With chiropractic care, there are different phases, including relief care and corrective care. During the relief care phase, your chiropractor might want to take X-rays to see what’s truly going on with your spine. Then he or she might come up with a plan to make adjustments to correct the misalignments found in the spine. Relief care typically happens when you’re in pain and at the office seeking some relief from that pain. Later on, perhaps days or weeks down the line, you then move to corrective care.

Corrective care is like a deeper fixing of that which was relieved. It may include things like exercises your chiropractor asks you to do at home, nutritional adjustments to your diet, traction sessions, and/or advice on what “not” to do versus what kinds of activities you should be doing to further help your body along its process of healing and feeling better.

Ultimately, corrective care is designed to get your nervous system functioning optimally, with your spine in better shape than when you first started chiropractic treatment.

So, to sum it up, corrective care is what happens after pain symptoms are reduced or eliminated. In order to prevent the symptoms from coming back, your chiropractor works with you over time to correct underlying problems via adjustments, exercises, stretches and more.

If you’re in the corrective care phase of your chiropractic treatment then don’t expect to have as many adjustments as often as you did before. Though you may experience some “flare-ups” even during corrective care, this phase of chiropractic care is most often associated with healing to the point where the problem(s) you used to experience disappear all together. Generally, the corrective care chiropractic phase lasts several months, and in some cases a couple of years.

Here are some big word topics a chiropractor may mention during your corrective care phase: mirror image adjustments, postural exercises, power plate rehabilitation, spinal rehab traction and/or spinal orthotics. Any time your chiropractor uses “big words,” you’re welcome to ask for clarification. It’s a good thing to understand what your chiropractor is specifically doing to/for you in order to help correct problems you have.