Chiropractic - What to Expect

Awesome! We love getting to see new faces around our office! We do our best to make your new patient experience as comfortable as possible and help answer any questions that you have.

When you book your first appointment, we will send you a link via email to a short New Patient Intake form. This form includes some health history questions and our consents to be able to work with you. You can fill this out on your phone, tablet, or computer. This needs to be completed prior to your first visit. This allows us to ensure that our time with you is well spent on addressing your health concerns.

Your first chiropractic appointment will begin with hellos! We look forward to getting to put a face with a name! Because of our current COVID protocols, we will have you wait in your car. You can check-in online, send us a text, or give us a call to let us know you’re here. Whatever is easiest for you! We will ask that you wear a mask in the reception area of our office. This is where we get started with getting-to-know you. 🙂

We will take some vitals like height, weight, blood pressure, and pulse. For most, we also take pictures to help us objectively measure postural changes in your spine and body. The report we create from these pictures is available for you to see, too! This report can be used to compare with future results on your next evaluation. We will also have you do a few simple exercises that show us how well your body is balanced. (Don’t worry, these “exercises” won’t make you break a sweat. 😉 )

After vitals and pictures, we will take you to an adjusting room where we get to chat! Once you are in the adjusting rooms, you will be able to remove your mask at your discretion. This is our favorite part! You and your provider will spend time getting you comfortable and acquainted with our adjusting rooms and any tools we plan on using. We will take time to talk through the intake forms that you filled out. This allows us to ask more in-depth questions and get to know you, your health history, any symptoms/conditions you are currently dealing with, as well as your goals for care.

Our examination comes next. This is where we will test various body systems, focusing on the connection between your brain and your body. When the information flows smoothly from brain to body and body back to brain we are able to adapt to our environment and stay as healthy as we can! During this exam, we will be performing “orthopedic and neurological” tests which is a fancy way of saying that we will be checking how well your body moves, and how well it responds to input like soft touch, reflexes, how well your eyes react to light, among others. If needed, we will listen to your heart and lungs, or look in your eyes, nose, and ears. All of this helps us gather information on where your body is now so we can see how your body adapts and changes over the course of your care.

Even more importantly, our exam allows us to make important decisions about anything going on in your body that might prevent us from performing an adjustment. If there is any reason that an adjustment would be unsafe for your condition, or if there is another issue that needs to be cleared up first, our exam will tell us. For most people, this helps us rule out any bigger issues that need to be addressed with a medical doctor first.

Because we are a low-force practice almost all of our patients can safely be adjusted on their first visit to us. This is included in the price for your first visit and we love getting to provide this gentle and effective care. We show you how we want you to get onto our adjusting tables. We have options for pregnant mommas, kids of all ages, those with limited mobility, those who are in wheelchairs, and more. Anyone with a spine can be accommodated! 🙂

As we continue our chiropractic evaluation, we will find and fix any misalignments in your spine or extremities. Check out this blog to see what a typical adjustment looks like. We work on the back side of your body first, and then will have you turn over so we can work on the front side of your body.

One thing that makes our practice unique is that we always check your organs. What does that mean? Here’s a helpful blog about that process and why it is important. Once we’ve finished up with your adjustment, we will talk about what to expect next! Although each body is different and each case is unique, many people leave the office feeling better than when they came in.

For most cases we want to see you, our new friend, in one week (between 4 and 7 days). This is the optimum window of time to see what your body did to adapt. We love to hear your feedback of how your body changed over the course of that week. Some people experience soreness after their first adjustment. In most cases, this would be similar soreness to after a good, hard workout. Drinking a bit more water than normal and using ice on any sore areas can help ease any soreness that may come about for you.

We do our best to answer any questions that you may have while we are together on your first visit. We also understand that there is a lot of information to take in all at once! So if you have questions after you leave, we have two easy ways to get in contact with our office: send us a text, or give us a call.

Our next visit (usually in about 1 week) is typically 15-20 minutes in length. We will start with finding out how you did and how your body has been feeling since the first adjustment. Then we check your body out again with a chiropractic evaluation and adjustment. The chiropractic adjustment is going to be very similar to what happened at the end of your last visit – always using gentle, safe, and effective low-force care. We use the information you provided along with what we find in your body to help us determine how well our style of low-force care is working for you, your body, and your health goals. This also helps us decide when we will need to see you next.

Many people wonder how often they will need to be seen and for how long. When time and money are tight, the frequency of care can be an important question. The simple answer is that you are welcome at our office at any frequency. We always say “one adjustment is better than no adjustment!” Most of our patients do and feel their best when they are seen every 2-4 weeks.

The longer answer to the question is that each body and each situation is unique. We don’t use cookie cutter treatment plans to rope you into long term commitment. We evaluate you at each visit to determine when would be ideal to see you next. We hope that through your time with us at Breath of Life, you see the value of investing in your health through chiropractic care. This is why many of our patients become a life-long part of our Breath of Life family. Check out this link to learn more about preventive and maintenance chiropractic care.