How Often Should People See a Chiropractor?

How often should people get adjusted is a question I get asked on a regular basis, and the short answer is: it depends. Long answer: there are a few factors that influence on how often a person should be adjusted. Some of the factors you can control, while there’s others that you can’t. Generally, getting an adjustment every month or two (if there isn’t anything musculoskeletal going on) is a good idea to maintain an optimal lifestyle. Keep in mind this is just my opinion, and it doesn’t reflect other chiropractors (although there are other chiropractors that will agree with me).

Age

First off, one factor that you cannot control is age, and that affects people in that younger people don’t require as many visits as older people. Reason why is because younger people can respond to stimuli faster than older people. The rate of decline in which you respond stimuli is a different topic, and can be within a person’s control.

Severity of the Condition

Secondly, it depends on whether or not there is some major pain or dysfunction going on with the spine in the first place, or if it’s minor and there’s little to no pain or dysfunction going on. If there isn’t a whole lot going on, then there isn’t a need to see the chiropractor that often. Thirdly, to go along with the severity of the condition, the chronicity of the condition determines how easily a person can get over a condition. Usually, acute musculoskeletal conditions (with proper care) are easier to treat, and therefore requiring less treatments compared to chronic conditions. As far as how much a person can control these two, I think there is more control a person than what people probably think. For example, someone with an acute sprained ankle will recover faster than someone who waits and their ankle would fall under the chronic category because a musculoskeletal therapy was introduced right away. Going off the sprained ankle theme, ankle sprains can be prevented with the proper interventions (musculoskeletal therapies like chiropractic as well as proprioceptive and strength training) to a certain extent. Granted it depends on the situation, but if everything is working properly working in the ankle, it is going to handle the stresses of a sprained ankle better and recover faster than a suboptimally working ankle.

Musculature

Last but not least is the musculature of a person. The more muscle mass a person has, the less times they generally need to see a chiropractor. This is a factor that every person can control, because everyone can do some sort of muscle building activity, whether it is going to a gym and doing strength training, sculpt yoga, or sitting and doing isometric contractions for a short duration. When patients are told they need to exercise and stress their muscles increase their muscle mass, people automatically think of going to the gym. That necessarily isn’t the case because there many ways people can increase their muscle mass, which is the number one indicator of longevity.

References

Bayer ML. Early versus delayed rehabilitation after acute muscle injury. N Engl J Med. 2017 Sep 28; 377: 1300-1301.

Nagy KK, Smith RF, Roberts RR, Joseph KT, An GC, Bokhari F, and Barret J. Prognosis of penetrating trauma in elderly patients: a comparison with younger patients. J Trauma. 2000 Aug 01; 49(2): 190-193.

Srikanthan P and Karlamangla AS. Muscle mass index as a predictor of longevity in older-adults. Am J Med. 2014 Jun; 127(6): 547-553.