How a Custom Care Plan Sets You up for Success
When symptoms don’t explain the entire picture…
In continuing with National Chiropractic Health Month, I have been sharing some of my patient stories to show the many different ways that chiropractic can help improve quality of life, and often change the course of our existence. It’s so much more complicated than simply pain relief. I want to share one Teacher’s story here…
In December 2021, I got a call from a future patient saying she would like to get seen for plantar fasciitis, a painful condition in the foot. She had it in both feet, but worse on the right. It had been an ongoing issue for about 5 years, and she had seen podiatrists, physical therapists, had ultrasound and shockwave therapy done, taken over the counter pain meds, wore a boot for a period of time, used ice, and had surgeries for bone spurs. She was desperate for relief and wanted to give chiropractic a try.
When she came in for her first visit, I could tell she was tense. It was the height of COVID, she was a teacher, had three children with special health needs, and was extremely stressed out. As we dove into her health history, she was taking medications for depression and anxiety, had a diagnosed heart condition, was on hormonal birth control, battled with chronic constipation, had low back spasms and TMJ pain.
As we chatted in her consult, it came up that she used to be a runner, and could no longer do so because of the foot pain. Between not being able to exercise properly and the stress of COVID and keeping her kids healthy, she had gained 25 pounds in the past year. The increased weight gain and inflammation made the foot pain worse, which made her more depressed and anxious because exercise had been her way of releasing mental stress. She often felt panicky and had irregular heartbeats. She also dealt with frequent headaches.
Our talk deepened and she opened up about much more mental and emotional struggle, and how many things were weighing her down. In her mind, if she could just stop the pain in her feet, then all her other problems would be fixed. After about 20 minutes, I told her, “I’m really glad you’re here. You think that you’re here because of foot pain, but you’re really here because your nervous system is a dysregulated mess, and you’re stuck in a vicious cycle. We will address your feet, but we really need to work on your entire nervous system so you can actually get to a point where you can let go of some of the mental baggage and allow yourself to heal.”
She looked at me stunned and started bawling. No one had ever taken the time to listen to her entire story and connect the dots. Podiatrists and physical therapists only looked at the structures of the feet, not what was happening in her brain that was controlling her overall health and healing ability. She said to me, “You just helped me more in ten minutes than ten years of therapy ever did.”
We did her nervous system scans (Themography, sEMG and HRV), did a full chiropractic exam, and scheduled her for a Report of Findings visit the next day. To no surprise, her scans were a mess. A lot of unbalanced muscle tension, major upper cervical subluxations, and a dominance in the sympathetic (fight or flight) part of her nervous system. There was a ton of red and black on her scans, meaning large deviations from normal, and showing many areas of her spine locked in chronic subluxation patterns. After her range of motion and chiropractic exam, it was clear she was in need of some major help.
Due to the longevity and chronicity of her patterns and symptoms, combined with the fact that she was still in an ongoing stressful situation (teaching and raising challenged kids during COVID), I had to come up with a care plan that would really get to the root cause of many of her issues, and give her body the time and space it needed to heal. We set up a 48 visit plan to balance her nervous system, get her out of chronic fight or flight, increase range of motion and proper biomechanics of the spine and feet, restore function in various systems of her body. She was given additional exercises and nutritional recommendations as needed. We also worked on ways to increase parasympathetic (calm, rest, healing) function of the nervous system, like grounding, meditation, gratitude work, journaling, and more, to help her brain focus from negative to positive. Since she wore a very restrictive mask daily, we worked on solutions to ease tension around her cranium, and work on proper breathing techniques to alleviate some of the panic sensations she would often experience.
Once we got her mind and body into a calmer, regulated and more balanced state, she was able to start to heal better in her painful areas. She was able to decrease some of the meds she was taking, gained perspective on emotional triggers and not let them take over her mental state, and finally was able to start walking and exercising again with little to no pain. Her Three Top Health Goals were 1) Be Active, 2) Better Mental Health, 3) Less Pain, and with the customized care plan for her, we were able to accomplish those.
Overall, her quality of life greatly improved. She was able to relax more, both at work and at home with her kids. She was able to be more active and enjoy life again. Her outlook improved as well, and she realized she needed to put her health first more often, and take time to prioritize her well-being, so that she could be a better mom and teacher.
This was a long story, but that is often how it goes with healing. And that is why I always dig deeper into WHAT is causing the dysregulation in the body, and WHY it keeps happening. And it gives us insights into why other things didn’t work for this woman. Her body was not in a receptive healing state because a stressed out nervous system was running the show. My favorite quote from Dr. Bruce Lipton, PhD, “You can’t be in growth and protection at the same time.” Nervous system-based chiropractic care should always be a part of the overall treatment plan, because that is the key to getting out of protection and into growth/healing.
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