Help Someone Who is in Pain      Chances are you’ll want to tell your family, your friends, people you work with and sometimes, total strangers about our office. Anyone you refer to our office will be truly grateful when they discover how much we can help them. Have Us Contact Someone      Any of our providers are willing to call or email someone you are encouraging to come to us for help. Ask for permission for one of us to make contact, fill in the information in this form and we will have a provider call or email to answer any questions or to determine if we can take care of their problem. Start with Your Own Family      Consider this care for your own family. When the people you love decide to become a patient and they feel better and are not in pain, not only will your life be easier, but it is very satisfying to be the one who has recommended us. Have your child’s spine examined at least once a year. The development of children is limited by the spinal misalignment and it is a wonderful gift to prevent the spinal and spine related problems that develop as our children grow into adults (see Symptoms and Conditions below). Tell Your Story      Start by telling about your personal experience in our office and how much you have been helped. There is nothing that will influence someone as powerfully as your own story. Let them see how much you have improved. When you tell people about us be patient. Recognize that they need help and understand that they simply don’t have enough information to make the decision. Send them to www.brooksspinalcare.com      Use the web site to guide people to the stories of recovery on the Patient Experiences page. Our site has all of the information that anyone would need to make the decision to call us and schedule an appointment. You can request information for them or they can request it for themselves. Give Them Information about How We Can Help Them      Encourage anyone who is interested to watch the video or DVD about our office. We have given you copies in your new patient gift bag. We also included a previous newsletter (Body Language) and brochures about the NUCCA procedure we use to correct the spine. You can request any of this information to be sent directly to someone with the Request Information button. How to know when someone is Ready to Come      People usually come for spinal care when they are in crisis, when the pain and associated symptoms are keeping them from their normal life. Most people with a spinal misalignment have more than one area of the body that is tense or painful. Improvements in problems associated with breathing, circulation, sleeping or digestion may be out of the field of their understanding. Talk to them first about the pain.      Many people, who are in need of spinal care, don’t know they have a spinal misalignment, don’t know if having their spine corrected will help them, or they believe that the adjustments will hurt, that they have gone too far, or are too old to be helped. Some think that it costs more than they think they can afford, but don’t know the value of living with the spine in its normal position. The person may have been miserable for a long time and accepted it as normal and they may be waiting until they have the next crisis before they will come. Be patient with them and tell them about us anyway and tell them that when they need us will be there. How to Tell if Someone Has A Spinal Misalignment      The misalignment of the spine comes from an initial injury. Some injuries are as s simple as a childhood fall, off the bed, out of a tree or off the roof. Sports in school, auto accidents and the various traumas of our lives; very few people have escaped!      Spinal misalignments twist the body’s skeleton. When someone has a spinal misalignment here are some of the visible signs: (1) one leg more than ¼” shorter than the other while lying down, (2) one of the hips or shoulders higher or lower when standing, (3) head tilting to one side when looking in the mirror, (4) uneven wear on the heels of the shoes and/or (5) the shoulders twisting one direction and the hips twisting the other direction. Have the person do a self-test. Refer to the “Personal Test for a Spinal Misaligment.” Don’t Wait – It Will Get Worse      The complications of the twisted skeleton are mechanical tension, muscular imbalance and abnormal movement. A spinal misalignment is progressive and degenerative – the longer it is there the worse it gets.      The complications, conditions and symptoms will be skeletal, neurological or functional. These include: (1) degeneration of the joints and discs of the spine, (2) compromise of the function of the nervous system and (3) with musculoskeletal pain, and affect breathing, sleeping, digestion, elimination, circulation, thinking and / or emotions. Symptoms & Conditions      The problems from a spinal misalignment in our children are small at first and are related to functions as much as pain. These include: irritable infants not sleeping through the night, chronic ear infections, fussy eating habits, tummy aches and growing pains. More severe misalignments can contribute to asthma, seizures, migraine headaches and learning disorders.      As teenagers, the posture slumps, learning and studying become more difficult, back pain develops from carrying textbooks. We see our adolescents beginning to develop the early symptoms of the problems of adulthood: allergies and sinus infections, chronic tension headaches, neck, shoulder and back pain, irritable bowels, indigestion, leg cramps and pain and or numbness down the arms or legs. Tense, restless and irritable from the pain, we accept our condition as “just the way I am.”      Episodes of neck and back pain are only the beginning of the problems. The long-term debilitating effects of the spinal misalignment are degenerative disc disease, degenerative joint disease, arthritis (inflammation of the joints), chronic fatigue and can eventually lead to fibromyalgia, a condition that includes a long list of the complications of spinal misalignment. What to Expect From Brooks Spinal Care      Our adjustments are painless, fast acting and very effective. For acute and chronic pain in most patients we expect immediate relief following the first spinal correction. It may take a while to recover completely, and monitoring the stability of your spine on a schedule insures this recovery. Because the correction of the misalignment reverses these effects someone is never too old or has gone too far to benefit from having their spine corrected.      Most spinal corrections will stabilize for months or years after a few visits to the office and an initial period of recovery. During this time we teach our patients to know when their spine needs to be adjusted again and will release most patients from scheduled visits long before they have recovered completely. Even though a weakness remains for as long as you live for the spine to misalign again, as you recover the need for future spinal care is minimized. Self-management (coming to the office only when the spine has misaligned again) reduces unnecessary office visits and reduces costs. How Do We Correct the Spine?      Most people don’t want to know how we correct the spine, only that it “works” and will relieve their pain. For those who want to know, tell them that: our procedures are based on the sciences of biomechanics, mathematics and bioengineering. All adjustments are based on objective measurements. No joints are cracked and no one is twisted.      On the initial visit we make measurements of the spinal misalignment on precisely taken X-rays and we use a patented instrument (the Anatometer) to measure the skeleton of the body for the signs of misalignment (see above). All measurements are recorded for comparison on each examination.      We can correct most spines 80% or more with the first adjustment. Measurements are made on each follow up visit to monitor the stability of the spinal correction and the spine is adjusted only when it has misaligned again. Note*****It is no longer necessary to repeatedly adjust / manipulate the bones of the spine one at a time to correct the spine and it does not take thirty adjustments done three times a week for prolonged periods of time. How Much Does It Cost?      Even though the fee to establish a new patient seems expensive to some, most of our patients say it’s worth much more than they pay. Many of our patients have been able to stop taking expensive prescription drugs, which immediately pays for their care and some have avoided surgery, which would have cost several times our fees. Fewer visits to physicians and emergency rooms will soon allow you to know that the savings in health care costs by keeping the spine corrected will far out weigh the cost of the care. Thank You For Caring Enough to Share      Everyone should have their spine examined for a spinal misalignment, corrected if necessary and make spinal care a part of a regular health maintenance program. Life is simply better with the spine in its normal position, free of the limiting effects on us physically, mentally and emotionally. Keeping the spine corrected is one of the best things that can be done for health and wellbeing. Helping others find relief is one of the best gifts you can give to anyone.