Do I need X-Rays? | Bellevue Wa Chiropractic Center
X-rays are a very objective view into what is subjectively (internally) going on inside the body.
Patients may feel a lot of pain and discomfort and as life goes on become accustomed to it and not realize all the factors that are causing the pain and the discomfort.
In fact, pain and discomfort are usually symptoms of much worse things. Quite often when I do x-rays on a patient who has been in chronic pain all their life...it turns out that they have a myriad of issues. These issues are detectable by a good Chiropractor just by touch but sometimes it is hard to tell the extent of the conditions and issues.
For instance, one time I had a patient with severe lower back pain. She had been chronically obese all her life and was in severe pain. I barely touched her and she would wince.
It was obvious to me that she had severe vertabral degredation and obviously had a severely misaligned hip as well as calcification and bone spurs.
But even I was surprised when the x-rays came back and showed just how much of these things there was. I almost fell out of my chair. There was probably one vertabra in the whole of her spine that was in okay condition. Everything else was severely out of alignment. The x-rays proved the necessity of care and the necessity for a severe change in operating basis for the patient.
Once I showed her the x-rays and compared them to "normal" she had an epiphany and wake-up call and went into crazy fitness mode to fix her problem and many of her bone spurs diminished in size, her hip (with intensive visits) came back into alignment and she avoided painful and life altering spinal fusion surgery.
I don't like dosing people with radiation but there really is only one way to know the extent and severity of what is going on inside a patient's body and even after almost 20 years in practice as a Chiropractor in Bellevue, Wa I am surprised at the severity that x-rays will show up.
I am always willing to forego x-rays if a patient adamently refuses but I really do like to have them done just so everyone knows exactly what we are REALLY dealing with - and by everyone, I am including myself as the doctor.
If you visit a Chiropractor do what you can to ensure you get x-rays and see what is happening inside. I guarantee you, if you have chronic pain, numbness, tingling, etc that the x-rays will show up more than you know is going on.
Best,
Dr. Edward Owens, D.C.
Chiropractic of Bellevue
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