We usually see people when they hurt, and as soon as the pain goes away, they ask if they should still come or not. I want to answer this question using a simple drawing below.
100% Healthy Feeling Sick
Tissue 1 2 3 4 Tissue
Let’s use the drawing above to see if you should stop coming in once you feel better.
The first line is the 100% healthy tissue line indicating that your spine and all the tissues are healthy.
The middle line is the feeling line, which indicates how you feel. To the left of the line, we will say you feel good, and to the right of the line, you don't feel good.
If you were a person who was at the number 1 position on the line, you would be a person whose tissue is becoming damaged, but because you were still to the left of the feeling line you would still feel good. The challenge is that your spine is breaking down, yet because you still feel good you don't think to take care of your spinal health. The spine will continue to break down moving along the health line to the right getting worse, but you will still feel good because it hasn't crossed the feeling line yet.
A person who is at #2 level of spinal damage will feel good, but they are on the verge of having enough tissue damage to feel bad just to the right of the feeling line but because they are still to the left of the feel-good line they still feel good.
My question for you here is if they are healthy or not? They feel good but they have almost enough tissue damage to hurt but just not there yet.
Let’s move on…. #3 Now has enough tissue damage to feel pain as they are on the right of the feeling line where they start to feel pain. You see you have thus far based your health on how you feel which is dangerous because your body can and will break down for a long time before you feel anything.
And the damage continues to #4 and eventually you hit the sick tissue line and at that point, you have let your spine hit the point of no return where you can’t be helped and you will be forced to live in pain for the rest of your life.
Let’s say you come to our office at a #3, we catch it in time, and we start care with you. When we begin care the tissue will heal and start heading towards 100% tissue health in the reverse direction of the tissue damage line.
Let's now say you get to the point in care and you went from #4 to crossing the feeling line and you are now a #2 your tissue has healed enough, and you feel better symptoms are gone!!
The BIG question looking at the line of healing should you stop care now? If you are just into symptoms you would say yes and you would stop care but is the tissue fully healthy at that point…and the answer is no which means if you stop now the damage will reverse and start back to the right and at some point you will have symptoms again.
You will be the person who straddles the feeling line never getting your spine strong as it can be.
Yet if you are interested in health just when you cross the feeling line and become a #2 you would know that you have only created enough healing to feel better but there is still healing to do to get your spine as healthy as possible to the left of the feeling line.
The answer to the question lies within you and how you view your health.
If you are a reactive person then as soon as you feel good you will disappear and when it hurts again you will come back. The only challenge with this is that at some point you will shift too far to the right and then we can’t help you.
If you are proactive with your health you will get to the left of the feeling line and continue to get the tissue as strong as can be and then do maintenance every couple of weeks to keep your spine to the left of the feeling line so you feel good and you know that the spine tissue is healthy.