I had a challenging case of a young girl who was seeking help for her constant daily migraines and arthralgia that began suddenly a year prior to seeing me. She was seeing pain management and would receive a lot of care from them as well as "rescue medication", which was injectable pain medicine for when the pain was truly unbearable. She brought in her CT and MRI reports of the head, but I noticed that the previous practitioners never looked at her cervical spine. I did full spine x-rays that showed what seemed to be many congenital abnormalities in her neck. I referred her for CBCT imaging to see the detail of abnormalities in her cervical region. Upon examination, it was determined that she had hyperplasia of a lateral mass of C1 with misalignment putting pressure on the vital nervous system in that region. She experienced relief after the first adjustment and continued to get more relief afterwards from chiropractic care. After two years of gentle and specific chiropractic care, she went from needing to take 12 medications to only taking 6 now.
4 years ago, I was referred a 69 year old male that was suffering from debilitating low back pain for over a week, without relief, no matter which combination of pain killer / muscle relaxer / anti-inflammatory he was prescribed. We did a focused physical exam, and took x-rays of his spine, which showed a significant amount of degeneration and loss of curvature (NOT Arthritis), and decided to adjust him based on a subluxation correction model of chiropractic care. Over the course of the next 3 months, we continued to check and adjust his subluxations, 2x/week, adding in SOT blocks and performing Mckenzie Disc Therapies when necessary. After, we took new x-rays to visualize spinal change. He had regained complete functionality at the end of his care (he went back to participating in all of his extra-curricular activities) and had managed to regain his full height of 6'5". His x-rays showed a complete restoration of his lumbar lordosis as well as improvements in disc height between the lumbar bones. Pain based chiropractic would not have been able to correct the underlying cause of the spinal malfunction that was producing the issues in the first place. Subluxation based chiropractic care corrects the underlying causes of not just spinal dysfunction, but also physiological dis-ease, allowing the body to restore itself and heal itself from inside out.