Hi. Dr. Steve Battaglino with Battaglino Family Chiropractic. I want to talk a little about maintenance care today.

A patient will come into our office and have some sort of problem. Usually, pain but it can be other things like dizziness, heart palpitations, numbness, tingling, headaches, all kinds things like that.

Once they go through what’s called an Initial Corrective Care Plan designed to address those acute symptoms, and get the body starting to heal from the injuries that are causing those symptoms, we then phase into maintenance care. Maintenance is a way to, like you maintain your car, you maintain your nails or your teeth. You don’t just go to the dentist when your teeth hurt, right? Maintenance is a way to keep things functioning and working properly, and to avoid bigger problems like root canals or things like that. Well, it’s the same thing with your spine. When the spine is out of place for long enough, you start to develop wear and tear in the joints and disks of the spine.

That’s something that can be nipped in the bud and corrected much more easily earlier on, when you have some sort of injury. Now injuries might be a car accident or some fall that’s a really obvious injury. But it might not be so obvious, and it might be something, and frequently is something, that happens when you’re much younger, in your early years between zero and five years old. That’s when most of these injuries happen, between zero and five years old. And they’re not corrected and over time you develop degenerative changes or wear and tear in the joints and disks.

Maintenance care is a way to offer insurance for the time and money investment that you made. You want to make sure that you’re continuing to heal and continuing to feel your best. Maintenance is a way to do that. And it’s also a proactive approach, so you’re not waiting until things get really sore and hurt before you take any action to help it out and help it heal.

I’m Dr. Steve Battaglino and this has been your Health Minute.