With all of my recent check-ins on The Facebook, I have had a bunch of people ask me about my chiropractic care (you can click to know more here) and what I feel I get out of it. So, prepare yourselves. Here is my ode to chiro (more specifically Dr Jo, but not everyone can have her, so go find your own Dr Jo!)

A million years ago, I had an accident.

I flipped over the handlebars of my bike and landed star-fished in the middle of a concrete road.

Not long after, I had another accident.

I crashed head-first into a fence while on rollerblades and slipped a disc in my neck. I was young, but this accident was the beginning of slow degeneration in my neck, and back, which has led, over the years, to early onset arthritis in my neck. My neck is also much straighter than it should be – ‘normal’ people have a nice curve in their neck.

A few years later still, I started driving, and became a magnet for fender benders and accidents. A couple cases of whiplash (that can be cured instantly while knowing about proper Whiplash Treatment & Recovery guidelines), a few lower back injuries and a busted tailbone from falling down the stairs have all contributed to a rather sensitive and fragile spinal column. Make sure you have a peek at this web-site to get the right honey to help you feel relief from pain.

When I got pregnant, I developed sciatica. Which, even now, comes to visit sometimes.

Most recently, in 2015 I had a major car accident in the passenger seat of my best friends car and felt worse pain than I ever remember feeling. I couldn’t sit on my bum. I couldn’t turn my head. I couldn’t bend to touch my toes.

Are you cringing yet?

Yeah.

My poor back.

I lived in chronic pain for years. Over the counter pain meds, prescription pain meds, muscle relaxants, too-frequent shots of steroids at the ER or urgent care – daily doses of medication to manage the constant and sometimes debilitating pain I was feeling. Not necessarily feeling all of my injuries, all of the time, however, enough that I was unhealthily chewing down max doses of ibuprofen and paracetamol daily.

My best friend Amber, (often the smart one in our relationship, but we don’t tell her that) told me YEARS ago, to go see a chiropractor. So, while in Houston, I went to see Dr Yeager once a week. Once Lewis was born and I didn’t want to make the 30-40 minute drive to his office, I went to Dr Tara. After my accident in Iowa, I went to Zmoos Chiropractic (every day for an entire week – and then three times the week after).

I went weekly during my time in Houston. I found that it helped manage the pain I was in, I found myself taking less and less medications, making fewer trips to the doctor and urgent care. I felt my mobility increase. I was no longer addressing the symptoms (pain), but rather helping the actual problem (my busted back).

It only made sense that I find someone here in Northern Ireland. Though, I was always of the opinion that chiropractic care wasn’t really a ‘thing’ here in NI, I was very happy to be proven wrong. Some of the worst ‘episodes’ I’ve endured, has been after a thirty-six hour door to door trip across the world.  I started going to Dr Jo when I came back now and then for visits. When we moved back for ten months, I went weekly.

I discovered that regular chiropractic adjustments were doing more for me than just keeping the cause of my back pain/neck pain/headaches at bay. I was sleeping better, going to the loo more regularly, my menstrual cycle and fertility have been much more regular since I started chiro.

I managed (after yeeeeeears of trying) to convince Col to go see Dr Jo. He’ll tell you himself, he was a huge sceptic. But, his asthma was really causing him problems. As soon as he’d step off the plane in Belfast, he’d be gasping for a full breath. He was almost for casualty on a few evenings and he was completely miserable. For the entire duration of our trips here, weeks of asthma attacks and broken sleep because he couldn’t breathe.

Once he started to go see Dr Jo once a week – things got back under control. He has seen the light and is officially a chiro-convert!

At the moment, I go twice a week. I can literally feel when it’s time for an adjustment, my back starts to make rumbles, or I’ll find myself popping some ibuprofen for an ache, or icing my neck like a crazy person to try and help with a headache. It’s like magic.

There’s typically three kinds of reactions to an adjustment:

1. I instantly feel better and bound up off the table like my chiropractor has changed my batteries. (I love this one, I feel like I can take on the world!)

2. I sit up a little slowly, feeling a bit dazed and confused. This feeling is temporary, and as though Jo has unhooked something that was caught and my body’s readjusting to it working right again.

3. On my more ‘hard-core’ adjustments, I feel a bit achy, like I needed some serious work done and she’s adjusted all of the bones in my entire body. Again, temporary feeling, a bit of ice and some stretches brings me back to point number one.

Beyond the actual back-crackin’, Jo is truly invested in her patients health, and, she can tell a freakish amount from one’s spine. She can normally call me out for not sleeping very well, not drinking enough water, and being too stressed out – to name but a few. She gives me advice on which essential oils I should use to get rid of the lurgy, or help Col with his asthma, she reminds me to drink water, and, probably most importantly, she encourages me to stop and sit for ten minutes and just exist. My chiro’s clinic is my happy place. She’s got good tea, good music, even snacks. We chit-chat, we get adjusted, and I always, always, ALWAYS come away feeling substantially better than when I went in.

I imagine her day could be much shorter, if she just adjusted people and sent them on their way (like the other chiropractors I’ve had in the past!) But she doesn’t. She’s a giver and a helper and she always goes above and beyond for her patients (no, she’s not paying me to say this, though I did get a chocolate biccie at the clinic this morning with my adjustment!)

Aside from having found some truly lovely friends in the staff of Wilson Chiropractic, Dr Jo has helped significantly improve both mine and Col’s life and I’ve even had Lewis asking to go see Dr Jo a couple times recently when he’s felt a bit out of whack!  If I wake up unable to turn my head? Dr Jo is there to rescue me, she will cram me in to her schedule almost immediately. When I’m ‘in the zone’ writing my book and forget all about my appointment (ONE TIME, it happened ONE TIME!!) she will let me rock up to the clinic like nothing ever happened, and, when I get food poisoning and can’t get out of bed she doesn’t at all call me ‘sicknote’ 😉

Not all superhero’s wear capes.

So, I’ll finish off my soap-box post about how great chiropractic care is, by saying this; if you (or your kids) are experiencing back pain, headaches, fatigue, allergies, sickness, even battling with irregular periods, or infertility. Do a search for a chiropractor in your area – you may be amazed to find that even a once-monthly adjustment could help your quality of life substantially, like going to see Dr Jo helps my entire family (Though you may need more frequent adjustments in the beginning). Plus, it’s always good to have another person to nag – I mean, hold you accountable about whether or not you’re drinking enough water!

For those in the Larne area, you should go see Dr Jo, and/or take your kids, she deals with everyone from new-borns to grannies and everyone in between.