Methods of Chiropractic

Raena Morgan: Welcome. I'm visiting with Dr. JaDean Anderson who is a chiropractor. And one of the things I would like to ask you is what are the different methods of chiropractic? Dr. JaDean Anderson: There are a huge variety of methods within chiropractic. There is basically different techniques done by hand, and then there is other techniques that use an instrument that actually performs the adjustment. Some techniques range from adjusting just in the neck, some just adjust the lower back, and the technique that I use is called Gonstead and it's a full spine technique, so we adjust anywhere within the spine and it's done by hands on adjustment. Raena Morgan: You do manual adjustment? Dr. JaDean Anderson: Yeah. Within the manual adjusting what helps us be able to locate the area that needs to be adjusted, we use a heat sensing instrument. It measures temperature from one side of the spine to the other. And, within a normal or perfect relationship the temperature will be the same on both sides. When there is an area that is a problematic area, the temperature will vary from one side to the other. So, it helps us to locate the problem that the patient has within their back and then it helps us monitor when they need to be adjusted and when they don't need to be adjusted, which is very important as well. Raena Morgan: Have you been using this all along, this heat sensing method? Dr. JaDean Anderson: Yeah. It's part of the criteria or approach of finding the patient's problem. We run the scope down their back that's what we call it, the heat sensing instrument, and then after we locate the certain areas of problem we then do a palpation or use our hands to move the patient around to feel how the body is moving, feel areas of tenderness, and then within that we look at an X-ray to help locate which way the bones have moved, so then we can properly realign the person's misalignments. Raena Morgan: So, your method is to treat the entire spine. Are there different methods that just treat the neck or the lower back? Dr. JaDean Anderson: Yes. There are certain techniques, well actually, quite a few different techniques that have different ways that they treat just the neck, and that's good but it's a little bit different approach. They look at treating the neck to help with low back problems or all of your problems, I guess-- Raena Morgan: Do you feel you miss a lot by not treating the entire spine? Dr. JaDean Anderson: I feel that way, but I do understand that in some cases a neck problem can result in some low back issues because the entire spine is one unit. So, I understand that just as much something above can affect something below, as something below can affect something above. Raena Morgan: Are there some chiropractors you say that use a technique that's called the activator where sort of a tool? Dr. JaDean Anderson: It's just a small little tool where they can set it to different amounts of pressure or force that's being applied and it's a small area that the force is sent through and they can just pull kind of like a trigger and it allows the force to be applied through this small area to the desired region within the persons spine. Raena Morgan: So, is that putting the vertebrae back into place, but in a faster way or--? Dr. JaDean Anderson: It depends on the person and the problem. I would say, maybe not necessarily quicker than by hand or more efficiently or less efficiently it is very case specific and patient specific. Raena Morgan: Okay. So it is just one of the other techniques. Dr. JaDean Anderson: Yeah. Raean Morgan: And you don't use that one? Dr. JaDean Anderson: No, I do not. Raena Morgan: Okay. Thank you Dr. Anderson. Dr. JaDean Anderson: Thank you.