Chiropractic Adjustments: Everything They’re Cracked Up to Be—Adam Lamb—Lamb Chiropractic

Richard Jacobs: Hello, this is Richard Jacobs with the Future Tech Health Podcast. I have Adam Lamb. He’s a chiropractor in New York city his website is Top Chiropractor nyc.com. Dr. Adam Lamb so thanks for coming. How are you doing?

Dr. Adam Lamb: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me here today.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah! Tell me about chiropractic. For people that don’t know, I’m sure there’s a lot of misinformation thinking that chiropractors will break your neck or all kinds of crazy stuff, but what do you encounter that people are misinformed about in regards to chiropractic?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure! So most people go to chiropractors when they have some sort of a complaint. When they have an Archer pain, something’s bothering them in their neck lower, back is bothering them, Psychiatric headaches, people come with all sorts of random symptoms. They go to a chiropractor they get adjusted, they get everything put into alignment and they feel better, but that’s not really what chiropractic is about.

Chiropractic to me is all about allowing the body to work the way it was designed to and if something is at a place in the spine or otherwise, and that’s gonna affect the ability of the body to work because nerves aren’t going to be able to get through those areas that are misaligned properly. So my job is to realign people and just allow the body to work properly and to heal itself.

Richard Jacobs: So when someone’s not aligned from what I’ve heard, they call it a subluxation. When you aligned someone what do you literally doing? Let’s say like I know one of the vertebrae in their spine is misaligned. How would it be misaligned and what would you do and what would happen after?

Dr. Adam Lamb: So most people could understand what a dislocation is sometimes they fall and their shoulder gets dislocated and if that happened, you would not be going to a chiropractor. You’d be going to an emergency room and having it put back into place but a lot of times shoulders and other joints in the body go out of place a little less than a full dislocation, another word for dislocation is a luxation and a subluxation is exactly what it means, It’s less than a full luxation. It’s less than a full dislocation and that’s really the way that chiropractors help people.

You see something that is just dislocated or out of alignment a little bit. We use our hands to put things back into place as gently as possible and we remove ND any interference from the nerve system. Therefore allowing the body to express itself fully.

Richard Jacobs: What’s the audible sound that some people hear the crack? What is that? Does the science figure out what’s going on?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Yeah the crack is really just some air that’s being released. It comes out of suspension. That’s in liquid, that’s in every joint, just like opening up a can of soda or beer and you have that little noise that comes out. If you wanted to test that theory once somebody has been realigned or adjusted, if you tried to move that same joint again it wouldn’t make another sound for at least about 20 minutes, which is how long it takes for the gas to go back into suspension and that doesn’t mean that you should be getting adjusted every 20 minutes, but you really couldn’t make that sound in less than 20

Richard Jacobs: And what causes subluxations? What are some of the major factors that cause it to happen?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Everything you do in life can cause a subluxation just being alive. Does it the way you sit, the way you stand, the way you sleep what you put in your body can cause subluxations. If you’re not putting the right things into your body, and let’s say you’re doing some damage to an organ like your stomach for example, then your stomach sends a signal to the brain. The brain says oh, there’s something fishy going on there and it further sends back an impulse. This causes a muscle to go into a spasm that muscle then pulls on the vertebra in that area and then the vertebra misaligns so as to put pressure on that nerve and turn down that abnormal signal and it’s really pretty simplistic.

It’s the only way the body knows how to get rid of that message. But we know now that by moving it properly and getting that pressure off that’s an even better way to allow the body to heal.

Richard Jacobs: So what happens if the nerve gets pinched slightly to get some pinched majorly? What are the effects or symptoms?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Well nerves in your body usually travel in bundles and within that bundle, there are different diameter fibers. Some of those fibers carry pain, some of them carry temperature, some of them carry pressure, and some of them carry motor function to various muscles in your body, so depending on where that bundle of nerves is being compressed and how much of it is being compressed, that can often determine what nerve within that bundle is going to get affected and some people might show signs of numbness and tingling while others might just be complaining of pain while others might have a loss of function in various body parts.

Richard Jacobs: Well how often the average person does needs to get adjusted? I know it depends on a person’s average.

Dr. Adam Lamb: There’s a lot of different factors that govern how long a person can maintain the correction. But the first thing to consider is how long have you had that misalignment for? Most people are coming in with misalignments, chronic misalignments that they’ve had for most of their lives. So if you’ve been living a certain way in a certain position for 30, 40 years and it might take another lifetime, another 30, 40 years to really correct that. It doesn’t often take that long. But typically when I see a person and I give them an adjustment, I give them a correction. I see that most of those corrections usually last about a week or so. So that’s why I encourage most of my people to come and get checked on weekly. Other chiropractors might look at that differently. Other chiropractors might see people several days a week, other chiropractors, depending on their technique. I only see people once a month or even less frequently.

Richard Jacobs: Well, what happens on your first adjustment? What will people typically report feeling and after they’ve come for a while, let’s say, for months they’re getting adjusted regularly? What’s the difference? What did they tell you?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure! So most people coming in getting their first adjustment are going to feel better. They’re going to feel noticeably better, right then and there in the office, they will be adjusted, they get up off the table like, “Oh wow” that feels good, I can move better.

