysis of your posture. This evaluation will give us valuable information into any muscle and soft tissue imbalances as well as any possible structural deviations that must be addressed. Your posture analysis results will play an integral role in the design of your active rehabilitation program as well as provide a quick and easy way to monitor progress.

A Physical Examination:

Your initial examination is a structural exam (your form). Once we have adequately stopped the degeneration process and got you stable, you will have a second exam, a functional exam (hence the name “Form and Function”).

During your structuralexam your spine will be thoroughly examined using  palpation and light touching, range of motion, muscle tone, symmetry, or other structural matters that need attention.

Your structural exam will consist of assessing your entire spine, not just areas that are painful. To fully understand the cause, we must assess for spinal adaptations resulting from injury or subluxation in one area can result in secondary irritations somewhere else in the spine. Without a thorough evaluation of the entire spine, you may get symptom relief but correction is left to chance.

X-Ray evaluation:

Only when we have determined that you have pathological structural adaptations, you will be given a prescription for x—rays.  Only a radiographic evaluation can provide specific, measurable details of your spine’s health. Alignment, spinal arthritis, and disc disease can only be conclusively measured with the knowledge that comes from analyzing your spinal x-rays. This valuable information will aid us in determining what is needed, not only to have you feeling better, but also to have you functioning better, not just today but for the years to come.

Your x-ray evaluation consists of a very specific and thorough analysis of the following: an overall evaluation of your alignment, looking for displacement of your proper center of gravity causing accelerated degeneration. Evaluation of individual vertebrae, looking for normal contour and density for any possible spinal arthritis. Normal and consistent spacing between each pair of vertebrae. This spacing is where the spinal discs lie. Any narrowing of the normal spacing indicates disc injury and disc disease. Check for any angular or turning (rotational) displacements and any sliding or shifting (translational) displacements, indicating spinal ligament damage. Finally, scientific measurements of the direction and amount of spinal displacement (subluxations), grading the severity of your case. These measurements of spinal displacements (subluxations) utilizing geometric norms that have been shown to be very reliable (repeatable) and valid (accurate).  Normal values for all spinal angles and distances are the result of many research projects on spinal alignment in normal subjects and have been reported in the most prestigious journals in the Index Medicus literature.Any abnormal spinal displacements (subluxations) will be compared to these norms to determine the length of time needed to restore proper stability and function.

This may all sound complicated, and it is, but don’t worry. Doc Scott will spend as much time with you as needed for you to fully understand the results of your radiographic evaluation. You will also receive a detailed report explaining your results as well as your recommendations for restoring your health. 

Functional Movement Exam:

Your first examination is from a structural point of view. Correcting long-standing chronic postural faults that have been identified in your structural exam, must take place before we can begin the process of neuromuscular reeducation.  Long standing postural faults (subluxations) cause a change in the body’s ability to move. These changes are a learned behavior from your nervous system to adapt to a spine that is out of alignment. Once we have begun the healing process and get your spine functioning again, we progress to phase 2.

The second approach is from a functional point of view. Your Functional Movement Exam (FME) provides insight into pathological movement patterns hindering your progress.  It has been observed that many individuals are limited in fundamental movement patterns. This leads to the use of compensatory movements in order to achieve or maintain performance of daily activities. The inefficient use of compensation during movement will lead to poor biomechanics that limit progress in function and performance. If these areas are not assessed and corrected, the gains you may have made are likely to recur due to overcompensation for weaker links elsewhere in the body.

The Functional Movement Exam (FME) is a screening tool used to evaluate seven fundamental movement patterns in individuals without severe pain or musculoskeletal injury. The screen is designed to place an individual in extreme positions where movement deficits become noticeable if appropriate stability and mobility are not used. This will help tailor the effectiveness of your initial home rehabilitation program design to address any hidden faults and fit your individual needs.

How a corrective care visit is different?

Before being accepted under our care, patients must understand and agree that they will be an active participate in their care—both at the clinic and at home. Each patient will receive a complete rehabilitation program that works toward ensuring permanent correction. Our goal is to restore your health as quickly and permanently as possible. It is critical that you play an integral role in this correction.

