What To Believe

“Well I read on the internet that…”

The above statement has to be the worst seven words that a doctor will ever hear in his or her medical career. Not to mention that the birth of the internet itself is probably the worst invention ever because let’s admit it, it has given people (namely doctor’s patients) an insight into the medical world that was used to be forbidden, unchartered territory. Now it seems that most patients can walk into a doctor’s office and tell him or her what they’ve been diagnosed with before the doctor can even perform any tests. All of which leads to a very important question: how right are we when we diagnose ourselves? Just because we’ve substituted doctors for Google doesn’t mean we’ve been “diagnosed” correctly. How can the internet be as reliable as, say, an X-ray or a blood test? Can a dot.com website really be as good as a doctor who specializes in something like chiropractic medicine?

Granted, there are hundreds of specialists and doctors out there and yes, some of them clearly don’t know what they’re doing. The number of malpractice suits prompts most people to be wary of even making an appointment to see a doctor and most doctors, because of the threat of malpractice, won’t even treat a patient fully because he or she is afraid of the repercussions, especially if there is surgery involved.

There was a time when surgery was the answer to just about every medical problem in the book. Nowadays, doctors and scientists are opting for new, non-invasive methods that will keep a patient off an operating table rather than on it. One such thing in chiropractic medicine that is helping patients with spine problems is using an activator instrument. An activator instrument is a hand-held, spring-loaded device that releases a pulse of energy into the spine in order to help move a vertebrae but not so much that it will cause damage. The idea of this device is to work the vertebrae in the spine to relieve pain without drugs or surgery. This instrument is not to be confused with spinal manipulation. The activator and spinal manipulation are two very different things and can or cannot be used, depending on the diagnosis of the patient.