Some people say they can breathe better, but some people don’t. Some people get an adjustment and they’re sore and people feel worse after their first adjustment or two and it’s kind of like going to the gym and doing an exercise that maybe you’ve never done before. Maybe you haven’t done it a long time and you’re moving parts of your body in ways that you’re not used to.

So a lot of times you can be a little sore after that typically after I see someone for the first time, I don’t ask them right then and there how they feel. I’m more interested in how they feel the next day or in a few days. So when I do see that person for the first time, I like to have them come back soon, within a few days or so to give me some feedback to see what they’re up to.

Reassess their whole spine and body and see if they move things properly, if we need to do more of the same, maybe we need to do different things and make sure that they’re not going to be sore on future visits.

Richard Jacobs: You people you see they resist wanting to come back to they feel like it should be one or is that not really a consideration? Like what goes on in people’s minds? Do you think when you adjust them the first time?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure! Well, so a lot of people have had told me that sometimes I’m too good at my job. Chiropractors cannot be too good in that a person comes in and in some sort of distress, they get adjusted and their symptoms go away. They feel better and most of the time when people’s symptoms go away, they think they’re good, they’re done but just getting someone out of pain doesn’t mean that they’re all better and that those misalignments aren’t going to come right back so it’s really not a one-time thing to really get the most out of chiropractic. It’s more of a maintenance thing, it’s more of just getting checked on a regular basis to make sure that your body is able to deal with the stresses of life.

Richard Jacobs: You see that people want to come to see you or that they’re afraid to come to see you and they feel like they have to come to you. Like what’s the perception of seeing you versus like a regular doctor?

Dr. Adam Lamb: I mean a lot of people want to go see chiropractors instead of medical doctors. They want a healthier approach towards things and then there’s a whole another group of people that go to chiropractors as a last resort after having gone to their medical doctor and trying drugs and all sorts of other treatments and therapies going to physical therapy and then they finally go to a chiropractor who does a really simple adjustment, and long behold their body starts working better.

People want to do the one and done the thing and I’m not forcing people, I’m not calling people, I don’t send postcards and bang people that come back to see me. My job as a doctor is to educate people and I educate my people and if they want to take advantage of what I have to offer, great. I’m here for them but I’m not here to force anyone something that they don’t want to do.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah! I mean just personally my experiences that I want to go to the chiropractor because I always feel better after the regular doctor. I don’t want to go because it just seems like it always would be negative news. I have a different mindset, it’s a positive sign. Just wondering hopefully that a lot of your patients feel the same way. They feel positive about it. They look forward to it.

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure! I mean part of the whole experience is to keep people being positive and to give people hope and I think a lot of people go to a medical doctors and you know medical doctors come from a place of fear and scare tactics to get people to do what they say and I don’t like that kind of practice. I’m all about giving people hope, keeping people positive and keeping people healthy.

Richard Jacobs: Are there particular techniques that you like? I’ve seen like the activator, it sounds like a little typewriter, some doctors use that and you know, I guess there are various ways to manually adjust, but anything that comes to mind that you like and why?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure! So the word chiropractic comes from Greek, meaning to use your hands and so to me, true chiropractic is about using your hands putting your hands on people, using your hands to realign things, move things, that kind of stuff but I also use a number of different modalities, number of machines in the office, some things to help break up scar tissue, muscle spasm, some things to stimulate cells in the body called Propecia receptors to help the body hold those adjustments even longer and I have no problem using all sorts of different modalities like lasers and ultrasound and things that physical therapists use and doing massage and all these things.

The important thing is that chiropractic is about using your hands, moving joints in the body and getting them in proper alignment to allow the full expression of the nerves in the body that’s chiropractic and that’s it. All those other things are cool and I like to use all those other things, activator that as you mentioned and you know, that blah, blah kind of activators. Like all these cool machines that a lot of personal trainers are using these days. They’re all cool as long as you can differentiate those, the chiropractic adjustment from all those other funds.

Richard Jacobs: Yeah. This is a profession that has a lot of new going on or has it just works and it’s been static for a long time. Like what’s your overall view of the field?

Dr. Adam Lamb: There’s a huge rift within the chiropractic profession. Chiropractors have always been known as being different. If you looked at a hundred different chiropractors, they’d all practice a hundred different ways more or less. Using different techniques and modalities. But the big thing these days is that there are a lot of new chiropractors coming out of school. And what they really want is they want to be on par, like medical doctors. They want to be accepted as medical doctors. They want to prove that they’re not over-treating people over adjusting. They want to be able to diagnose various conditions. And even though all chiropractors are required to diagnose things, at least for insurance companies. Again the real point of chiropractic is to allow the body to work better. And I think chiropractic should be different than all the other health profession.

And that’s why we’re kind of chiropractors. If you want to do things like a medical doctor or like a physical therapist then go to physical therapy school, go to medical school, but don’t even call yourself a chiropractor. That’s my opinion.

Richard Jacobs: Do you see the profession changing in a certain way because of the desire of new chiropractors? I mean, is it really going to stay how it is?