Wobble Discs:

When patients come to the clinic, they don’t sit passively waiting to see the doctor. They prepare for their chiropractic adjustment by doing warm up exercises using our Wobble Discs. The Wobble Disc exercises hydrate the disc.  By completing the Wobble Disc exercises prior to your adjustment, you are helping to enhance blood flow and oxygenation through spinal discs, you are actually changing the viscosity of the fluid in the discs and by putting the soft tissues (muscles, ligaments and tendons) through a series of loading and unloading cycles, prepares the spine for an easier and gentler correction that will hold. 

In addition to enhancing your chiropractic adjustment, the Wobble Disc exercises strengthen your ‘core’ muscles that aid in support of your low back, as well as prevention of adhesions during healing, and improved joint integrity of healed joints.

The amount of time spent wobbling is CRITICAL. At around 7-8 minutes of wobbling, you create enough motion to “heat” the disc and ligament tissue enough to begin to change its state from a solid to more of a liquid. This is when you begin to remodel the disc and ligament tissue, healing and seal up cracks and tears in the disc and ligaments. As well as lubrication for spinal joints and nourishment for their cartilage.

THE FIX:

Once the supporting spinal structures are loosened and flexible your doctor will then perform a series of spinal adjustments, directed to move the spine into proper alignment. 

This is the most critical stage in your healing process. Spinal bones out of place have consequences far greater than biomechanical degeneration.

Proprioception refers to the body’s ability to sense movement within joints and joint position.The loss of proprioceptive awareness may affect the control of muscle tone, disrupt reflexes, and severely neurological function.

 When a joint and associated muscle are not moved, proprioceptive impulses to the brain decrease and the brain does not sense it as “important”. This downregulation of neurological impulse.

By restoring joint motion we are improving proprioception in these areas, which in turn improves neurological output, and contributes to restoring normal function.

VIBE Vibration Therapy:

We at Form and Function Chiropractic are proud to offer Whole Body Vibration (WBV) therapy as part of our corrective care program. WBV represents the next step in the evolution of human performance therapy.

During normal forms of exercise, your muscles contract one or two times per second, while our WBV causes your muscles to contract 10 to 60 times a second. In addition, other forms of exercise cause only about only about 40% of your muscle fibers to contract on average, our WBV training works on up to 90% of your muscle fibers. What that means for you is faster recovery in shorter time.  

The secret to the effectiveness of our WBV is in the type and frequency of vibration. While most vibration platforms have sideways or circular motion, we utilize a smooth vertical vibration. Vertical vibration is a more natural motion because it mimics the force of gravity. Simply put, our WBV provides rapid micro hits of gravity that enhances the gravity that is already there in order to create the clinical and training compression that we need to excite our nerves, to mobilize joints and to strengthen our muscles to enhance our function. Vertical vibration also activates the postural muscles which facilitate better muscle balance, coordination and increased bone density.

Our WBV program will encourage your body to produce increased levels of human growth hormone, which helps in the repair and regeneration of damaged muscles, bones and other tissues. Your body will also produce more serotonin, the hormone responsible for feelings of happiness and well-being, and less cortisol, the hormone responsible for feelings of stress and anxiety.

The high levels of muscle contractions you’ll experience during VibePlate® training will stimulate your lymph glands, leading to increased flow of lymph throughout the body and a stronger immune system. Stimulating your muscles will lead to increased blood circulation as well. Your blood pressure may drop, and your blood may carry more oxygen to the cells of your body, resulting in increased levels of energy.

All this translates into not only drastically reducing recovery time but also dramatically improving function and quality of life that no other therapy can match.

Cervical Traction:

The last piece of the clinical puzzle is our cervical traction unit. Cervical Traction device not only puts the necessary motion back into the cervical spine, it helps to restore disc height and eliminate pain. Your spinal discs are avascular, which means that they have no direct blood supply for the nourishment and elimination of tissue cell wastes. Motion is required to pump nourishing fluids into, and waste products out of, avascular tissues such as the spinal disks and ligaments to repair and regenerate the tissue. This pumping motion is called imbibition. Our cervical traction helps restore cervical mobility and reduces back and neck pain while keeping pressure off of the TMJ joint, a critical detail to effective restoration of health. Cervical traction also relieves tension on the spinal cord by restoring the normal “arc of life” to the cervical spine.