Tough Love

2 Comments August 22, 2017 drworobec

I’m here for some tough love today.

I work in a sports-based clinic, and while we are by no means an athletes-only environment, we do tend to attract an active population of patients. In fact, active-lifestyle patients are the reason I became a chiropractor in the first place. I had finished my Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Calgary and was unsure of my next steps- my boyfriend’s cousin was a chiropractor and needed front desk help, so I began working there and my path became clear. A year later, I packed up my worldly possessions, moved across the country to attend CMCC in Toronto, and (insert cliché here) the rest is history. Fitness and health is what I’m all about; I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk, and being active is one of my core values. So perhaps it comes no surprise that I ended up working at a clinic that follows the same principles.

Let’s get back to the tough love part:

You cannot expect your body to be pain-free if you do not treat it well. Please read that again, and hear me out. If you sit at work all day and do not incorporate fitness into your life, there is only so much I can do for your back pain. If you carry extra weight and ignore your rehabilitation exercises, there is only so much I can do for your knee pain. If your workplace ergonomics are terrible and you work 60 hours per week, there is only so much I can do for your neck pain.

Listen, we’re in this together. In fact, I pride myself on getting people feeling better very quickly. I will do my part, but please, you have to do yours too.

Tough love can be confrontational and irritating and uncomfortable, so if you’re feeling that now, please accept my very-Canadian apology, and make a plan. Make a plan to take charge of your health. As we age, our healing rates slow down. Cell turnover drops and recovery slows.

Make a plan to move more, for movement is the fountain of youth.

It doesn’t have to be running or CrossFit or yoga (my personal favourites), but it has to raise your heart rate, stress your muscles, and put your joints in motion.

Short and sweet. Black and white. To the point.

Get moving.

“and your back pain is going to go away”

Leave a comment January 23, 2017 drworobec

“You know what really helped me?” a patient recently said during her second treatment with me. “The fact that you told me that my back wasn’t going to go out.”

I hear this type of thing often. This particular patient was suffering with lower back pain, and had a previous history of an exceptionally debilitating episode that made her temporarily unable to care for her two young children. Her fear level was high. On her first visit to the clinic, I spent much of our time together talking with her, explaining what was happening to her back, and why she was having pain. Patient education is patient empowerment. I did some hands-on manual therapy and then we chatted about rehabilitation exercises and the importance of movement, something that people in pain tend to avoid. The last words I said to her before she left were along the lines of “don’t worry, you’re going to be fine, and your back pain is going to go away.” A huge part of my job is patient education, because knowledge is power.

And just so that we’re all on the same page moving forward, backs don’t “go out” and then “go back in,” running does not cause arthritis in your knees, and getting adjusted three times a week for the rest of your life will not prevent stage three spinal degeneration. Yet these are all proclamations that patients come in and tell me about themselves; these blanket statements are untrue and damaging, and in most cases, patients have been told these things by a health professional. As chiropractors, and certainly as all healthcare providers, we cannot underestimate the power of our words for the good and for the bad. If you have a patient’s trust and respect, you have the power to remarkably alter the course of their healing and the perception of their body’s abilities through your words alone.

This is the same reason that medical imaging can often be detrimental; because it affects a patient’s psyche. Did you know that in many cases, there is actually a very poor correlation between what is shown on a medical image (an X-ray, for example) and a patient’s symptomatology? But if a patient is shown an x-ray of “degenerative joint disease” (that’s a fancy term for arthritis) in their spine, they will come to believe that they have an arthritic, incapable, dysfunctional body. This person then tends to become fearful of movement and therefore moves less. And what creates a perfect storm for unhealthy joints? Lack of movement. Herein lies the problem.

Healthcare professionals: please do be careful with your words, and patients: please do be careful of what you listen to.

I Hurt My Back

2 Comments December 13, 2016 drworobec

I hurt my back last Thursday.

I have never had a back injury. Like, never. I’ve hurt my neck, broken my thumb, sprained my ankles, and torn my ACL, but my back has never given me problems. As a chiropractor, perhaps this is to be expected, but in fact, the opposite is true. Many of my colleagues decided to join this profession after having great success with chiropractic for their own back injuries, and many others now suffer with lower back pain as a result of the physical nature of what we do. But for me, despite two babies, 225lb deadlifts, and a clumsy fall-down-often nature, my lower back had been spared. Until Thursday.

Thursdays are my GSD day (Get Sh** Done). I don’t have clinic hours that day, so my day often begins at the gym and ends at the grocery store, doing computer work, or cleaning my house. This past Thursday, I was with my 9am crew working on back squats. It was a 12-minute working segment; one back squat per minute for 12 minutes, with progressively increasing weight. On minute six, I lost my focus. I didn’t concentrate on my core, or my breath, and I heard a “click” from my back on the way down to the bottom of my squat. I didn’t have pain immediately, but it’s not my first rodeo, and I knew exactly what I’d done. I let my competitive ego take over, finished the workout, and then called the clinic.

I was in a treatment room less than two hours after that dreaded “click” and by then, I couldn’t even stand up straight. But Dr. Dave worked his magic, and when I left thirty minutes later I was feeling almost 100%. Through the weekend, my back pain came and went, but with some heat, core stability exercises, hot yoga, and a great Sunday long run, I am back to full function and pain free today. Five days from start to finish; from hunched and bent forward in pain to a full deadlift workout at 6am this morning. Chiropractic works. That treatment set me up on a path of quick healing.

I’ve written about low back pain before, but this is the first time I had been on the other side of the coin. This experience has grown my empathy and expanded my amazement with the wonders of my “job.” It comes down to mechanics, and if we can fix your mechanics, we can get you out of pain and functioning optimally. Quickly.