Dr. Adam Lamb: I think there’s always going to be two categories. There’s going to be the chiropractors that believe in health and wellness and the chiropractors that are just here to treat pain and symptoms and again, be more like a physical therapist. So I think there are more hopefully maintain that thanks to the old school chiropractors like myself, but we’re always learning new stuff as well. And I’m always going to new seminars, always learning new things about chiropractic and new techniques, new modalities, learning things about nutrition and just healthy living things that I can pass on to my patients to help them lead happier healthier lives.

Richard Jacobs:  Do you see that the patients are changing at all? I mean, like how long have you been a chiropractor and how long have you been seeing patients?

Dr. Adam Lamb: I’ve been doing this for 18 years, almost 19 years now. And the thing that we see now is thanks to the internet, thanks to Google. People, patients know more about themselves than most of their doctors. And I love that. And I love that people are researching everything, every word that a doctor tells them, which they should. I tell my people all day long, don’t believe me. Don’t believe what I say. Go check it out for yourself. The real thing that we can offer people that nobody else can is an adjustment. You can’t get an adjustment on Google. You can use the sorts of facts, but you need to get face to face with a chiropractor and get the physical aspect of it.

Richard Jacobs: What’s an osteopath versus what you do? Do they do adjustments and how are they different?

Dr. Adam Lamb: So osteopaths do lots of manipulations of the joints in the body and a lot of chiropractors have learned osteopathic techniques. And I love a lot of osteopathic techniques. The formation of chiropractic had some roots in osteopathy, but then, one of the biggest differences is that osteopaths move things just for the sake of moving things. And the point is they really want to allow for normal blood flow through the body, blood, and lymph. Whereas chiropractors are more concerned with nerve flow. It just so happens that nerves and blood vessels and lymphatic drainage, lymphatic system all runs in the same general directions and areas. But chiropractors are more concerned about the brain and the nervous system than osteopaths.

Richard Jacobs: Oh Okay. Interesting.

Dr. Adam Lamb: Chiropractic also happens to be more specific than osteopathy, whereas osteopathy will sometimes use some long lever adjustments. Chiropractors get in and do very specific shorter lever adjustment. I know that’s a little confusing, but it’s just more specific than just moving things for the heck of it.

Richard Jacobs: And do you work on, I guess men and women, do you work on kids? Is there an age at which it will be okay to work on kids?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Sure. So I see a lot of pregnant women and I offer them to check their newborns. I’ve seen a lot of newborns, sometimes in the hospital, sometimes as soon as they’re home. With a newborn in a normal delivery, it’s really important just to check the pops their necks and make sure that’s all in the right place so that they can develop properly. But the adjustment and I say adjustment with quotation marks. It’s a really, really simple gentle thing. It’s not at all like someone would imagine a normal adult would be adjusted. And then outside of the newborns I see children of all ages and it’s as they develop as their body grows and matures or able to move things in different ways, we’re able to do different types of adjustments with them.

Richard Jacobs: I’ve seen them, you know, like teenagers and kids with the chiropractor and it seems like when they get adjusted it’s like the chiropractor gave them sugar because they have all this energy and they go crazy.

Dr. Adam Lamb: Yeah. I mean that’s really the power of chiropractic. It’s not all that getting somebody out of pain, it’s about giving them more energy and vitality and just allowing their body to express itself fully.

Richard Jacobs: Any contraindications? Is there a point where someone’s too old or too frail to get this help? Or you can just modify the strength by which you do things and everyone can benefit?

Dr. Adam Lamb: So truthfully, everyone can benefit from it. And there are some people that are so arthritic or locked up that a real forceful adjustment would be contrary indicated. So I wouldn’t do that stuff. And that’s where modalities like the activator come into play where we can do things a lot gentler. I see lots of elderly people, lots of osteoporitic people that you’ve got to really be careful with. Lots of people with vascular issues, people who are in danger of getting a stroke and you gotta be really careful with their necks. A lot of people who might have heart conditions, who might have had heart conditions for decades might have things like an abdominal aortic aneurism. And we need to be really careful about adjusting even just the middle of their backs. But it’s all through modifications that we can help everyone.

Richard Jacobs:  All right, excellent so Adam, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and you serve what Manhattan or like what range area do you serve?

Dr. Adam Lamb: Yup I am in Manhattan, so because I’m in Manhattan and right in the center of it all right by the grand central station, I get people from all over New York. I get people from Westchester in Connecticut takes Metro-North and I get people from Jersey and from all the boroughs and I also get a lot of travelers international travelers that are just passing through New York and just want to get a good adjustment.

Richard Jacobs:  And you’d have you set up a booth right next to like the hot and crusty right there Penn station, I get a lot of people to come in.

Dr. Adam Lamb: Totally!

Richard Jacobs:  Well excellent, so people could also go to your website. It’s what the

topchiropractornyc.com

Dr. Adam Lamb: You can also get there by going to lamb chiropractic.com. Either way, since it does the same place.

Richard Jacobs:  Okay! All right Adam well thank you for coming. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Adam Lamb: Thanks so much Richard have a great day.