Specialized Chiropractic Care: What You Need to Know

In this episode of 'Ask the Chiropractor,' Dr. Brant Hulsebus from Rockford, Illinois, explores the various specialties within the field of chiropractic care. Dr. Hulsebus, a Palmer College of Chiropractic graduate and team chiropractor for the Rockford IceHogs, provides insights into different post-graduate certifications such as pediatrics, sports injuries, chiropractic radiology, veterinary care, upper cervical care, wellness, and chiropractic philosophy. Tune in to learn how these specialties can offer targeted and effective treatments for different patient needs. Dr. Hulsebus also emphasizes the importance of consulting qualified chiropractors for any chiropractic-related questions.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. Hi there. So we just completed a really exciting week in our office. Once a year, we host the high school students here at our clinic. We let 'em come in. Those who are interested in their career in chiropractic and of question, you bring in a bunch of juniors in high school. They have a lot of questions and I wrote some of these questions down for this podcast and thanks to one of the Rockford area high school students. That's the topic of the week. Do they, the question was, do chiropractors have specialties? I know those doctors of medicine, there's an orthopedic surgeon, there's neurologists and stuff like that. Are there different areas in chiropractic that you can get involved in and do a deeper dive in? And the answer is absolutely now, just like a medical doctor could probably perform neurology surgery on somebody 'cause they could complete a medical school, but a neurologist would probably do a better job. So just because a chiropractor doesn't have a degree in something or a certification in something does not mean they're not capable of doing it. But if you really wanted to say, can this chiropractor? Let's say I moved to a new town and I've got children, and I want my children to see a chiropractor who maybe specializes in pediatrics. We have a post-graduate certification in pediatrics where you have to complete all years of classes. You have to be involved in a research project, and you have to take a final examination and you get your certificate. We have other ones in sports injuries. So if you wanted to find a chiropractor that took care of athletics and you weren't sure whether or not that chiropractor, did they have the degree called the CCSP certified Chiropractic Sports Practitioner? That means they took classes above and beyond with a no chiropractor would for athletes. Now, does it change the adjustment part? Probably not. But there's special considerations you need to take care of when you take care of athletes that the average person might not. Have or deal with. So we have a postgraduate degree in this. We also have a postgraduate degree in reading x-rays. We have our own chiropractic radiologist. So if I take an x-ray of somebody and I see something a little weird, or maybe the person grew funny and I'm not really sure I should proceed until I talk to a chiropractic radiologist, they'll be able to tell me, absolutely you can use this technique or this technique on this patient, but maybe not this technique. And so we had the people that studied this in order to give me a field doctor. Better answers on how I should proceed when I have those rare cases. And in my office, we have about two or three a year that we like to be able to tap into these chiropractic radiologists and get that information from. There's a whole area of chiropractic that's rapidly growing now in veterinarian care. Now, if you ask me to adjust your pet dog, I would say no.'cause a dog walks on four legs and we walk on two legs, and our spines have grown and developed and matured differently. They had different stresses and different things on the spine, and so I wouldn't know the right angles or the line of drive in order to adjust a dog because their joints look different than ours. Even though they had the, their mammal and they had the same number of vertebras, the way the vertebras was shaped, looked differently. So there's chiropractors that take extra coursework to learn how to adjust animals. Now, every state has different laws on adjusting animals. It's a newer thing in the chiropractic world, but it definitely does exist and there are now certifications in veterinary and chiropractic. Another area is upper cervical, meaning they only took at the top bones in your neck. These are some of the chiropractic urologists out there. These are some of the chiropractors doing some of the most exciting chiropractic work in the areas of brain trauma. Cuss of forces head injuries. I've been able to study with lots of these doctors and learn a lot from 'em. I haven't completed my certification yet, but I've able to learn a lot and be able to add more to my everyday practice than I did before by studying some of the work that these doctors do. And I often remember refer someone to somebody who does this type of work if I feel they might benefit from it. Another area we do besides that is wellness. Now I've done this with myself. I have my degree in chiropractic wellness where I took, bought four textbooks, took four courses, took four exams, and a final exam at the end to earn my certification. So we have the certification of wellness that shows you that I've studied. Hunter and gather tribes to understand what the genetic requirements are for a healthy person in order to stay healthy based on our genetic demands. Not so much on recommendations from various third parties. Wink. I have a postgraduate degree in chiropractic philosophy. A lot of us study chiropractic philosophy, chiropractors approach healthcare different than medical doctors.'cause we're two different things. So medical doctors, they try to find ways that. To put out fire, stick out crisises. If you're having a heart attack, a medical doctor is the best doctor you can see for that. They know how to treat those heart attacks and take care of you and recover you if you're trying to rehab and get better and stronger quicker. Maybe a medical doctor is not the best. Maybe a chiropractor that works with a physical therapist or the best to see. So we're more about long-term health and establishing good health patterns and trying to prevent the major health crisis. Not so much treat the major health crisis. So we have one at Chiropractic Philosophy. We have other ones that take classes in Whiplash, learn how