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Originally Posted by redlemon
You might also consider physical therapy. At the core, chiropractic is about bone manipulation, while PT is about muscle manipulation. I would think that repositioning and strenghening the muscles to get the bones where they should be is a better response. (My SIL is a PT).
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I agree with this and will add some more.
Getting a Chiropractic License is a far different ball of wax than something like an MD or being a PT (Physical Therapist). This means that as far as accreidation goes, there is a lot of leeway. You can be a licensed chiropractor and do things like healing hands where the body's own life force heals without direct physical contact or you can be one who bends your body in all kinds of directions for "adjustments". It runs the gambit and so you don't know if your malady will respond to the person's chosen method of treatment.
To go a step further - I think a lot of them are quacks. While some are good - if you go to 10 chiropractors with the same ailment, I bet you get 10 different treatment plans with few similarities. To me there are a few ways to fix things and a lot of ways to make it worse. Personally, I think most of them are in the business of getting lifetime patients. People who feel better when they leave but are not fixed (maybe ever).
I think the following would be reasonable questions to expect answers to.
1 - How many sessions will this take? The scientific ones who are more responsible will answer this with at least a specific range. The others will give at best nebulous answers and not give anything at all specific saying it is too hard to tell / too many variables. Asking about what the same injury on someone else has taken to fix is not unreasonable. Asking the longest or shortest treatments for the same injury is not unreasonable. If they cannot answer, they do not have enough experience with your problem to fix you or they have no intension to do so and instead are looking for someone who they can bill for sessions as long as they can.
2 - What milestones in between treatment 1 and treatment X (x= answer 1 above) are you looking for to know that we can move on to the next phase or that the injury is responding. I would look for 3-4 clear and measurable milestons. Again, you will get a lot of "impossible to tell" here from people who just want to bill you instead of fix you. These can be answered to at least SOME degree.
3 - What guarentee are they willing to put on the treatment's sucess. I doubt anyone would answer this, but it is the way they answer I think is most important. Maybe instead find out at what point in answer 2 would they STOP treating you since you are not responding to a long term fix. Put their focus on the fix and not the treatment of pain.
Like Redlemon, my SIL is a PT as well (no relation that I know of) and she is in San Diego. She can recomend someone to you. There is a reason most health insurers don't take chiropractors bills since there is almost no end to the bills once they start. On the flip side, your MD even if you are in an HMO will most likely happily write you a perscription to get Physical Therapy. They are used to people coming in with pain looking for a perscription for meds and so most are very happy to oblidge with something like that (especially since they are not on the hook for follow-up). PT is something that insurance usually covers and they teach you a bunch in the process you can use the rest of your life if there is ever any problems or if you ever have a similar injury.
PM me if you would like me to talk to her for you or give you a call.