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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

A chiro who isn't a quack

After my bad experience with a chiropractor last year, I hesitated to see another one. But this winter, I went - mostly just because I had met my deductible, and wanted to get some free visits in!
I saw one who came highly recommended from multiple runner friends. I explained my odd leg pain and showed him my xrays. After reviewing film and testing and prodding all my muscles, he said the same thing my doctor said: I looked as healthy as a horse.

But he did some good stuff: tests to see if pain originated from bone (negative) or muscle (negative). But if neither of those - what?
Nerves!
View of the obdurator nerve

Which is exactly what Char suggested a few posts back.
When I went to the chiropractor, I'd been feeling the front-and-back thigh pain a lot, and the pain in front of my thigh was still waking me up some times. The chiro tried to move some muscles around to relieve impingement, and as soon as he did I felt the burning pain stop. It was weird. And relieving.
Sadly, it sort of came back when he let go of my psoas. But since then, the pain in front of my leg is slight, intermittent, and hardly noticeable. I was given a list of stretches to try to keep my muscles limber and off my nerves, and told to return if I wanted.
So, I actually got something positive out of this visit. No trickery, no quackery, and another assurance that there is actually nothing major wrong with me. Perhaps some odd healing and clearly a lot of shifting of soft tissue to accommodate the lumpy bone I was sporting for awhile, but physically and mechanically, all is well.

I've read more on obdurator impingement, and here's a good summary. I think in my case, my long healing course coupled with chronic groin strain/pain is the cause. The good news is that stretching, strengthening, and warming up work wonders!

I felt obligated to post this because I kind of slammed chiropractic last year. But the guy I saw this time was excellent, so I will go ahead and tell you who it was: Source Chiropractic in Metairie. Tell Dr. Dave I sent you!

5 comments:

  1. I do think there's a lot of variability in chiros so I'm glad you had a good experience with this one. Go Char on the diagnosis!

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  2. It's good that you found someone who knew what they were doing. I've been burnt a few times by the medical/allied medical fraternity and sometimes feel like the only good medico out there is Dr House and he has to almost kill you to get a diagnosis.

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  3. So glad you found a good one and you're seeing some positive changes!

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  4. sounds like you saw a good professional!

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  5. Glad you found someone who worked for you. A positive thing I'll say about Chiro's is that most seem very passionate about what they're doing, with a true belief in their prescribed healing process ... even though a lot of what they do seems like glorified stretching to me. But many medical doctors I've seen in the past seem overworked, disinterested, and very pedestrian but with a deep and genuine arrogance ... basically offering diagnosis's that I could've called before I went in.

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