to take care of direct traumas. Again, kinda like the Epi cervical, but a little different. The Epi cervical focuses on just the top two bones, the whiplash and the trauma doctors that take care of the whole spine. This would be a clinic if you had work comp injury or if you were involved in an auto accident. These are your specialists. Now, don't get me wrong, I take care of auto accidents all the time. Every chiropractor can do it, but these ones have a little bit more advance. I've had some weird injuries come in here that I've referred to these experts more on how to take care of my patient better. So there is collaboration also. Now, besides these certificates and different degrees you can get, there's also different councils and committees you can get on. I myself have been on the wellness committee from the International Chiropractic Association for the, for my CCWP certification. This is just an ongoing counsel looking to continue to evolve in the science of wellness and the in the application wellness in the chiropractic clinic. I currently serve on the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council, where we look at incorporating chiropractic into the sports and fitness world.'cause a lot of people that are involved in sports and fitness love their chiropractor. So how do we tap into the newest resources and the newest research in chiropractic strength chiropractic fitness and chiropractic sports and give access to those to field doctors or chiropractors that work with sports teams? How do we get that information out to. This is all on chiropractic.org. That's those two boards are along with the upper cervical board. I talked about the upper cervical certification. You can go on here and you can find chiropractors that specialize in this. How to find chiropractors in it. We also have the trauma one, we also have the pediatric one. So if you heard me talk about these different areas of specialty and you wanna find these chiropractors, you just go to chiropractic.org, you'll see the different councils. And from of those councils, you can find chiropractors that either have a certificate in these areas or have a unique interest in these areas. And either work with doctors, they do it, or have taken enough classes to be comfortable enough to do it themselves. So if you're in my community, Rockford, Illinois, and you wanna move to Oklahoma and you're like, Hey, I really wanna find a chiropractor to continue with the pediatric world, I would go to the chiropractic.org, I go to the Council of Pediatrics, I'd find a chiropractor there, I send you to 'em. So this is a great way for us to get, find each other and work with each other. So there's so many different areas in chiropractic you can dive into and get involved in beyond just the chiropractic degree. And what's our motivating force for this? Once we graduate, we have to continue to take hours and classes that maintain our license. And so a lot of us fight success with chiropractic in one of these areas, and then we want to learn more about it. I got into studying pediatrics because my daughters were born 10 weeks early, and I realized there's a whole bunch more in pediatrics that I was not an expert in. So I wanted to become a better expert in these areas to help the next patient whose children might be born early to help give them advice and give them some guidance and answer questions for them from a chiropractic point of view, a holistic natural point of view versus the medicine reduction point of view. Both have their merits, both have their needs, but it was neat for me to be able to get this education to share with my patients. As far as the sports stuff, yeah, I take lots of sports things. I learned, I'm a certified the McDougall Chiropractic Methods now for taking care of strength athletes and I talk about strength athletes. I take care of the strong men, the guys that carry cars. But I've been able to apply this technique to a 79-year-old. Retired nurse who's taking care of her husband as he's ailing from an ailment and she doesn't want home care. She wants to take care of her husband'cause she used to be a nurse. And so I'm able to adjust her using those same sports philosophies in order to help stabilize her core so she could be a better help to her husband. So these classes are interesting to me. I dabbled in all of 'em. I've done the whiplash courses, I've done the pediatric courses, I've done the wellness classes. They're just interesting to me to do deeper dives to make myself a more well-rounded chiropractor. The only thing, I'm an expert in any of 'em, but I think I have good knowledge in all of them.'em. So if you're looking to get more involved in chiropractic and maybe graduate with a chiropractic degree, but tell me, Hey, I want to practice with nothing but horses and animals. Then you go on after you, you finish and you do the veterinarian stuff, and you learn the rules and the laws of veterinarian chiropractic. Or maybe you just really love looking at those MRIs and X-rays. Then you graduate. Then you go on and take the. Classes in those areas, and you become what we call DACBAR an acronym for the degree that chiropractors get in the radiology world. So yes, there are chiropractic specialists. If you're gonna a chiropractor now, ask them, Hey, would I be a candidate for upper cervical care? And if they could either do it themselves. That's the first class I learned how to adjust at chiropractic school. But I have had some really unique cases I've referred on to other upper cervical chiropractors. So ask your chiropractor about these areas of specialty. If you're looking for one particular, like for an athlete, you can go to chiropractor.org and you can find various members of these different councils and membership in order to find each other and never with each other. So there you have it. There are definitely specialties in chiropractic and that's where some of 'em, there's probably more, some chiropractors probably gonna send me, Hey dude, you totally forgot about mine and I probably did, but you can look'em up yourself and find more of them. All right everybody. Thanks for tuning in and like always, if you ever have a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, the only person qualified to answer that is a chiropractor themselves. So you always ask a chiropractor about chiropractic, nobody else. Again, if I can help you in any other ways, let us know. Leave a comment message below. Maybe next time you'll be the question of the week. Thanks